
Ask HN: What should I do? - hamhamed
I run a startup called Stay22 which helps attendees from events find places to stay (hotels, apartments) around the venue. We do it through an embeddable map widget, for example: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tractionconf.io&#x2F;accommodations<p>I&#x27;m a 23 year old solo founder who lives with mom and dad..and that&#x27;s important because I used to brag about my startup&#x27;s burn rate which was literally $1 a month (12$ a year for .com domain)...even my heroku server is free.<p>This was until today where Google decided to limit Google Maps free tier quota down and hard. It used to be free for us, but now it&#x27;s limited to only 25,000 loads a day. Just to give you an idea, Stay22&#x27;s traffic needs around 200k loads a day. Now I&#x27;m being charged around $10,000 a month at this rate (because not only I have to pay for extra map loads, but using their API like directions and geocoding also charges me per request).<p>I can&#x27;t afford 10k a month (esp since I have no funding yet), our revenue is barely half of that.. and changing my whole code to a free alternative like leaflet&#x2F;OSM would be my worst case scenario (I&#x27;d have get my startup down for weeks just to do the transition and idk what can go wrong then (for e.g seo, backwards compatibility, etc)). My secret sauce is all coded using Google Maps&#x27;s API so it&#x27;s going to be tough.<p>What do you suggest? Any ideas? If anyone knows someone at Gmaps who can understand our situation and bill us when we raise money for example that would be great.. Or should I just man up, let my customers lose money (since the hotel revenue is shared) for weeks, and convert the code?
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pedalpete
Mapping is getting expensive. I'm running a site which depends on mapping too
([https://doarama.com](https://doarama.com)).

We are currently re-architecting some services and one of the key items in our
newest version is creating an api where we can easily swap out map providers.

You say it would take a lot to redo your code to swap service providers, but
you don't have a choice. If you "want" to give up, then give up, that is a
choice. If you're using this as an excuse, that's fine, but recognize that it
is an excuse and not the real reason.

I used to run HearWhere.com (now gone). I was in a somewhat similar position
to you shortly before I shut it down
([https://techcrunch.com/hearwhere](https://techcrunch.com/hearwhere) if
you're curious). I would have had to do some major code changes due to outside
circumstances, and I decided I didn't want to. Not that I couldn't. I just
thought that the site had served it's purpose. I learned how to code, it got a
bunch of interest, but in the long-term, I wasn't going to be the next
songkick and didn't want to be. Mostly just because I didn't want to put in
the effort in a very challenging industry.

What I'm saying is there is nothing wrong with stopping if you'd like. But
just be honest with yourself as to why you are not going forward. It isn't
because Google changed their API pricing, it is because you don't want to put
in the effort to change to another service provider that you could afford.

~~~
hamhamed
haha appreciate the roughness, but let me assure you I'm not quitting or look
for an excuse to delay this. I'm looking for a quick solution instead of
spending a month to re-build from scratch. Time that could be spent on
partnerships and other product areas.. Plus gMaps is the best imo. Anyways, it
will probably come to this..

------
miguelrochefort
I encountered similar restrictions while working on a native mobile app using
the Google Maps API (free tier) for reverse geocoding and driving distances.

After comparing all our options, MapQuest was the clear winner (100% free).
Google/Apple Maps is still used to render the map and pins, but all the
business logic uses MapQuest. The transition took roughly 1 day.

Obviously, this won't help with map loads. YMMV.

EDIT: You might be eligible for a grace period until October 12 [1]

[1] [https://developers.google.com/maps/pricing-and-
plans/standar...](https://developers.google.com/maps/pricing-and-
plans/standard-plan-2016-update)

------
nxzero
Unlikely answer, but have you thought about asking Google to up the free
requests for your account to 120k?

If they did grant you it, highly suggest opening a waiting list or new users,
rate limiting current users, and switching to OSM.

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acomjean
Open Street Maps

[http://www.openstreetmap.org/](http://www.openstreetmap.org/)

open source mapping. You'd have to host or find a host. It will take time and
effort, but the data is free.

there are other maps as services too.

[https://www.mapbox.com/pricing/](https://www.mapbox.com/pricing/)

~~~
hamhamed
Yup well aware of the alternatives. It's just that converting my gMaps
javascript code into this new API is gonna be a big pain and ensure downtime
until I'm back live (I'm currently paying gMaps as a temp fix until I find a
solution). Looking to find an easier solution

~~~
LarryMade2
Why do you have to be down? Cant you set up a forked development server and
get OSM up and running then do the transition?

------
csallen
I don't know much about the Google Maps API, and this may sound obvious, but
could you use caching to help you drastically reduce requests? I imagine many
different visitors are making the exact same requests.

Also, are most of your requests coming from unique users, or do you see lots
of users making repeated requests over and over? Maybe you could limit the
number of requests for a single user. It sucks for them, but it allows you to
implement a cap and affect the least number of people possible.

Are there any features of your product you can offload to other services? For
example you mentioned directions -- why not link to Google Maps itself and let
them handle that? (This might not be an applicable solution because I haven't
studied your product to see how it works, but you get the gist.)

Is your code written modularly? Ideally you won't have to port all your code
at once in some gigantic all-or-nothing rewrite. You can simply move one
component of your code at a time to a free or open-source alternative to
Google Maps. This could reduce your burden chunk-by-chunk over time until it's
manageable.

Another avenue is to increase your revenue. Easier said than done, I know, but
perhaps you could request payment/donations from users, or at least for repeat
users. Or maybe you could reach out to the conferences on your site and see if
they'll sponsor you.

Finally, I don't know anyone at Google, but it can't hurt for you to try to
look up the right people and send some emails. I'd start with their developer
advocates. This is a shameless plug, but I started a forum on my site
([https://IndieHackers.com](https://IndieHackers.com)) recently as a place for
founders to help each other out with problems just such as these. Can't hurt
to post there and see if anyone has advice or connections at Google.

Good luck, sounds like a tough position to be in! (By the way, your site is
awesome and it'd be very cool to interview you for Indie Hackers.)

~~~
hamhamed
Hey Courtland - u make some good points let me address some of your points:

1- Caching won't help. It seems I'm being limited on just "map loads", up to
25k [https://developers.google.com/maps/pricing-and-
plans/#detail...](https://developers.google.com/maps/pricing-and-
plans/#details) After that I'm billed $0.50 per 1000 requests, and that's
still a lot since we have around 200k loads a day (plus not to mention we're
growing like crazy expecting to triple that amount by the end of this year).
And the costs is just too damn high for us because our widget is like an ad
impression..it doesn't always convert and requires lots of loads.

2- If I go OSM, or Bing maps, I might as well do the rest because I'd be
spending more time trying to connect the services together. It wasn't meant to
be changed or scaled..

I remember IndieHackers when it was launched here in HN, very good reads. I'll
give it a try, thanks man!

~~~
nfriedly
I'd suggest looking at caching a bit harder - could you take an (automated)
screenshot of the map, load that initially, and then only actually load the
map when the user began interacting with it? If this worked, it would probably
load faster too ;)

------
nicholas73
It looks like your widget displays roughly the same information each time but
costs you a new map load per user, who may or may not be interested in hotels.

The event planner who is using your widget is not sharing in any of the cost.
I think charging them is probably not what you want, so the alternative is to
lower your service level to them.

By this, I mean simply display a pre-generated image of the map, and make
users who click open up a new tab to your site. That way, you only load a map
to users who might convert.

You could try other map sources, multiple ones to get you as much free tier as
possible, but eventually you'd run into the same problems again.

------
chatmasta
If I were you, my short term solution would be to find a hacky workaround to
avoid rate limiting. Once I got that working, I'd immediately start the
conversion over to OSM or other alternatives.

I'm not familiar with the google maps API so I'm not sure what a "hacky
workaround" would look like. But I'd guess that one of the following would
work:

\- Rotating API keys

\- Loading the map in an iFrame from a rotating set of domains

\- Pointing multiple domains to the same IP and rotating which domain you use
in the embed

------
cdnsteve
Do your customers have an API key for your app? If so I'd say focus on this.
You could then calculate and charge for your service on top of whatever Google
does. Having users put in their own Google API key might be too technical, you
could also provision an individual key for each app as part of the
registration process.

------
meekins
Did you contact Google sales for a premium plan? Just curious if they were
able to give you a reasonable quote since 200k daily map loads looks to be so
much outside the scope of the standard plan.

------
debacle
Show someone brilliantly technical that you trust your financials, offer them
reasonable equity or cash to transition your service (to Bing, OSM, etc) with
you over a weekend, and code like hell.

------
cureyourhead
Man up and pass on the cost. In some sense in this situation you are a slave
to market forces beyond your control. Price gouging once they've built lock in
on an API is pretty much a natural part of any service's lifecycle. If you can
afford to ride it out, eventually the forces of competition will take over and
prices will come down a bit.

From the way you talk about potential partnerships or help with gmaps it seems
you really believe in the value of your business. That's an asset. Try to
articulate this value more clearly but understand that gmaps is unlikely to
just "help you out" or "invest" in you at this stage since: 1) it's not their
mandate and 2) they're the incumbent and potentially you are eating a piece of
something google wants to do.

At the stage you're at ... 4-5K MRR 25-100K DAU ( I'm guesssing ), and
suddenly a slave to a price gouge, an investor can help you out. Definitely
try to find one. There's probably a lot for them to like in your situation,
not the least part of it being that you're to some extent desperate for their
help right now.

I love your non-defeatist attitude. Don't give up. Keep going. You know what
you're doing is somehow close to how Airbnb started right?

~~~
hamhamed
You seem to very much understand Stay22's business and product ! Very
impressed!

To answer you, yes Airbnb does know about us and did show interest. Can't
comment more than that.

I've been looking for an investor that believes in us and has the proper
connections/industry experience that we are looking for. Not the easiest when
you're based in Montreal.

~~~
cureyourhead
Thanks for your compliment. You saying that helps me feel a lot more belief in
myself again. I guess I'm perceptive. Montreal is a good place. I considered
it as a base for my startup because it's affordable, open minded and has
interesting culture. Never been there tho. I wish you a lot of good progress
in your investor search. I'm currently looking for one and at a much earlier
stage. Again thanks for the comment it lifted my spirits.

