With the recent change in the Google Maps API pricing structure, the industry is abuzz with developers and industry professionals weighing in on alternatives to google maps and their pros and cons. At Geoawesomeness, we created our own list of alternatives to Google Maps, which much to our delight is ranked quite high on Google search. (Read: Looking for Google Maps API alternatives? Here are some affordable ones).*In order to expand this article and provide everyone with a better understanding of the alternatives, we spoke to TomTom’s head of developer relations, Gregory De Jans. Read on!
Q:*Gregory, thanks for taking the time to talk to us! Let’s get started! TomTom is synonymous with Maps and Personal Navigation Devices (PND) but not many know that TomTom also has quite a few APIs that help developers build location-based apps… Perhaps it’s not surprising considering that TomTom’s product page doesn’t list it! (see screenshot)
*(i)*Are APIs a new business area at TomTom?A: APIs are a relatively new business area and an area of growth for TomTom. TomTom has been developing Location Bases Services APIs for several years but only since the end of last year, we started offering*our APIs to businesses of all sizes*to help fuel growth for developers at any scale.*(ii) What is your vision for the APIs market?A: With the convergence of offline and online, location information has become more critical than ever. New players are entering the market very aggressively and existing players are frequently changing their business models. Maps APIs are already required in*many existing use cases like IoT, fleet * logistics and on-demand. But many new use-cases like smart cities, geospatial data analytics and Augmented Reality are also empowered by Maps APIs which makes it a rapidly growing and interesting market which that will keep on growing significantly over the next couple of years.*Q: Before you dive deeper into the TomTom API, let us address the “elephant in the room” *#8211; what’s your opinion about Google Maps recent pricing changes? More specifically, are you being approached more by startups looking for a “cheaper” alternative or has it been more the enterprise customers who have approached TomTom?*A:*The recent Google price changes have indeed led to a lot of Google Maps customers looking for more affordable alternatives. TomTom has seen double-digit growth in the percentage of visitors to the developer portal, users of our APIs and questions from customers looking to migrate from Google Maps APIs to TomTom Maps APIs. Because of that, we have created tutorials on how customers can easily migrate from the Google Maps SDKs to the TomTom Maps SDK on web and mobile. All of these materials are available on our developer portal at developer.tomtom.comWe have been approached by both startups and enterprises. For the startups who were not paying*much to*Google before and now get invoices for thousands of dollars, the impact is, of course, the heaviest,*so we did see a more immediate and urgent request for affordable alternatives there.As of this week, we have also announced that we will be giving away our maps and traffic flow tiles away for free in our Mobile Maps SDK for both Android and iOS. We’re trying to make it as easy as possible for startups to get started without having to worry about the heavy costs to build applications.Q: Could you tell us a bit more about your pricing structure, as well as other value-added benefits and how your approach differs from the competition?*A:*We have made our maps and traffic flow tiles on mobile free. This means that it will be entirely free for developers to display maps and traffic flow inside a mobile application using the TomTom Mobile SDK for iOS and/or Android. With free maps, developers can add location in their application without having to worry about costs. An example is a simple store locator where you want to display the location of your business on a map. This will be entirely free using the TomTom Maps Mobile SDK. Moreover, TomTom is the only provider to offer free traffic tiles. This means that developers can also benefit from high-quality traffic information and develop innovative mobile applications for free.Outside of the free map and traffic flow tiles in our Mobile Maps SDK, The TomTom Maps API pricing structure is transactional, meaning we only charge our customers for the API transactions they consume, without any additional subscription fees. The TomTom Maps APIs can be used for free if the transaction volume does not exceed 2,500 transactions per day. When customers want to consume more than those 2,500 transactions per day, they can purchase small or large packages of TomTom credits which are valid for 1 year. In our public pricing model, the smallest package of 50k credits costs $25 (meaning $0,50 per 1000 transactions). When a customer purchases larger packages, he even gets discounts which make the price per 1000 transactions more attractive and lower than $0,50.We are mainly differentiating from the online pricing models from our competition by:
*(i)*Are APIs a new business area at TomTom?A: APIs are a relatively new business area and an area of growth for TomTom. TomTom has been developing Location Bases Services APIs for several years but only since the end of last year, we started offering*our APIs to businesses of all sizes*to help fuel growth for developers at any scale.*(ii) What is your vision for the APIs market?A: With the convergence of offline and online, location information has become more critical than ever. New players are entering the market very aggressively and existing players are frequently changing their business models. Maps APIs are already required in*many existing use cases like IoT, fleet * logistics and on-demand. But many new use-cases like smart cities, geospatial data analytics and Augmented Reality are also empowered by Maps APIs which makes it a rapidly growing and interesting market which that will keep on growing significantly over the next couple of years.*Q: Before you dive deeper into the TomTom API, let us address the “elephant in the room” *#8211; what’s your opinion about Google Maps recent pricing changes? More specifically, are you being approached more by startups looking for a “cheaper” alternative or has it been more the enterprise customers who have approached TomTom?*A:*The recent Google price changes have indeed led to a lot of Google Maps customers looking for more affordable alternatives. TomTom has seen double-digit growth in the percentage of visitors to the developer portal, users of our APIs and questions from customers looking to migrate from Google Maps APIs to TomTom Maps APIs. Because of that, we have created tutorials on how customers can easily migrate from the Google Maps SDKs to the TomTom Maps SDK on web and mobile. All of these materials are available on our developer portal at developer.tomtom.comWe have been approached by both startups and enterprises. For the startups who were not paying*much to*Google before and now get invoices for thousands of dollars, the impact is, of course, the heaviest,*so we did see a more immediate and urgent request for affordable alternatives there.As of this week, we have also announced that we will be giving away our maps and traffic flow tiles away for free in our Mobile Maps SDK for both Android and iOS. We’re trying to make it as easy as possible for startups to get started without having to worry about the heavy costs to build applications.Q: Could you tell us a bit more about your pricing structure, as well as other value-added benefits and how your approach differs from the competition?*A:*We have made our maps and traffic flow tiles on mobile free. This means that it will be entirely free for developers to display maps and traffic flow inside a mobile application using the TomTom Mobile SDK for iOS and/or Android. With free maps, developers can add location in their application without having to worry about costs. An example is a simple store locator where you want to display the location of your business on a map. This will be entirely free using the TomTom Maps Mobile SDK. Moreover, TomTom is the only provider to offer free traffic tiles. This means that developers can also benefit from high-quality traffic information and develop innovative mobile applications for free.Outside of the free map and traffic flow tiles in our Mobile Maps SDK, The TomTom Maps API pricing structure is transactional, meaning we only charge our customers for the API transactions they consume, without any additional subscription fees. The TomTom Maps APIs can be used for free if the transaction volume does not exceed 2,500 transactions per day. When customers want to consume more than those 2,500 transactions per day, they can purchase small or large packages of TomTom credits which are valid for 1 year. In our public pricing model, the smallest package of 50k credits costs $25 (meaning $0,50 per 1000 transactions). When a customer purchases larger packages, he even gets discounts which make the price per 1000 transactions more attractive and lower than $0,50.We are mainly differentiating from the online pricing models from our competition by:
- Giving our maps and traffic flow tiles for free in our Mobile Maps SDKs
- Providing evaluating customers to access all our TomTom Maps APIs and SDKs
- Offering discounts when purchasing larger credit packages
- Allowing customers to mix and match our Maps APIs with other APIs
- Allowing additional use cases such as asset management
- Providing personalized support to all our developers, whether they are using our APIs for free or paying.
- Our transactional map-making platform is allowing us to provide our customers with the freshest maps. We’re currently doing 1.5bn map updates per month which is really impressive but at the same time also mandatory to reflect the changes which are taking place in real-time. This technology is reflected in the high quality and precision of our geocoding and map display APIs.
- Our traffic fusion engine is allowing us to offer predictive, real-time and historical traffic information in our routing and traffic APIs. By using this technology our customers can calculate the most up-to-date and accurate travel times and itineraries.
- Select the most appropriate taxi for picking up a passenger, taking real-time traffic conditions into account
- Highlight to a user where the closest Starbucks or ATM is.
- Calculate which trucks should pick up and deliver what goods to serve all their clients in the fastest way.