Volunteers, community & personal
Route planner for door-to-door canvassing
For campaigns, petition drives, fundraisers and door-to-door sales: map the turf from your spreadsheet, drive between blocks in the shortest order, and walk the doors with the list on your phone.
Free plan, no credit card. Works on your phone and computer.
- Field officeStart
- Fairfax St, 2200 blockPark at the corner, 22 doors0.5 mi
- Dexter St, 2500 block18 doors, both sides0.5 mi
- Kearney St, 2100 block16 doors, follow-ups from last week3.2 mi
- Park Hill library cornerPetition table, 30 minutes0.4 mi
- Forest Pkwy loop12 doors on big lots, drive it1.6 mi
- + 5 more stops
EZRoutePlanner for door-to-door canvassing
A canvassing route planner maps a turf list and puts its stops in the shortest order. In EZRoutePlanner you import the walk list or voter-file export, then plan the drive between parking spots, or every door in spread-out turf. Canvassers get a phone link with no app. It's a routing tool, not a canvassing app: it doesn't record answers or contact results.
- Typical shift
- 40–100 doors on foot in 3–4 hours
- Turf list
- A CSV or Excel walk list, one row per voter or lead
- Dense blocks
- One stop per parking spot, then walk the doors
- Spread-out turf
- Every door a stop, driven in order
An example day
Saturday canvass shift
This example is 10 stops on real roads in Denver, Colorado. In the order the list had them, the round trip is 33 mi and 1 hr 38 min of driving. Optimized, it's 15 mi and 49 min: 18 mi and 49 min less, 55% shorter.
In dense turf, driving to every door makes no sense: each stop here is a parking spot with a block of doors to walk. The optimizer orders the drive between them; the walk list on the canvasser's phone or clipboard covers the doors themselves.
Stops are example points on real streets, not real customers. Distances and times are driving figures for each order.
- Field officeStart
- Fairfax St, 2200 blockPark at the corner, 22 doors0.5 mi
- Dexter St, 2500 block18 doors, both sides0.5 mi
- Kearney St, 2100 block16 doors, follow-ups from last week3.2 mi
- Park Hill library cornerPetition table, 30 minutes0.4 mi
- Forest Pkwy loop12 doors on big lots, drive it1.6 mi
- Holly St, 2600 block20 doors3.4 mi
- Glencoe St, 2800 block14 doors, two not-home revisits0.9 mi
- Montview Blvd apartmentsLobby access arranged, 30 doors1.2 mi
- Ash St, 2300 block15 doors0.7 mi
- Bellaire St, 2900 block18 doors, one yard sign drop0.4 mi
Where the day goes
What makes routing hard for canvassers
Walk lists come sorted by voter, not by street
Voter-file exports come out by last name or ID, with several voters per house. Walking in that order means crossing the same street five times.
Turf is cut by precinct, not by how you'd drive it
Precinct and district lines don't care where you parked. A team of six needs turf it can reach, walk and get back from in one shift.
Spread-out neighborhoods break walking
In suburbs and foothills, houses are too far apart to walk between. Canvassers end up driving door to door, and the order of those drives decides how many doors get knocked.
Start from your list
Bring the spreadsheet you already keep.
Contact history, scores and phone numbers stay in your canvassing tool. EZRoutePlanner keeps the address and one label, and folds rows that share an address into one stop, which is what a household canvass wants anyway.
- 1
Export the turf list
Download the walk list from your voter-file tool, CRM or petition sheet as CSV or Excel and import it. Several voters at one address become one stop, labeled with the first row's name.
- 2
Choose doors or parking spots
Spread-out turf: keep every door as a stop. Dense blocks: make one stop per block where you'll park, by searching the corner address or clicking the map.
- 3
Optimize from the field office
Set the office or staging spot as the base, turn on Round Trip, and press Optimize Route.
- 4
Send each pair their turf
Lasso each pair's turf into its own route and share the link or QR code at the morning briefing.
| Voter ID | Last name | First name | Address | City | ZIP | Last contact |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CO-48821 | Alvarado | Rosa | 2245 Fairfax St | Denver | 80207 | Not home |
| CO-48822 | Alvarado | Miguel | 2245 Fairfax St | Denver | 80207 | Not home |
| CO-48907 | Brooks | Dana | 2530 Dexter St | Denver | 80207 | Talked |
| CO-49015 | Chen | Wei | 2161 Kearney St | Denver | 80207 | |
| CO-49102 | Doyle | Patrick | 2618 Holly St | Denver | 80207 | Lit left |
An example sheet. Columns can be named anything and in any order; street, city and ZIP can be one column or several. Pick one column, like the customer name, as each stop's label.
From the route
Routing tips for canvassers
Walk odds up, evens back
The optimizer orders the drive between blocks. On the block itself, walk one side up and the other side back, so nobody is crossing mid-block with a clipboard.
Don't cut turf across a highway
A car crosses I-25 or I-70 in seconds; canvassers on foot can't. Lasso each pair's turf on one side of any highway, rail line or big arterial so they're not walking a long way around.
Put not-home doors on an evening route
Doors nobody answered are scattered across the turf. Import just those as a revisit route for early evening, when more people are home.
See how much of the shift is in the car
On paid plans, each route shows drive times along with distances. If driving between blocks eats an hour of a four-hour shift, the turf is cut too wide.
Map the leads before you pick a neighborhood
For door-to-door sales and fundraising, import a lead list and look at it on a map first. Forty leads in one subdivision beat sixty spread across the city. Start with mapping a list of addresses.
Spread-out turf: every door is a stop
In the foothills or on acreage lots, import every door and optimize them as one driving route, up to 200 on paid plans. Canvassers park at each house instead of walking.
Honest fit
What it handles, and what it doesn't
EZRoutePlanner is built for putting a day of stops in the right order and getting them to whoever drives. Here's where that fits canvassers, and where you'd want something else alongside it.
Good fit
- Campaigns, ballot measures and petition drives, whatever the cause
- Nonprofit fundraising and membership drives
- Door-to-door sales with a lead or territory list
- Driving between parking spots in dense turf
- Spread-out turf of up to 200 doors a route on paid plans
Not built for
- Not a canvassing app: no scripts, survey answers or contact results
- Routes are drawn for driving; the walking order on each block is up to the canvasser
- Doesn't cut turf for you; you lasso each pair's area
- Doesn't sync with voter-file or CRM tools; you import an export
- No canvasser tracking or live progress
Last reviewed October 21, 2026.
Door-to-door canvassing: questions
How do you plan a door-to-door canvassing route?
Start with a turf list, map it, and decide where canvassers will park and walk. Order the drive between those parking spots, then walk each block in a loop. In EZRoutePlanner you import the list, add a stop per parking spot (or keep every door in spread-out areas), and press Optimize Route.
Can I import a voter file or walk list?
Yes, as CSV or Excel. EZRoutePlanner finds the address columns and keeps one label per stop. Several voters at one address become one stop, and columns like party, scores or phone numbers aren't stored. The map addresses from Excel guide walks through the import.
Does it work for walking routes?
Partly. The order is worked out from the distance between stops and drawn on driving roads, so on foot treat it as a sensible order for the blocks rather than the exact shortest walk. When you tap Navigate, you can switch the maps app to walking.
Does it replace a canvassing app?
No. Canvassing apps hold scripts, survey answers and contact results. EZRoutePlanner handles a part they don't always cover: ordering the drive between turfs and getting each pair a route on their phone. Many teams use both.
How many doors can a canvasser knock in a shift?
Commonly 40–100 in three or four hours on foot, depending on density, apartments and how many people answer. Spread-out turf by car is slower per door, so plan fewer doors and more drive time.
Can I use it for door-to-door sales territories?
Yes. Import your lead or territory list, lasso a territory for each rep, and optimize each day's route. Field sales teams with recurring accounts may want the route planner for sales reps setup instead.
More for your business
- IndustryRoute planner for outside sales repsA sales route planner for field reps: import accounts from a CRM export, put each territory day in the shortest order and fit in drop-ins. Free to start.
- IndustryRoute planner for nonprofits and volunteer programsPlan volunteer delivery routes for meal programs, church outreach and holiday hampers: short routes per volunteer, shared as links with no app.
- IndustryRoute planner for newspaper and flyer carriersPlan a newspaper or flyer delivery route from your subscriber list: up to 200 stops a route in the shortest order, on a printed sheet or your phone.
- GuideHow to map addresses from an Excel spreadsheetMap addresses from Excel: tidy the sheet, put every row on a map as a pin with Google My Maps or a route planner, check the pins, then plan the drive.
- GuideHow to plan routes for multiple driversPlan routes for multiple drivers: split the stops by area, ZIP or day, balance each driver's load, optimize every route and send each driver a link.
- PlannerMap multiple addressesPaste a list or upload a spreadsheet and see every address as a pin on one map.
Plan tomorrow's canvass route tonight.
Import your customer list, optimize the order with one click, and open it on your phone in the morning. Free to start, no credit card.
Free plan. No credit card. Works in any browser.