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Google Maps vs SmartyStreets: What are the differences?
Developers describe Google Maps as "Build highly customisable maps with your own content and imagery". Create rich applications and stunning visualisations of your data, leveraging the comprehensiveness, accuracy, and usability of Google Maps and a modern web platform that scales as you grow. On the other hand, SmartyStreets is detailed as "Commercial and free street address validation and geocoding". Now it's faster and easier than ever to verify addresses on your website. Help your customers provide valid address data by verifying it in real-time with our API. Display multiple matches if the address is ambiguous, and alert them when the address is invalid. Your shipments will be cheaper and arrive faster, and your customers will be satisfied knowing that their addresses were submitted correctly the first time.
Google Maps can be classified as a tool in the "Mapping APIs" category, while SmartyStreets is grouped under "Shipping".
Some of the features offered by Google Maps are:
- Maps Image APIs
- Places API
- Web Services
On the other hand, SmartyStreets provides the following key features:
- Add address validation to your website
- Get address suggestions as you type
- Verify addresses in an Excel or list file
From a StackShare Community member: "We're a team of two starting to write a mobile app. The app will heavily rely on maps and this is where my partner and I are not seeing eye-to-eye. I would like to go with an open source solution like OpenStreetMap that is used by Apple & Foursquare. He would like to go with Google Maps since more apps use it and has better support (according to him). Mapbox is also an option but I don’t know much about it."
Google Maps is best because it is practically free (they give you $300 in free credits per month and it's really hard to go over the free tier unless you really mean business) and it's the best!
I use Mapbox because We need 3D maps and navigation, it has a great plugin for React and React Native which we use. Also the Mapbox Geocoder is great.
I use OpenStreetMap because that has a strong community. It takes some time to catch up with Google Maps, but OpenStreetMap will become great solution.
I use Google Maps because it has a lot of great features such as Google's rich APIs, geolocation functions, navigation search feature, street map view, auto-generated 3D city map.
I use OpenStreetMap because i have the control of the environment, using Docker containers or bare-metal servers.
Pros of Google Maps
- Free253
- Address input through maps api136
- Sharable Directions81
- Google Earth47
- Unique45
- Custom maps designing3
Pros of SmartyStreets
- Great jQuery Plugin3
- Great Customer Service2
- Easy Setup2
- Reliable2
- Cheaper than Google Places API1
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Cons of Google Maps
- Google Attributions and logo4
- Only map allowed alongside google place autocomplete1
