Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#21

Post by mycentstoo » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 4:51 PM UTC

Design looks great!

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#22

Post by lluft » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 4:56 PM UTC

joekrill wrote: post #20

lluft wrote: post #10

How do you compare to Maxmind in regards of data quality?

This is really important. Particularly because Maxmind can be used locally and their free dataset is actually pretty accurate for most use cases.

Agree. Nothing beats running it locally in regards to latency constraints.

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#23

Post by mrkurt » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 4:57 PM UTC

jonathan-kosgei wrote: post #11

no_protocol wrote: post #9

I wonder if you can change the pricing plans and language around them a little. What happens if I'm going along happily on the 2500/day plan and suddenly I get hit with a traffic spike and need 20,000/day for 3 days until things calm down? If you're going to use pricing buckets like this it probably needs to also come with an automated way to bump the plan if needed. Someone else in the thread suggested Maxmind as an…

I've actually been seriously considering adding a pay as you go plan, where you pay for only per the number of requests you make,is this something that would interest you? The current prices are an extended Cyber Monday offer, I figured I'd let it run into the holidays. Unfortunately it's never going to be spot on all the time. Awesome points on the example ips and adding error handling documentation. Thanks for poin…

It's more fun to sell metered services to people than "plans". You can get the best of both worlds by having a per unit price, and then giving people discounts for committing to certain usage levels.

Plans are kind of a pain because you have to have a sales process to get people to change. Mailchimp automatically upgrades/downgrades people between plans, which is a decent workaround, but still a little weird to customers.

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#24

Post by jonathan-kosgei » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 4:59 PM UTC

rhyst wrote: post #14

"Lantency based routing" - typo on landing page?

Fixed.

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#25

Post by jonathan-kosgei » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 5:09 PM UTC

mrkurt wrote: post #23

jonathan-kosgei wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've actually been seriously considering adding a pay as you go plan, where you pay for only per the number of requests you make,is this something that would interest you? The current prices are an extended Cyber Monday offer, I figured I'd let it run into the holidays. Unfortunately it's never going to be spot on all the time. Awesome points on the example ips and adding error handling documentation. Thanks for poin…

It's more fun to sell metered services to people than "plans". You can get the best of both worlds by having a per unit price, and then giving people discounts for committing to certain usage levels. Plans are kind of a pain because you have to have a sales process to get people to change. Mailchimp automatically upgrades/downgrades people between plans, which is a decent workaround, but still a little weird to custo…

I bet you mean something along Postmark's pricing https://postmarkapp.com/pricing.

I'm probably going to start work on incorporating this soon. Thanks for the input!

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#26

Post by jonathan-kosgei » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 5:14 PM UTC

mycentstoo wrote: post #21

Design looks great!

Thanks!

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#27

Post by boyd9461 » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 5:15 PM UTC

Do you support GeoJSON formatted output?

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#28

Post by dewski » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 5:20 PM UTC

lluft wrote: post #10

How do you compare to Maxmind in regards of data quality?

I live in a well known city of almost 300k people and it can't locate my city and the lat/lon is the center of the US.

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#29

Post by reaperducer » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 5:20 PM UTC

lluft wrote: post #10

How do you compare to Maxmind in regards of data quality?

I can't speak for anyone else, but it's got me pegged 571 miles from my actual location. Not even close enough for an ICBM.

Re: Show HN: A New, Clean Geolocation API

#30

Post by jonathan-kosgei » Fri, Dec 08, 2017, 5:22 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #19

no_protocol wrote: post #9

I wonder if you can change the pricing plans and language around them a little. What happens if I'm going along happily on the 2500/day plan and suddenly I get hit with a traffic spike and need 20,000/day for 3 days until things calm down? If you're going to use pricing buckets like this it probably needs to also come with an automated way to bump the plan if needed. Someone else in the thread suggested Maxmind as an…

You can download the Maxmind database locally. I don't see the option for that from IpData. That's worth the price increase for me. Having a web API is great for low- or mid-volume applications, but adding 10ms per user for an HTTPS call would still be like 1000x slower than hitting a local DB.

You're right, they're definitely many cases where incorporating any calls to external resources would be the wrong call and where hitting a local copy of a db would be the best solution.

An API such as this exists would be a great choice where you need to modify content on the frontend. In which case you'd benefit from the availability of 10 endpoints around the world from which the API is available to provide the lowest latency to your users.