1,848 karma · joined May 16, 2010
organizer of Geomob: https://thegeomob.com
mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@freyfogle website: https://www.freyfogle.com
Our experience (10+ years of offering a geocoding service) is that many people (of course depending on exact needs and use case) are significantly over-spending and could be using open data to reduce costs by 80+%.
Happy to chat if interested
correct
That said we do have enterprise customers with other pricing models to meet their exact needs. Please get in touch if we can help you.
See: https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-ip-geolocation-differs-f...
though really the key difference is the fact that we use open data. Googles data is not open, this significatly restricts what you can do with the data.
And here is a similar comparison versus running your own Nominatim https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-to-switch-from-nominatim
Please let us know if anything is out of date or can be made more clear. Thanks.
Great. The only real answer is you should sign up for a free trial (takes 2 min, requires just an email address) and test with your actual input data. Which language are you working in? We have SDKs for almost all (30+) and detailed tutorials for many: https://opencagedata.com/sdks
You can also test manually on our demo page: https://opencagedata.com/demo
You can do a lot to help us by formatting the input data well: https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-to-format-your-geocoding...
re: company names, it is a real challenge as they introduce a lot of noise.
Please can you follow up by email with specific questions: support @ opencagedata.com
I hope we have the chance to work with you
If you still need geocoding very happy to have a conversation, or you can just check out our site: https://opencagedata.com
We use only open data, you can store it forever (even if no longer a customer) and use it for whatever you like.
For example: quality (not generally, but versus your actual input data), terms & conditions of what you can do with the data, support, data enhancements (things like timezones, etc, etc), ease of use, documentation, terms of payment, and more.
The only real answer to "which geocoding service is best" is "it depends".
We have a comprehensive geocoding buyer's guide on our site: https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-to-compare-and-test-geoc...
Please get in touch if you need geocoding, hapyp to tell you if your needs are a good match for our service. Happy also to tell you if not.
Please see: https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-to-think-about-postcodes...
I write this as someone who grew up in the ZIP code 09180
a. Excel treats them as numbers instead of strings of digits and thus drops the leading 0
b. Developers make assumptions about postal codes based on how they work (or more usually how the developer incorrectly thinks they work) in their own country and these assumptions absolutely do NOT hold in other countries.
A relevant guide to geocoding and postal codes: https://opencagedata.com/guides/how-to-think-about-postcodes...
And other fund with this same model: https://tinyseed.com
Also more and more non-US banks won't take US citizens as customers because they don't want to deal with the US's FATCA requirements.
No other developed country has these sorts of requirements for non-resident citizens.
My complaint is simply people imagining it is perfect elsewhere. Really that is not the case, no where is perfect. All the people chiming in about the US being so easy, yes, wonderful. Now let's talk about healthcare and how your health insurance is tied to your employer. Everyone who is extolling how simple the UK is, that's lovely. What a shame about brexit though.
The point is there are major pains absolutely everywhere.
Germany is not at the cutting edge, but it is far from the worse. The interactions I have had with bureaucratic systems in Thüringen have all been entirely fine. Friendly people, clear process, done quickly. Obviously that is only an n=1. It is a rural area that is not overloaded as Berlin is.
Which country would you consider "modern"? My experiences:
In the UK the way you prove who you are is literally a physical copy of your water bill.
Spain, some things work well enough, others are insane.
US, massive variability from state to state and government department.
I am not sure there are "countless" scams in the UK, but yes, in 10 years of commercial operation did come across a few oddities. Example - a customer (UK Ltd) who declared bankruptcy owing us a money and then then next day founded a new Ltd company and tried to act like he didn't owe us the money because it was a new entity.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-packaged_insolvency
I have not come across this kind of thing in Germany.