my compost pile is open and never smells..I've never seen any animals near it except squirrels..no bugs..I think an open pile with ground contact is best..I would never use a container..the concept is very unnatural to me..just my opinion..

if my big compost bin smelled bad my neighbors probably would've complained..but nobody's said a word..

My compost doesn't smell either. The only varmints that I have trouble with are my dogs (one dug very purposely for a while and emerged with a waffle, which she carried around for about an hour and then buried elsewhere, her own little compost pile) and the turkeys, who make a bit of a mess but it's not too hard to rake it up again.

I have one of those silly spinable containers that I use for kitchen waste (in addition to a massive open yard mulch pile). It seems to be working just fine.

The only varmint I ever had in a compost pile was a family of overwintering voles. If you're getting noticeable odor or pests you may have too much nitrogen in your pile. But yes, you can compost in a container. I had a vermiculture setup in a Rubbermaid bin for awhile that worked well. Drill holes in the bottom for drainage and higher up for ventilation. The rotating ones look pretty cool but I haven't tried them.

think soil contact helps a lot to get the microbes to the material. I use 32 gallon trash barrels with the bottoms cut out. Place wide end downward. The lid becomes the cover and put a rock on it to hold it down. I painted them for the heck of it, to get rid of some leftover spray paint.

I practise what I call "direct composting". I dig a hole in the garden bed one shovel deep and dump there all the kitchen scraps, unusable parts of vegetables, and almost all weeds (no seeds or aggressively spreading roots). When the hole is sufficiently filled I work the stuff into the soil at the bottom. I add more composting materials and some of the dug out soil and mix them together. I repeat the process until the hole is filled up. How great my vegetables grow there! One condition: don't use any synthetic fertilizers or other chemicals. They will upset natural processes.

"It is best if you remove the bottom so you have contact with the ground and to allow for drainage. And you will need to add a lot of holes along the sides to allow for oxygen penetration and off-gassing. And I'd leave the lid off as much as possible. Without these modifications, you will just generate a pile of anaerobic vegetable matter that will eventually rot but will smell far worse than any compost pile!"

True that! Ask me how I know... Yep, wet compost in a plastic barrel smelled worse than any open compost pile I've lived near.