There are many other online tools on the market. On the one hand, you have toolsets like NationBuilder, Salsa, and Blue State Digital available for purchase. On the other hand, you have free tools like Change.org.
The Action Network is different in a few key ways. Unlike the for-profit toolset vendors, we're a mission-driven organization, and we make our full-featured toolset available for free to individuals and small groups, something none of the vendors do.
And unlike free options such as Change.org, we offer a full range of tools -- not just petitions -- and we believe you own your own data. Where you may have to pay to get a list of all of your petitions signers with other free tools, or you may only be given access to a fraction of your signers or be forced to email them in a very limited way through the free tool, all of your data on the Action Network is yours. You can contact your activists in infinitely flexible ways using our built in mass mailer, or you can download all of your data and take it with you elsewhere, the choice is yours. And we don't email the activists you sign up through the Action Network -- we're not building a list off of your users.