The new commercial model of Google Maps suits businesses really well with its monthly, pay on consumption billing, but the new price table can lead to unexpected costs.

You might have been on the free version of Google Maps (the now-deprecated Standard Plan) and now find you are having to pay for usage you previously used for free.

Under the previous model, there were very generous limits that were given away for free, which meant that developers didn’t need to carefully assess how their code would impact on cost.

This changed when Google Maps Platform was launched earlier this year – now there is a US$200 credit applied to your account each month and all calls are billed. The result is businesses are now paying for a service they previously thought was free.

Checking the health of your deployment

If you receive a bill that is bigger than you’d like you can do a few things to bring it down.

The first one is to bring your usage under a partner – for any usage over the second price tier, a partner billing account can unlock further discount levels, which will bring your costs down starting from the following month’s bill. In high use cases, the bill can be up to 75 percent cheaper under a partner. Ask how.

Beyond that you can check Google’s maps optimisation guide and work with your developers to bring down the usage to an acceptable level.

Ask for help

If you need NGIS to help with the assessment of your maps deployment, NGIS perform health checks. Our consultants not only understand the technical details, but they are also experts on the commercial model and how the two facets apply to your application.

If you would like to have an in-house or online health check, get in touch.