In the summer of 2018 Google changed the terms of use for its services — and for many websites the ordinary map on the contacts page turned into a monthly invoice. If your Google Maps has stopped working, the bill for it has grown too high, or you need capabilities the service simply does not offer, there is a workable alternative — Open Street Maps. Here is how it differs and which of our projects already run on it.
Why this question came up while building online stores
In the summer of 2018 Google changed the terms of use for its products. In particular, a credit card now has to be linked to the account. Every month Google grants $200 free of charge, and anything spent above that amount for the use of its services is charged to the card.
A map is usually embedded in a site as an interactive one, via JavaScript. In that form you get 28 000 free loads. On the one hand that is a large number and, in Google's view, enough for the needs of small and medium businesses to keep using the map for free.
For large sites things are less clear-cut. So that a visitor can find all the contact information already on the first page, many companies started placing the map at the bottom of the home page. Which means: if your site has more than 1000 visitors a day, that monthly limit will not be enough. Beyond it you have to pay $7 for every additional thousand map loads. And that is before accounting for the fact that some users will also move from the home page to the contacts page and switch the map several times to get the details for their own city.
What the alternatives are in general
A few years ago the second big mapping service for our region was Yandex Maps. In 2017 Yandex and a number of other Russian services were banned in Ukraine, and in March 2019 that ban was extended for another three years.
Other mapping services are even less familiar to our users and developers. Among them, Open Street Maps stands out as the interesting one.
What Open Street Maps is
It is an open source project whose philosophy is very close to that of Wikipedia. The service runs on charitable donations and support from non-profit organisations. Its key feature is that any ordinary user can make changes to the map.
Advantages of Open Street Maps:
- free to use;
- a greater variety of objects and object types — which makes the map more detailed;
- the ability to add any object you need yourself.
Lavina mall: one place on two maps
A big plus of OSM is that, beyond the outline of the mall, it marks the entrances, the walkways and the more precise position of individual objects.
Let us look at the advantages of Open Street Maps through several examples already implemented on Ukrainian sites.
An example on the LUN real estate portal
Here they use MapBox, which is built on OSM. The portal holds information about new residential developments, and its signature feature is a map with all of them marked on it.
Because any user can edit the map, a developer or a LUN editor can go into OSM and add their property as accurately as possible. And because you can specify a building's height or number of floors, the map takes on a 3D look.
An example for retail — Silpo
- Open Street Maps renders differently: when you zoom in, the map scales up rather than being redrawn from scratch as it is in Google Maps;
- marker clustering is more precise, and on top of that you can set your own animation for it.
What exactly is different — in brief
| Criterion | Google Maps | Open Street Maps |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $200 free per month, then $7 for every additional thousand loads | free to use |
| Free allowance for an interactive map | 28 000 loads per month | no charge per load |
| Editing objects | not available to an ordinary user | any user can make changes |
| Level of detail for a mall | the building outline | outline, entrances, walkways, more precise object positions |
| Zooming | the map is redrawn from scratch | the map scales up |
| Marker clustering | less precise | more precise, animation can be configured |
How we implemented this in our own projects
The official PANDORA online jewellery store. The site has high traffic and the map is placed on many pages, including the home page. Using Google Maps would have cost from $500 a month.
A separate advantage of Open Street Maps was the ability to pinpoint the offline stores inside large shopping centres ourselves and with precision (Lavina and Dream Town, for instance). That way the shopper does not waste time searching, and competitors do not get the chance to win them over.
Who can find Open Street Maps especially useful
High-traffic sites
This is exactly where Google's free allowance runs out fastest, and moving to OSM saves hundreds of dollars a month.
Services where the map is a core element
Real estate, land surveying, well drilling, directories of locations — anything where the map is one of the main features, or even the killer one.
Services that need the freshest data
Taxi services, emergency services, tourism — wherever the most up-to-date mapping information matters, along with the ability to make changes to it yourself.
Fans of new technology
Those who enjoy new technologies and open source solutions and are ready to try them on live projects.
Conclusion
Open Street Maps is not a universal replacement for every situation, but for large sites the arithmetic is transparent: the cost of implementation pays for itself within the very first month, and the map becomes more detailed exactly where the shopper genuinely needs it — inside the shopping centre, by the entrance, next to the right doorway.
If Google Maps has stopped working on your site, or you need a special solution — write to us and we will sort it out.
