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Tyler Technologies makes software that helps governments and schools run their daily operations.
Tyler Technologies sells software to a customer most tech companies ignore: local governments. If your town needs to collect property taxes, issue a building permit, dispatch police to an address, or let a resident pay a water bill online, there's a decent chance the behind-the-scenes system is Tyler's. The company makes money two ways. First, it sells licenses and subscriptions to its software, which is now the big and growing piece. Second, it charges recurring fees for maintenance and for handling transactions like online payments. It also runs some back-office services for states, such as unemployment insurance systems. Cities and counties pay because replacing these systems is painful and switching is even more painful, which locks customers in for a long time.
The business splits into two main parts. The larger one, Enterprise Software, serves big cities, counties, and states, and brings in roughly three-quarters of revenue. The smaller one, Platform Technologies, serves smaller towns, schools, and courts, and includes things like online payment portals and appraisal tools. Think of it as the difference between a giant custom-built system for a whole state versus an off-the-shelf toolkit for a small town clerk. Growth lately has come from pushing customers toward cloud subscriptions instead of old installed software, plus steady add-on acquisitions that fill gaps, like tools for permitting, tax billing, and public safety records.
Tyler was founded in 1966 and spent decades quietly buying up niche government-software rivals, which is how it became the dominant player in a fragmented market. A key turning point was its 2021 acquisition of NIC, which added the payment-processing side and made Tyler the middleman for millions of citizen transactions. The company generates lots of recurring revenue and healthy free cash flow, which it mostly uses to buy more companies and repurchase its own shares rather than pay a dividend. The main risks are slow government budgets and the long, bureaucratic sales cycles that come with selling to public agencies.
Saved answer · last researched 11 Oct 2026