Single Digital Presence vs Town Web

Single Digital Presence (SDP) is a web publishing platform for Victorian Government websites, established on Drupal in 2016. Its CMS provides publishing tools, data collection forms, revision history, federated approvals and domain redirect management. Each website receives Google Analytics dashboards. The service also provides security assessments and updates, Drupal and Ripple upgrades, outage and update alerts, bot protection and disaster recovery. The Ripple design system supplies styles, components and patterns for Victorian Government branded digital products. SDP’s design framework states technical and design compliance to Level AA of the latest WCAG accessibility standards. Victorian public servants can access online content training, a help centre and a Community of Practice. Technical support covers website bugs, malfunctioning elements and CMS assistance; 24/7 emergency support applies to outages and emergencies covered by the service level agreement. The service runs over 140 instances across 60 sites. Creating a new section on vic.gov.au costs nothing and requires approval from the lead department’s Digital Management Committee. Independent websites or components require a quote after a requirements document; some features and services incur charges.

Town Web builds and hosts websites for cities, towns, villages, and other local governments, and says its service is exclusively for this sector. Its municipal content system covers agendas, minutes, ordinances, resolutions, events, contacts, news, forms, and permits. Residents can subscribe to email or text notices about posted information, while municipalities can offer online payments for bills, taxes, citations, licenses, and permits. Additional tools support boating permits and facility bookings; optional Facebook posting may add a charge. Town Web also offers municipal email through Google Workspace. The company says its service includes monitoring, HTTPS certificates, separate-cloud-server backups, and accessibility maintenance. Existing site content and files are included in migration, alongside support, one-on-one training, webinars, and a dedicated account manager. An iOS and Android app is included for medium municipalities with 10,000–50,000 residents. Pricing starts at $99/mo, with the exact quote varying by municipality and features. A nominal one-time build fee applies and may be spread over the contract term; optional add-ons are priced separately.