How can a platform this broad be free to use?

The platform is funded so that the large organisations needing advanced support pay for it, which keeps it free for the roughly 99% of users who do not. It is run as a digital public good rather than sold per seat.

Video: mWater Overview: Platform, Business Model, and Tutorial on YouTube

Why this matters

Procurement teams are right to ask what free means and what happens when it stops. For a government planning a decade of monitoring this is a sustainability question rather than a pricing one: it decides whether the system survives the next budget cycle, and whether costs appear later once the data is already inside. Understanding how the platform is paid for makes it possible to plan around it.

How to do it

  1. Understand what is free: mapping, surveys, dashboards and the Portal are open to every user.
  2. Create an account and an organisation, so your data is held by your institution rather than by an individual.
  3. Map sites and assets in the app, then review them in the Portal.
  4. Build a survey, deploy it, and follow the responses through to dashboards and indicators.
  5. If you operate at scale and need guaranteed response times, look at the paid support membership.

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