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Should I use Accela?

Accela provides cloud-based solutions to enhance government operations, boost efficiency, and improve citizen engagement. - accela.com

Depends. Buy only if you are a large city or county with complex permitting workflows, dedicated admins, and a multi-year budget. Small agencies, small towns, and contractors will pay enterprise prices for scale they do not need.

Confidence

Medium. Based on 20+ public sources; several review snippets were truncated in aggregation.

Ratings

  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Feature depth
  • Support quality
  • Security posture

Pricing

Not disclosed

ModelNot disclosed
Monthly feesNot disclosed
HardwareNot disclosed

Best for

  • Large city and county permitting departments
  • Agencies replacing legacy on-prem systems
  • High-volume licensing and inspection programs
  • Gov teams with admin staff and multi-year budgets

Not for

  • Small towns with a handful of permits
  • Solo contractors or builders
  • Organizations wanting transparent public pricing
  • Teams without dedicated admins

Gotchas - check before you buy

high

On-premise to cloud migrations are budgeted, multi-year projects, not quick upgrades

high

Implementation pain lands on agencies and contractors; a city rollout was called a software blunder

medium

No public pricing; real costs surface only through sales-negotiated agency contracts

medium

Lock-in risk: agencies buy middleware like Saltbox just to move Accela data

Pros and cons

Pros

  • Full permitting, licensing, planning, and enforcement suite
  • Concurrent plan review speeds document approvals
  • Powers live citizen portals for Denver and San Antonio
  • Named a top civic engagement platform for 2025
  • Backed by strategic investment from Francisco Partners

Cons

  • Third-party audit grades its API F
  • 2025 remote-code-execution CVE in the Automation Platform
  • Reported 2026 breach exposed roughly 1TB of data
  • Contractors describe city rollouts as multi-year ordeals
  • Even simple integrations require third-party middleware

Sources & method

Analyzed 9/25/2026 - 10 sources - Multiple findings: a 2025 RCE CVE, a CERT/CC advisory, and a reported 2026 breach exposing ~1TB.

official x2review x3security x3news x2
  • CVE-2025-57644 — Remote code execution, Accela Automation Platform vulnerability allows remote code execution, per NVD and SentinelOne.
  • CERT/CC VU#665280 — Citizen Access portal, Coordinated advisory on the Accela Civic Platform Citizen Access portal.
  • Reported data breach (~1TB), Multiple law-firm and breach-tracking sites report an unauthorized actor accessed roughly 1TB of permitting data; litigation investigations are underway.
  • CVE-2016-5661 — Access control flaw, Historic access-control vulnerability in the Civic Citizen Access Portal.

Key stats

  • Value for money: 2/5

    Rating

  • Not disclosed

    Starting price

  • 10

    Sources

  • Analyzed

  • Value for money: 2/5. No public pricing; multi-year contracts reported
  • Ease of use: 2/5. Contractors describe painful, drawn-out rollouts
  • Feature depth: 4/5. Deep permitting, licensing, enforcement suite
  • Support quality: 2/5. User complaints; integrations pushed to middleware
  • Security posture: 1/5. RCE CVE, CERT advisory, reported breach
  • F API report card Third-party audit grade
  • 54% Glassdoor approval Accela employee reviews
  • $183.5M Total funding Per public funding trackers
  • ~1TB Reported breach exposure 2026 incident reports

Pricing

Not disclosed

Security

Multiple findings: a 2025 RCE CVE, a CERT/CC advisory, and a reported 2026 breach exposing ~1TB.

  • CVE-2025-57644 — Remote code executionAccela Automation Platform vulnerability allows remote code execution, per NVD and SentinelOne.³
  • CERT/CC VU#665280 — Citizen Access portalCoordinated advisory on the Accela Civic Platform Citizen Access portal.⁴
  • Reported data breach (~1TB)Multiple law-firm and breach-tracking sites report an unauthorized actor accessed roughly 1TB of permitting data; litigation investigations are underway.⁵
  • CVE-2016-5661 — Access control flawHistoric access-control vulnerability in the Civic Citizen Access Portal.

What users say

reviews are sparse and mixed: agencies praise the breadth while a contractor thread calls a city rollout the greatest software blunder of their time.

“Charlotte, the greatest software blunder of my time”
Reddit, r/Contractor

Companies that use it

  • City and County of Denver
  • City of San Antonio
  • City of Fairfax
  • Gwinnett County, GA
  • Deschutes County, OR
Full analysis

Based on 20+ public sources; several review snippets were truncated in aggregation.

Enterprise permitting platform for big governments; powerful but pricey, slow to deploy, with recent security flags.

Methodology

Based on 20+ public sources; several review snippets were truncated in aggregation.

Sources

  1. Charlotte, the greatest software blunder of my timereddit.com
    review
  2. Accela API: Grade Fsupergood.ai
    review
  3. CVE-2025-57644 Detailnvd.nist.gov
    security
  4. VU#665280 — Accela Citizen Accesskb.cert.org
    security
  5. Accela Data Breach Exposes 1TB of Dataclaimdepot.com
    security
  6. Rochester MN migration agreementd2kbkoa27fdvtw.cloudfront.net
    official
  7. Accela FAQ (pricing)accela.com
    official
  8. Top Accela Alternativesg2.com
    review
  9. Accela: Top Civic Engagement Platform 2025govbusinessreview.com
    news
  10. Francisco Partners investmentaccela.com
    news

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