Help TSR Pay Their Last MapBox Bill
Donation protected
Final Update!
Travelers, the future of the Nest Atlas is secured! Please see our update with the latest information here!
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What's the Situation?
The Silph Road's Global Nest Atlas has been our favorite project to work on at the Silph Road this past year. We've seen hundreds of thousands of travelers contribute reports to help us map the world's Pokemon nests.
Unfortunately, the traffic the Nest Atlas receives is pretty intense. Hosting "map tiles" isn't cheap at scale. And this week, we've hit an impassible hurdle.
The Silph Road is not a profit-oriented business. We run unobtrusive ads on the Nest Atlas to cover our infrastructure (and a rainy day fund to cover infrastructure emergencies like traffic spikes) but those ads don't generate enough to pay for enterprise-level map API usage.
The geolocation game community is brand new, and fan communities are getting creative with map-based web applications. PokeVision, the Silph Road Nest Atlas, and future geolocation game community tools will demonstrate a need for eneterprise-scale basemap tile usage, but don't generate the revenue of true enterprises. We're in a newly-exposed gap in the market that hasn't been needed before. Who on earth needs millions of basemap tiles anyway? Haha. (Us. we do.)
So we were in a pickle.
We launched on Google Maps, and after outgrowing it moved to MapBox. But MapBox's original ballpark quote (25k/yr) suddenly became 180k/yr last week and spiked up to $1,000/day last month.
So What's The Next Move?
Well, we need to pay our last bill.
But then we need to make sure we never get bills like that again, or we'll have to shut down!
The reality is, our only option (without charging money or being more aggressive about ads) is to self-host our own map.
That's right - we're downloading the entire planet's map imagery, uploading it to a CDN, and hosting it ourselves. How is that possible? It's possible due to the amazing open-source work of the folks at OpenStreetMap.
This will eliminate our dependency on MapBox, eliminate our reliance on expensive 'enterprise-level usage' plans designed for large corporate entities with lots of revenue for licenses like that, and will enable us to have finer-grained control over the map tiles themselves, which is super cool. (We're looking into a 'night-mode' map, for example!)
We also have some amazing new additions to the Atlas coming:
- Guides: the ability to clean up duplicates/remove false reports
- Camps: local communication centers!
- Hotspots: the ability to report places where spawns come in large bursts
and a few more awesome things. :)
I and the rest of the Silph Road team have worked so hard to create the Nest Atlas. We've spent countless hours on it to make it stable, robust, beautiful, free, and awesome - even under intense load. A massive bill hitting us like this could have spelled the end for our Global Atlas before our coolest features even go live. But with a little help, we can make the transition and keep moving forward as planned.
Travelers, we need a little help. If the Road has meant something to you this past year and you're in a position to give, we would be grateful for the support. We've never asked for donations before. But this is a moment of need for our team. We don't anticipate raising enough to pay the bill from donations, but anything you could put towards this transformational step for our Global Nest Atlas would be deeply appreciated and help us secure the future of the Silph Road.
Travel safe,
- Executive Dronpes -
(Verification Post - so you know this is really the Silph Road team. Always make sure GoFundMe's are verified!)
Travelers, the future of the Nest Atlas is secured! Please see our update with the latest information here!
------------------
What's the Situation?
The Silph Road's Global Nest Atlas has been our favorite project to work on at the Silph Road this past year. We've seen hundreds of thousands of travelers contribute reports to help us map the world's Pokemon nests.
Unfortunately, the traffic the Nest Atlas receives is pretty intense. Hosting "map tiles" isn't cheap at scale. And this week, we've hit an impassible hurdle.
The Silph Road is not a profit-oriented business. We run unobtrusive ads on the Nest Atlas to cover our infrastructure (and a rainy day fund to cover infrastructure emergencies like traffic spikes) but those ads don't generate enough to pay for enterprise-level map API usage.
The geolocation game community is brand new, and fan communities are getting creative with map-based web applications. PokeVision, the Silph Road Nest Atlas, and future geolocation game community tools will demonstrate a need for eneterprise-scale basemap tile usage, but don't generate the revenue of true enterprises. We're in a newly-exposed gap in the market that hasn't been needed before. Who on earth needs millions of basemap tiles anyway? Haha. (Us. we do.)
So we were in a pickle.
We launched on Google Maps, and after outgrowing it moved to MapBox. But MapBox's original ballpark quote (25k/yr) suddenly became 180k/yr last week and spiked up to $1,000/day last month.
So What's The Next Move?
Well, we need to pay our last bill.
But then we need to make sure we never get bills like that again, or we'll have to shut down!
The reality is, our only option (without charging money or being more aggressive about ads) is to self-host our own map.
That's right - we're downloading the entire planet's map imagery, uploading it to a CDN, and hosting it ourselves. How is that possible? It's possible due to the amazing open-source work of the folks at OpenStreetMap.
This will eliminate our dependency on MapBox, eliminate our reliance on expensive 'enterprise-level usage' plans designed for large corporate entities with lots of revenue for licenses like that, and will enable us to have finer-grained control over the map tiles themselves, which is super cool. (We're looking into a 'night-mode' map, for example!)
We also have some amazing new additions to the Atlas coming:
- Guides: the ability to clean up duplicates/remove false reports
- Camps: local communication centers!
- Hotspots: the ability to report places where spawns come in large bursts
and a few more awesome things. :)
I and the rest of the Silph Road team have worked so hard to create the Nest Atlas. We've spent countless hours on it to make it stable, robust, beautiful, free, and awesome - even under intense load. A massive bill hitting us like this could have spelled the end for our Global Atlas before our coolest features even go live. But with a little help, we can make the transition and keep moving forward as planned.
Travelers, we need a little help. If the Road has meant something to you this past year and you're in a position to give, we would be grateful for the support. We've never asked for donations before. But this is a moment of need for our team. We don't anticipate raising enough to pay the bill from donations, but anything you could put towards this transformational step for our Global Nest Atlas would be deeply appreciated and help us secure the future of the Silph Road.
Travel safe,
- Executive Dronpes -
(Verification Post - so you know this is really the Silph Road team. Always make sure GoFundMe's are verified!)
Organizer
Dronpes Silph
Organizer
New York, NY