This means, all new users, who have registered on or after 11th of May 2021, will have pricing features enabled. In short, it means means that some features require paid plans.
For all users who have registered before 11th of May 2021, nothing has changed, you can continue to access all of MapHub’s features for free. You can see the pricing and “Upgrade” buttons, but you don’t need to do anything with them.
Before anything changes for any existing users, there’ll be an official announcement, letting you know well in advance.
Thanks! A sustainable business model will enable me to concentrate on implementing new features and provide personal support for MapHub users in the future!
Too much expensive. Compared for example with … It’s 10 x the price I’d accept to pay. And the free version is dramaticaly limited. 6 photos ! No collaboration ! I’m very disappointed.
Collaboration is enabled even in the free plan! You can collaborate on public maps. I made this decision so that MapHub can be used for education, as it is used today.
Images are unlimited if you are hosting them somewhere and using the Markdown embed syntax.
Now let me tell you a bit about the price: from $6 per month I have to pay:
VAT, which can be as much as 27% in some EU countries
credit card processing fees ($0.5 + some percent)
server hosting
basemap hosting for each provider:
Mapbox
Thunderforest
HERE maps
geo-search (OpenCage)
backups
email service
Moreover, all the user-uploaded images and icons are hosted by MapHub, which means paying for storage and bandwidth.
In the last 5 years, I paid all this myself and I have never put any single advert on MapHub.
If you consider $6 expensive while providing all this, then you are asking for a service that is not sustainable. When you normally see a service that is free or suspiciously cheap, they are either making a loss or are selling your data.
MapHub is strictly against selling your data or showing adverts. I want to make a sustainable service and the new pricing is a way forward to this.
I am also wondering, could there be a way to increase the limits on the maps as a separate monthly add-on? I don’t need any of the enterprise features, but for me 10,000 points will run out fast…
All the existing users are on an unlimited plan, think about it as “Teams plan with 100 users”.
is there import in free: of course, import is not limited on any plan
CSV import is really tricky. Do you have lat-lon coordinates or only street addresses?
What is the difference in embedding in free and Hobbyist? Most options are available in both, including panel settings. Some advanced ones like Geolocation button, Directions button and “Open links in same tab” are only available on Hobbyist.
Is there any export in Hobbyist? Yes, everything you see today is visible there.
Do you Imgur best for image hosting? It got very bloated over the years. Honestly I don’t know any reliable free image hosting websites.
The 10.000 point limit is tricky. The reason is exactly as you’ve found out, that an uploading can take a long time. During this time the server is working a lot on a single user’s map. This means that if many users starts uploading maps with so many points the server would get slow for all the other users as well.
If possible, I really recommend splitting the maps to sub-maps, performance would be much better.
to me the limit of just 100 items in the free map seems very low, especially when you compare it with the next step of 5000 items in the Hobbyist Plan.
Many users who don’t need many features will probably keep using Google MyMaps instead, where there is no such limit.
And I think it would be great if there was a “Hobbyist Lite” Plan for 2-3€ monthly.
For example I would only need the increased item limit and maybe advanced embedding. I do not need any of the other features, but I would still have to pay at least 6€ monthly.
Besides that I like Maphub a lot! keep doing your great work, I really hope you get more attention. I only found out about you when I searched for “Google MyMaps Alternatives”