simonp47•1mo agoProlific Poster

Decided to pay for a service instead of using free location data

I had to choose between using Google's free location tracking for my app or paying $200 a month for a privacy-focused provider like Mapbox. I went with Mapbox because I didn't want to sell user data to advertisers like Google does. So far it works fine, but my budget took a hit and now I'm wondering if most users even care about privacy. Has anyone else made this switch and found it worth the cost?

3 comments

3 Comments

adam_lewis1mo ago

My buddy Mark runs a small hiking app and he made the exact same switch last year. He was using Google's free tier but got spooked after reading their privacy policy update about location data. He's paying $180 a month for Mapbox now and honestly it hurt his startup budget bad for a few months. He told me the weirdest part was that zero users ever mentioned the change or asked about privacy. One guy actually complained the map tiles loaded slightly slower and Mark almost lost it considering what he was paying. He's sticking with it though because he sleeps better at night, but he jokes that he's the only one who cares.

jennys721mo ago

Oh man that's rough lol. I did the same thing with my little recipe site and honestly just switched to a cheaper static map option and the load speed tradeoff was totally worth the peace of mind.

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mark_thomas13d ago

Actually that $180 a month number is a little off I think. Mapbox has a free tier that covers up to like 50,000 map loads a month for small projects now. My hiking app only does about 15,000 hits a month so I'm on their free plan still. The paid plan starts at like $40 a month for the next tier up, not $180 unless you're doing something really custom with tons of data. Maybe your buddy got a different plan or added extra features. But yeah you're right about nobody caring about the switch. I asked my users in the last survey and literally zero of them noticed when I moved from Google maps to Mapbox tiles last year. Kinda makes you wonder who all this privacy stuff is actually for sometimes.