1. Does the report reach anyone who can act?
A report that lands only in a public feed depends entirely on a volunteer noticing it. A report that lands only in a council system is invisible to the neighbours who could have cleared it in ten minutes.
CleanSpot does both from a single submission: the report is a public pin immediately, and where the local authority subscribes it also appears in their triage inbox, assignable to a municipal team or an external contractor and tracked to completion.
2. What happens where the council is not a customer?
This is the question most category comparisons skip, and it decides whether an app is useful on day one or only after a procurement cycle. If the product is purely a pipe into municipal systems, it does nothing until a municipality buys it.
CleanSpot is useful without any municipal relationship: the map, volunteering, group cleanup events and the public record all work regardless. Municipal subscription adds a dispatch and tracking layer on top of a network that already functions.
3. Is it free for the people doing the reporting?
Anything that charges residents, or monetises them with advertising, suppresses the reporting volume that makes the map worth reading.
CleanSpot is free for citizens permanently: no ads, no paywalls, nothing to buy inside the app. Revenue comes from municipal subscriptions, priced by population band.
4. Does it close the loop?
Reporting without resolution produces a map of complaints that gets more depressing over time, and communities stop contributing.
A CleanSpot report has a lifecycle, from open to being cleaned to cleaned, with before-and-after photos, credit to whoever did the work, and a public record when a site is dumped on again. Recurrence is visible rather than lost.
5. Will people use it more than once?
Civic reporting tools tend to have severe retention problems, because filing a complaint is not an enjoyable activity.
CleanSpot is built as a community rather than a complaint form: EcoPoints for verified reports and cleanups, badges, leaderboards, groups, and organised cleanup events with RSVPs and a shared recap. The social layer is what brings people back.
6. Where does the data live, and who owns it?
For a European municipality this is frequently the deciding question, and it is worth settling before a pilot rather than during procurement.
CleanSpot is GDPR-compliant and EU-hosted. Reports are public by design, because that is what makes the network function; account details, personal data and location history are not, and are never sold. Residents can export or delete everything from Settings.
7. Does it work in the languages your residents speak?
Coastal and urban municipalities deal with residents and visitors who do not read the national language, and those are frequently the people standing in front of the rubbish.
The CleanSpot app ships in 30 languages, kept in step with each release rather than translated later.
Can CleanSpot replace an existing council reporting system?
It can sit alongside one or replace the citizen-facing part of it. The dashboard covers triage, assignment to internal teams or external contractors, resolution tracking, scheduled email reports and analytics. Talk to us about your current setup and we will be straight about the fit.
Does it cover more than litter?
Yes. Alongside litter and bag drop-offs it handles public issues, potholes, broken streetlights, overflowing bins, damaged signage and similar, each with its own reported-to-resolved lifecycle.
What does it cost a municipality?
An annual subscription to the CleanSpot dashboard, priced by population band. Get in touch and we will put a quote together.