Consul Democracy
Your civic platform. Your AWS account. Nobody else's black box.
A production-ready Consul Democracy deployment in your own AWS account in about 20 minutes — the open-source citizen participation platform, configured the way an AWS consultancy would do it for a government agency.
Deploy on AWS Marketplace →Transparent Civic Engagement, Independently Auditable
Local & Municipal Governments
Citizen participation infrastructure your residents can trust.
Regional & State Agencies
Participatory processes that scale without a per-project quote.
Universities
Student government voting and proposals on infrastructure you control.
Nonprofits
Participatory budgeting without a custom-quote sales process.
Advocacy Organizations
Transparent, auditable engagement tools for public campaigns.
International Development & Civic Tech Orgs
Open, auditable infrastructure deployable anywhere AWS operates.
If your organization is accountable to the public for how it spends money and makes decisions, the next section shows why a black-box vendor is a hard sell for civic infrastructure.
Custom Quotes vs. One Transparent Price
Civic engagement platforms like EngagementHQ, CitizenLab, Bang the Table, and Granicus don't publish pricing at all — every one of them requires a sales call and a custom quote. Industry reporting puts typical costs around $5,000–$10,000+ per year, scaled by population, features, and project count, with larger cities paying significantly more.
No Sales Call Required
See the exact price on this page — $0.02/hr flat, no custom quote process.
No Population-Based Scaling
Cost doesn't change based on your city's size or how many residents participate.
Fully Open Source
Consul Democracy's code — and this deployment pattern — are both independently auditable, which matters specifically for public infrastructure.
Industry reporting puts typical civic engagement platform pricing at $5,000–$10,000+ per year, negotiated per project — this pattern costs about $175/year flat (plus standard AWS costs), with the exact price published right here.
Free, Open-Source Civic Software
Consul Democracy's core is free and open source — for public infrastructure specifically, that independent auditability matters in a way it might not for a private company. Self-hosting keeps resident data under your own government's control.
Free & open-source, no license fees
Independently auditable code
Resident data stays in your infrastructure
Meets data sovereignty requirements by design
Production-Ready, Following AWS Best Practices
This CloudFormation template and custom AMI deploy a complete Consul Democracy environment — live in about 20 minutes.
Citizen Participation
Debates, proposals, and participatory budgeting.
Voting System
Secure and transparent voting mechanisms.
Multi-AZ Support
High availability across AWS availability zones.
Auto-Scaling
Handle traffic spikes during voting periods.
What's Easy to Get Wrong, Handled By Default
Hardening voting and participation infrastructure against abuse
Multi-AZ RDS PostgreSQL and auto-scaling EC2, configured for resilience
Scaling for high-traffic voting or budgeting periods
Auto-scaling EC2 instances, built in from day one
Session management infrastructure at government scale
ElastiCache for session management, configured for you
Distributing documents and media reliably to residents
S3 storage with CloudFront CDN for global distribution
FOSSonCloud is built by Ordinary Experts, an AWS Consulting Partner working in Infrastructure as Code since 2014. This isn't a repackaged black-box AMI — the CloudFormation template is open source, so you can see exactly what's being deployed.
Architecture
This pattern deploys a complete Consul Democracy infrastructure including:
- Auto-scaling EC2 instances
- RDS PostgreSQL database with Multi-AZ
- S3 for document and media storage
- CloudFront CDN for global distribution
- ElastiCache for session management
What You'll Need
Everything required to go from this page to a running Consul Democracy deployment.
An AWS Account
With billing enabled and permission to launch resources in the region you plan to deploy to.
A Subscription to This Pattern on AWS Marketplace
Accepting the marketplace terms is what makes the CloudFormation template available to launch in your account.
A Registered Domain Name
Pointed at the infrastructure this pattern creates — needed for your platform's public URL and SSL certificate.
IAM Permissions to Launch CloudFormation Stacks
The stack creates auto-scaling EC2 instances, a Multi-AZ RDS database, ElastiCache, an S3 bucket, and a CloudFront distribution on your behalf.
About 20 Minutes
For the stack to finish launching before your platform is live.
Up and Running in 4 Steps
Subscribe to the Consul Democracy pattern on AWS Marketplace
Launch the CloudFormation stack in your AWS account
Configure your organization settings
Start engaging with your community — live in about 20 minutes
Self-Hosted Doesn't Mean Unsupported
Free Onboarding Session
A 1-hour call with a FOSSonCloud engineer, included with every deployment.
Ongoing Email Support
Direct line to support@fossoncloud.com whenever you need it.
Fully Open Source
Deploy on AWS Marketplace
Production-ready Consul Democracy in your own AWS account, live in about 20 minutes.
Deploy on AWS Marketplace →