maps.co

What It Is

Map Maker (maps.co) is an online map creation and basic GIS analysis tool provided by My Maps Inc., aimed at businesses, government organizations, GIS professionals, and individual users. Its core positioning is not as a complex GIS platform, but as a tool that helps users quickly import coordinate or address data and create custom maps that can be shared or embedded.

Key Features

The product supports plotting latitude/longitude points, customizing marker icons and map styles, and quickly importing location data from spreadsheets or via copy and paste. Users can import custom fields for points and dynamically filter data using filters. Its analysis features include heatmaps, clustering, distance measurement, area and perimeter calculations, and drawing lines, shapes, circular radii, and more. Bulk geocoding is an important feature, allowing addresses to be converted into latitude and longitude and exported as CSV; the product also mentions standalone forward and reverse geocoding APIs.

Pricing and Trial

The current product copy only discloses one plan: Map Maker PRO. It costs $29 per month or $290 per year and includes a 7-day free trial. PRO includes unlimited maps, layers, locations, drawings, areas, and screenshots, plus 3,000 geocodes per month. Subscriptions renew automatically and can be canceled; the terms state that fees are generally non-refundable.

Collaboration, Security, and Integrations

For collaboration, Map Maker supports public sharing, access for authorized users only, and map embedding, but there is no clear information about team roles, fine-grained permissions, or audit logs. On security, the platform states that it does not sell or share customer information, and users can request account data deletion by email. Payments are processed by Stripe, and credit card details are not stored on its servers. Third-party dependencies include Google Maps API, Cloudflare, Google Analytics, FullStory, and Stripe.

Pros, Cons, and Who It’s For

Its strengths are an interface focused on ease of use, lightweight workflows for data import and map publishing, and relatively generous core resource limits in the PRO plan. Its drawbacks are limited information on enterprise-grade compliance, permission governance, and SLAs, while API capabilities are mainly disclosed around geocoding. It is suitable for use cases such as store/customer location visualization, bulk address-to-coordinate conversion, lightweight geospatial analysis, and embedded maps.

Access from China

Because the product uses Google Maps API, access and map loading from mainland China may be unstable or restricted, and payments also rely on Stripe. Users in China who require stable access, RMB payments, or local map data may want to evaluate alternatives such as Baidu Maps Open Platform or Amap Open Platform.