Blasts for cities, towns and counties
Road and utility disruptions, collection days that move, community meetings, parks and facility notices and operational updates during a storm, on the screens of the residents who asked for them. One voluntary channel more, beside every notice you are required to publish.
Connection-based and encrypted. Credits are prepaid and never expire. No subscription, and no per-message carrier fee.
Local government publishes more than any organization its size, in the places the law names, and still spends the afternoon on the phone explaining it.
A main breaks overnight and River Road closes between Third and Ninth. The closure goes on the website, on the town's social page and on a barricade with a printed sign. By ten the clerk's counter has taken forty calls, half of them from people who drove into it, and public works is answering the same question instead of fixing the main.
The calendar mailed in January says the week after the holiday shifts by a day. Nine months later nobody remembers the calendar. Bins sit out on the wrong morning down three streets, the crew comes back Saturday, and the office spends Monday explaining a schedule it published nine months ago.
The zoning change was noticed exactly as required: the paper, the board, the agenda packet, the website. Eleven people came. Six weeks later a petition arrives signed by three hundred residents who say they never heard. The notice was lawful and the notice was published. It still did not reach them.
There's another way
Blasts is a network of persistent, encrypted connections between parties who already know each other. Your municipality is one of those parties; every resident who approved you is the other. The Hub is the working layer on top: the audiences, the composer, the replies and the roles that turn one connection into the right notice reaching the right street, from a sender residents recognize.
A town has no membership list, and this does not invent one. What a town has is a set of places every household already looks, and the invitation goes there and stays there.
On the water bill, the tax statement, the collection calendar, a sign at the clerk's counter, the notice board, the meeting agenda and the town website. It stays published, so every billing cycle is another invitation.
A resident who wants town notices enters the code on their own phone or computer and asks to connect. You approve the request. It is the resident's choice, made once, and they can undo it silently at any time.
From then on the closure, the collection change, the park notice and the meeting agenda go to the service, route or neighbourhood they concern, and land on the screen the same hour you decide them.
Every notice, on the screens of the residents who asked for it.
Residents opt in, always. The municipality cannot upload a utility-billing file, a voter roll or a tax roll: those are not lists residents joined. Only a sign-up list residents joined themselves can be imported, and every person on it is still invited and still chooses.
The annual report and the budget book still belong on the website. These belong on a screen the day they happen.
A lane closed for paving, a main break, a bridge deck out for a week, a signed detour that changes on Thursday. Sent to the neighbourhood or the route it affects, with a map image and up to three attachments such as the detour sheet.
A scheduled shutoff, hydrant flushing by zone, discoloured water after the work, a boil-water advisory. An advisory sent here is a plain-language courtesy message for the residents who connected, beside the official notification your procedure requires, and it says so and links the official notice.
A collection day that moves for a holiday, a route delayed by weather, bulk pickup week, leaf and brush runs, a hazardous waste day. A weekly reminder to one route costs the same on the fiftieth week as the first.
Council, planning and board meetings, a budget hearing, a comment period that closes Friday, and a plain summary the next morning of what was decided. The agenda attaches, the official notice is linked, and residents can reply with a question a person answers.
A pool closed for repairs, a field flooded, registration that opens Monday, a festival, a parade route, a library closing early. Residents choose the parks audience themselves, so the notice reaches the families who use it.
During a storm: what crews are doing now, which streets are cleared, where the warming centre is open, what residents should do next. Between storms: what the paving crew is doing on your street this month. Emergency instructions still come from the official source, and every one of these messages says so.
The website is where a notice waits for someone to come looking. The newsletter competes with everything else in an inbox. Your official notification path is built for warnings and is rightly not used for a collection change. None of them puts an ordinary town notice on the screen of a resident who asked for it, the hour you decide it.
Audiences for public works and utilities, sanitation and collection, parks and recreation, meetings and notices, and urgent operations, plus the neighbourhoods, wards, routes and water districts you create by name. A north-side shutoff reaches the north side. Residents do not learn to ignore the town, which is what makes the next real notice land.
Invite the public works superintendent as a leader granted their own audiences and the recreation director as a leader granted parks. They post their own notices; only the people you choose can send to every connected resident, and that send asks for a passkey confirmation. Every message is attributed to the person who sent it.
Credits are bought once and never expire, so a deposit made before winter is still there in spring. One typed message to one resident is one prepaid credit, with no carrier fee. Every new Hub also includes 50 email credits, and email packs are bought the same way.
Messages come from a sender residents recognize and travel over encrypted connections. A resident can mute the town for a day, set quiet hours, pick the services they hear about, or disconnect without asking anyone and without the town being told. Messages auto-delete after 30 days and there are no tracking pixels, so if a notice has to be retained it belongs in your records system, not here.
| SMS | Blasts | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Reaches a resident the hour the decision is made | Depends on when the person opens email | Yes, for residents who registered a mobile number | Delivered to the connected resident's phone or desktop screen |
| Per-message carrier cost | Low | Per message, per carrier, every time | One prepaid credit per typed message, no carrier fee; credits never expire |
| Shows who has actually seen it | Open-tracking pixels only | Delivery only | Delivered and read counts from confirmed actions, which are not proof of notice |
| Resident must have opted in first | No | Yes, by registration | Yes, by design; residents can disconnect silently |
| Send to one route, district or neighbourhood | Requires maintained address groups | Requires maintained number groups | Named audiences with no per-recipient cap, and one audience can sit inside another |
| Carries a legally required notice | No | No | No. Keep publishing every required notice exactly where it goes now |
Comparison reflects published Blasts.app product information as of September 2026 and general characteristics of email and SMS alert systems. A cost model for your connected-resident count and notice frequency is in the municipal rollout guide.
This is not a way to reach every household inside the town limits, and DirectToResidents does not pretend otherwise. It is built for the residents who saw the code on their bill and decided they wanted to hear from their municipality directly. That choice is exactly what makes it a channel they will not mute, and exactly why it can never be the notice of record.
For the person who will set it up
For the communications director, clerk or department head who will actually do it: five steps, roughly an afternoon, then a billing cycle of letting residents find it.
An operator signs in at /hub/signin/ with an email code, a passkey or a Blasts sign-in. A new municipality sets its Hub up through guided onboarding after signing in, and the Hub activates with its first credit purchase from BlastCredits. Hub Pro, which adds Journeys and Event Campaigns, unlocks at $500 in cumulative credit purchases for any organization. There is no separate application, and no verification program applies to a municipality.
Onboarding publishes an enrollment code and QR code and prints an enrollment kit. Put them on the water bill insert, the collection calendar, the clerk's counter, the notice board, the park and recreation center signage, the meeting agenda footer, the newsletter and the town website, and leave them there. Residents ask to connect; you approve, or turn on auto-accept so they are connected the moment they ask.
If your town runs its own notice sign-up page, point it at the Hub's inbound webhook, or use the Zapier private app, so each resident who signs up is invited the day they do. An existing sign-up list can be imported as a CSV export, up to 5,000 rows, previewed before anything sends, with invitations spread at up to 200 a day. There is no Granicus, CivicPlus, Accela, Tyler, OpenGov, Everbridge, 311 or utility-billing connector, and a billing file, a voter roll and a tax roll are never lists you may upload.
Onboarding seeds All Residents, Public Works & Utilities, Sanitation & Collection, Parks & Recreation, Meetings & Notices, Emergency & Urgent Operations and Municipal Staff. Add your own neighbourhoods, wards, routes and water districts by name. Leave the service audiences open so residents self-select on their preferences page. Invite each department head as a leader granted only their own audiences, the clerk as an admin, and keep the All Residents send with the communications office. Write once and it goes out as a Blast and, for residents who chose email, as email from the municipality's own verified sending address.
Write down, before the first send, that this is a voluntary courtesy channel beside every notice you are required to publish, that its audience is partial by design, and that emergency instructions still come from your official source. Put a line to that effect in the welcome message and in every advisory. Residents who reply land in one inbox the office shares, and anything needing dispatch still goes into whatever system your town already uses for work orders.
Growing the connected audience is a billing-cycle task, repeated. Domain Auto-Approve is built for organizations whose members share a verified email domain, so it does not apply to residents. The Hub does not run permitting, utility billing, work orders, agenda management, records retention or public warning: it adds one channel beside the systems you already run, and replaces none of them.
In one paragraph
DirectToResidents is the front door for cities, towns and counties to the Blasts Hub. Blasts is the consent-based network underneath: a resident approves a connection with your municipality once, and after that your notices appear on their phone or desktop screen instead of waiting on a web page. The Hub is where the municipality works: audiences by service, route or neighbourhood, one composer that sends the same message as a Blast and as email, replies in one inbox, and roles so public works can post a detour without holding the whole town's send. It is one additional voluntary channel beside whatever your municipality is required to publish. It is not an emergency alert system, not a 311 or utility-billing system, and it satisfies no public-notice obligation. The audience is the residents who chose to connect: a real share of the town, never all of it.
No. It is one additional voluntary channel to the residents who chose to connect, and it is not a mass-notification or reverse-911 platform, a CAD or 311 integration, or a path to wireless emergency alerts. Whatever your municipality uses for public warning stays exactly as it is. Inside the Hub, Emergency & Urgent Operations is an audience residents opt into, and sending to it asks for a step-up confirmation; it is not a badge and it is not a siren.
Use it for the operational side of an incident: what crews are doing, which streets are cleared, where a warming centre is open, when the next update comes. Say in the message which official source carries the instructions.
No. Nothing here is a notice of record and no conformance claim is made about accessibility, public-notice or records-retention requirements. Keep publishing every required notice exactly where it goes now, and link the official version from the message you send here. Messages auto-delete after 30 days, so anything that must be retained belongs in your records system.
No. A resident must approve the connection before anything is delivered, and a billing file, a voter roll and a tax roll are not lists residents joined. Only a sign-up list residents joined themselves can be imported, and each person on it is still invited and still chooses. There is no way to reach a resident who has not connected.
You publish a code and QR code on the materials residents already receive: the water bill, the tax statement, the collection calendar, counter and park signage, the meeting agenda and the town website. A resident enters the code on their own phone or computer and asks to connect, and you approve, or turn on auto-accept. Residents receive on the free Blasts app for iOS or Android, on a browser extension for Chrome, Edge, Brave and other Chromium browsers, or in the web app at blasts.app. Anyone who prefers email receives the same message there instead.
Yes, and that is the point. Audiences let you name a group once, a service, a route, a ward, a water district or a neighbourhood, and reach every connected member at the same time with no per-recipient cap. One audience can sit inside another, so a district send covers its routes. Sending to All Residents asks for a step-up confirmation first, which keeps the whole-town send rare enough that residents still read it.
Yes. The Hub has four roles. Owner has everything including billing. Admin reaches every audience and manages the team. Leader, which is where department heads belong, sends to and reads replies from only the audiences you grant them, chosen one by one. Viewer is read-only. So the public works superintendent posts a detour to the streets it affects and cannot reach the rest of the town, and every message is attributed to the person who sent it. Settings can also require an administrator's approval before a leader's message goes out.
If your municipality already has a Hub, an operator signs in at /hub/signin/ with an email code, a passkey or a Blasts sign-in. A new municipality sets its Hub up through guided onboarding after signing in, and the Hub activates with its first credit purchase from BlastCredits. There is no application and no verification requirement. Hub Pro, which adds Journeys and Event Campaigns, unlocks at $500 in cumulative credit purchases for any organization. Sending, audiences, Content Series, conversations, roles and the email leg are there from the start.
No. There is no connector to any municipal platform: no Granicus, CivicPlus, Accela, Tyler, OpenGov, Everbridge, 311, CAD or utility-billing connector exists, and none is implied. The generic doors are a CSV import of an opted-in sign-up list, an inbound webhook any form or script can post a new resident to, signed outbound events so your own systems learn who connected or replied, and a Zapier private app available on request. Point the Hub at a public calendar link and upcoming meetings appear on Home ready to announce. Blasts itself integrates with Zapier and logs activity to CRMs such as Salesforce, HubSpot and Dynamics 365; that is Blasts's integration, not ours.
No. The newsletter is still where the long read, the annual report and the budget summary belong. Each connected resident chooses Blasts, email or both, and the Hub sends the same message on both from your municipality's own verified sending address. Email is metered in email credits: every new Hub includes 50, and packs are bought on BlastCredits.
A typed message consumes one credit per recipient, so 1,500 credits. Credits are prepaid, never expire, carry no subscription and are bought at standard pricing on BlastCredits.com, so a deposit made before winter is still there in spring. A municipality is not a nonprofit for this purpose: the nonprofit verification program does not apply, and there is no separate public-sector tier.
No, and you should not try to. Delivered and read counts come from confirmed actions rather than tracking pixels, which tells you honestly how far a notice travelled among connected residents. A read count is not an acknowledgement and is not proof of notice. When you need an answer from a person, ask for a YES or NO reply, which is the resident's own action and which the Hub counts.
The Hub is shared across Blasts verticals and documented in one place. blastshub.com/en/docs/for/localgov/ covers it in municipal terms: publishing the code and approving requests, audiences by service and route, sending a notice, the email leg, conversations, campaigns, roles for departments, integrations, credits, and where this channel fits beside your required notices. The shared version lives at blastshub.com/en/docs/, and inside your Hub the Help panel shows the same article next to the screen it describes. Blasts itself, the app and the connection, is documented by Blasts at blasts.app.
Everything a communications director, clerk or department head needs to run this well, and where each piece lives.
A practical guide to running municipal communication on the Hub: where to publish the code so residents actually find it, how to structure service, route and neighbourhood audiences, what to grant each department, what this channel carries and what it must never be used for, and the notices worth having written before the first main break. Tell us a little about your municipality and we'll send it over.