The application which allows you to pin your favorite places on a map and share it with your friends decided at the end of October to move from a free model to a freemium model, asking the most active users to checkout.
“So now we have to pay €70 so we can see where our friends are going to eat their banh mi?” On social networks, Mapstr's new paid offer is raising eyebrows. The application, created by the French in 2015 and which allows you to save your favorite places on a map to share with your friends, announced at the end of October that the most active users will now have to take out a subscription. Beyond 300 registered addresses, you will have to pay 9.90 euros per month (or 69.99 euros over a year).
“No one is going to pay more than their mobile plan or Spotify to pin restaurants”wonders an Internet user on X, when another would have “preferred to have advertising on the app”. Mapstr, which has never been profitable in nine years of existence, nevertheless had no other choice but to abandon total free access for this freemium model, explains its creator and boss, Sébastien Caron, who defends a measure Who “only concerns 100,000 users out of 4.5 million”.
Cheaper subscriptions
Mapstr will, however, lower the price of its subscription around mid-November, announces Sébastien Caron at Figaro. “We are going to align the monthly rate with the annual rate”he explains: this will increase to 5.90 euros per month, and two months will be offered for users subscribing for the year. A family subscription will also be created, which can be shared by six users, for 9.90 euros per month.
Sébastien Caron recalls having tested several economic models, without success. “In particular, we thought we could be financed by B2B, but this requires a large sales team and is very expensive.” Advertising was also not an option, according to the boss: “This business is based on the time spent in the app, while our model is that users spend as little time as possible to enjoy the places.” Mapstr also ensures that it does not sell the personal data of its users, cutting itself off from another windfall that is usually juicy for digital players.
Hence the decision to have users contribute directly, with “a limitation on the number of addresses set as high as possible so that it affects as few people as possible”defends the boss. “We charge those who get the most use from Mapstr: they travel thanks to us, go out a lot… Pay six euros per month [le tarif annuel rapporté au mois, NDLR] for this service which is useful to them, it seems fair to us and it is not much in a travel or outings budget.
500 emails “pure insults”
The five Mapstr employees received more than a thousand critical emails following the introduction of subscriptions, “including 500 pure insults”. The application team took the time to respond to everyone, to explain their decision and their situation. In particular, remembering that users with more than 300 addresses can still have access to them and consult their friends' maps, they simply cannot add any more. “And nothing prevents you from subscribing for a month for a trip for example, when you need to add addresses, then unsubscribing while continuing to have access to your card”underlines Sébastien Caron.
It is still too early to see an effect of the introduction of this new model on the use of the application. But despite the controversy, the founder of Mapstr prefers to see the glass half full: “The good news in all of this is that it’s indicative of how attached people are to this app.”
