Help
Questions and answers
How muniSERV works, in plain terms: signing in, provider profiles and plans, posting for municipalities, billing. Each answer links to the page it is about.
29 questions.
Everyone
muniSERV is a Canadian network that connects municipalities with the consultants, suppliers and service providers who serve them, together with the RFPs, municipal jobs and events that go with that work.
Joining is free for everyone. Municipalities search the directory, post RFPs and list events at no cost, and pay only to post a job. Consultants, suppliers and service providers are listed free, and pay only when they want the full profile municipalities can open and contact them through.
Search the directory by the service you need and the province you are in, or browse the consultants, suppliers and service providers separately.
Every listing shows the services and provinces it covers. Paid profiles have a page you can open, link to and contact directly. If the one you want is a free listing, which shows no contact details, write to us and we will put you in touch.
Sign in with the email address you signed up with. If the password is gone, use Forgot password on the sign-in page and we email you a reset link.
The link works for one hour. If you had an account on our old site, the same email address still works: use the reset link the first time.
Look in your spam or junk folder first, where it usually is. If it is not there, ask for a new one with the Resend link on the screen you saw after registering.
A confirmation link lasts 24 hours, and opening an expired one offers to send a fresh link. Some workplace mail filters hold our messages: if nothing arrives at all, contact us and we will confirm the address for you.
Yes. Email preferences let you tick the topics you want, and the ones you tick arrive together as a single round-up on Tuesdays.
The topics are announcements, RFPs, jobs, events, muniBLOG articles and municipal activity. A week with nothing new in your topics sends nothing at all, and every email carries an unsubscribe link. To change the address you sign in with, contact us: we will update it and send a confirmation to the new address.
A free listing shows no contact details at all. On a paid profile your email address and phone number are shown to people signed in to muniSERV, and to nobody else.
That means municipal staff, members and providers on a paid plan; a visitor who is not signed in is asked to sign in first, and providers on the free plan do not see them either. A free listing is your name, company, city, provinces, services and the first few words of your description, and nothing more. Municipal staff choose on their own profile whether their contact details appear publicly.
Municipal staff post some of them on muniSERV directly, and the rest are mirrored from Bids & Tenders, which we check every five minutes.
Every tender is open to everyone and carries its full description. An admin reads each RFP posted on muniSERV before it appears, and province and category tags are refreshed every hour. The documents themselves usually stay with the municipality or its tendering service; where a tender gives a link, the link is on the page. Signed in, you can ask the municipality a question from the tender page and we pass it on.
Use the contact form and tell us what you were doing and what you saw. A screenshot helps.
For something urgent, put URGENT in the subject line. We answer by email.
A solution provider opens Account settings, under My account; municipal staff open Plan & billing and use the Account section at the bottom. Closing stops sign-in and all email, and takes your listing out of the directory.
What you have posted stays on the site, and we can reopen the account if you ask. If you pay for a plan you choose when it closes: at the end of the period you have paid for, with everything working until then, or the same day, giving up the rest of that period without a refund. Any credit left on the account is not paid back automatically, so ask us first if you want it.
Solution providers
Register as a provider, or choose List your company on muniSERV on your dashboard if you already have an account. Your free listing goes into the directory as soon as your profile is switched on.
The free listing shows your name, company, city, the provinces you serve, your services and the first few words of your description. You say which of the three you are (consultant, supplier or service provider) when you list, and the directory lists you under it; you can change it on your dashboard afterwards. Choose Essential or Professional when you want the full profile municipalities can open and contact you through.
Yes. muniSERV lists consultants, suppliers and service providers, and each of the three has its own part of the directory.
You pick which one you are when you list your company, and you can change it on your dashboard whenever you like. Everything else works the same whichever you pick: the free listing, the plans and the profile are identical.
Yes, and the free listing has no time limit. It shows your name, your company, your company logo (or your photo, if you have no logo), your city, the provinces you serve, your services and the first few words of your description.
Nothing else is public: not your full description, your website, your email address, your phone number, your testimonials or your success stories. Your listing has a basic page of those same facts, so a municipality can open it, but the full profile page comes with a paid plan, and that is where your description is whole and your photo is a picture of you rather than a small mark on a card. Municipalities can still find you by province or service, and one that wants to reach you contacts muniSERV. Switch the listing off on your dashboard and you are not in the directory at all.
Free puts you in the directory so municipalities can find you by province and service, with your company logo (or your photo, if you have no logo) on your listing. Essential adds your full profile, with bio, photo, website and contact details, on its own page. Professional adds the ways to stand out.
Today Professional includes everything in Essential, plus: featured placement in search; featured first on the pages for your services and area; suggested first on similar providers' profiles; submit up to 2 muniBLOG articles a month; weekly email of RFPs matched to your practice; see how much interest an open tender has had on muniSERV, compared with similar tenders; success stories & testimonials; video introduction; post events to the events calendar. The profile view count is a number only: nothing about who viewed your profile is recorded. Each week we also email you the open RFPs that match your practice; every email has an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing does not change your plan.
Being listed is free. Essential is $22 a month (or $199 a year) and Professional is $39 a month (or $349 a year), plus 13% HST.
Monthly is how most people start, and paying for the year costs less over twelve months. You can move between the plans or stop at any time, and the plans page shows the current prices and what each one includes.
Three things have to be true: your profile is switched on, your account is active, and your profile has a name on it. A free listing also needs a company name and at least one service or province, because that is all its card shows.
The status line under Welcome on your dashboard says which one is missing.
Use the Switch off button on the status line under Welcome on your dashboard. Your plan is untouched and you can switch back on whenever you want.
Buying a plan switches the profile on for you.
Open Edit profile and use the Profile photo and Company logo cards. JPEG, PNG, WebP or GIF, up to 5 MB each.
A photo is saved as a 400 by 400 square and a logo is fitted inside 600 by 300, so a PNG with a transparent background looks best as a logo. If the framing comes out wrong, Adjust image lets you zoom and move it without uploading again. iPhone photos are converted for you when you pick them from Photos; from another device, export the HEIC file as JPEG first. Every image gets an automatic check, and anything the check cannot call a headshot or a logo is looked at by a person.
They are on Edit profile, below the profile fields, and they are part of the Professional plan.
On Free or Essential the section is locked, and you can fill it in as soon as you move to Professional.
Yes. Providers on Professional can submit up to two articles a month, and municipal staff can submit one. Write it from Articles and events on your dashboard.
A person reads every article before it is published, usually within 24 to 48 hours.
Yes, if you are on Professional or you are municipal staff. Submit it from your dashboard and it joins the calendar after review.
Municipalities
All three start on your dashboard: Post an RFP, post a job, or submit an event. RFPs and events are free; job postings are paid.
An admin reads each one before it goes live (a job usually within 1 business day). You can post once an admin has confirmed that you work for the municipality, which is also what opens up editing the municipality's profile.
$199 for one posting, or $149 each in a pack of 5 and $99 each in a pack of 25, plus 13% HST. Everything else a municipality does here is free.
You buy postings up front and use one when you post. The posting runs until its closing date, for up to 90 days, and is Featured above the main listings for that whole run. If we do not approve it, you get the posting back. Postings belong to the account that bought them, so buy them on the account that will do the posting: a colleague cannot spend them, and if someone is leaving, tell us before their account closes and we can move their unused postings to a colleague.
Your account works, but we have not yet confirmed that you work for the municipality. Posting RFPs, jobs and events opens up as soon as we have.
An email address on the municipality's own domain is confirmed quickest. Otherwise contact us with your job title and we will sort it out.
Open My Team on your dashboard and enter their name, title and email address. The invitation lasts 14 days and puts them straight on your municipality, with no second approval.
You can invite once your own affiliation is confirmed. Providers can invite colleagues at their company the same way, once there is a company name on the profile.
Members
Following muniSERV without being a consultant or municipal staff: the directory, RFPs, municipal jobs, the events calendar and muniBLOG, plus the weekly emails you choose.
You can also save jobs you are interested in. Members do not publish articles. If you decide you want a listing municipalities can find, choose Add a listing on your dashboard.
Billing
Both are on Plan & billing: Change plan or billing moves you between Essential and Professional and between monthly and yearly, and Cancel subscription stops the renewal. You see the amount before anything is charged.
A change that costs more per month happens straight away, and the difference for the rest of the period, plus HST, is charged that day (any credit on your account is used first). A change that costs less per month, and a switch from yearly to monthly, happen at the end of the period you have paid for, with nothing charged until then. If a payment is overdue, pay it before changing. Cancelling leaves your plan running to the end of the paid period, and you can resume before then. Card details are updated through the billing portal on the same page.
Prices on the site are before tax, and 13% HST is added at checkout. Every payment emails a receipt to your account address, and every receipt is also listed under Billing history on Plan & billing.
A receipt carries its number, the date, what was bought, the subtotal, the HST line, the total, our legal name and our GST/HST number. A refund sends a credit note, or a refund receipt naming the invoice it corrects. You can have any receipt or credit note sent to you again from Billing history.
Credit and debit cards, including through Apple Pay or Google Pay, handled by Stripe, so muniSERV never sees your card number. There is no free trial, but the free plan has no time limit.
Visa, Mastercard, American Express and the other networks Stripe accepts all work. Yearly billing is the standard term and costs less than monthly. Paid subscriptions are not refundable once paid.
Our charges appear on a statement as WWW.MUNISERV.CA. Look for a muniSERV receipt for the same amount and date in your email, or under Billing history on My Subscription.
If you still do not recognise it, email info@muniserv.ca with the date and the amount before you dispute it with your bank. We will look into it and refund anything charged in error, which is much faster than a bank dispute. Please write within 30 days of the charge.
Still stuck? Contact us with what you were doing and what you saw. We reply by email.