Fixed Cost Map Library or Service?

Question

I need mapping for an AJAX (Javascript/PHP/MySQL) project. All the providers I researched used a tile cost model or were beyond our budget.

I'm not looking for anything fancy, just something that allows:

1. Commercial Use (for us and users of our service who use the maps)
2. Panning
3. Zooming
4. Street Layers
5. Efficiently plotting large numbers (eg: >= 1,000) of markers by GIS or zip code.
6. Adding annotations to markers (directly or via legend).

I may even be able to do without 1 or 2 if it comes down to it.

The budget for this is tight: $2,500 for an annual license or and $5,000 to buy something outright. However, this figure may be adjusted if there's something that isn't too far out of the ballpark.

Does anyone know of anything that fits the bill (bad pun unintended)?

Also, an additional wrinkle is that the underlying tile server should be included in the price. Some excellent responses were provided so far (and I'm looking into them), but some of them are libraries only and the tile server may be a hidden cost. It's also not always clear just what (default) tile server is used with what library.

Answer 1

The first thing that I would try is MapQuest APIs with OpenStreetMap option:

• It is free of charge for commercial and non-commercial use
• It supports panning and zooming
• It has geocoding, letting you map by ZIP code
• It supports POI markers and InfoWindows, letting you supply annotations to markers on the map.

The biggest limitation that comes with using OpenStreetMap is the lack of routing services, but it is not on your "shopping list" anyway.

Answer 2

Some other solutions that might be worth investigating.

OpenLayers (http://openlayers.org/) appears to support what you need.

• 2-clause BSD License (also known as the FreeBSD)
• zoom and panning
• plotting
• more examples here

Leaflet (http://leafletjs.com/) looks promising. Looks like it relies on the OpenStreetMap option.

• Zoom buttons, Panning animation, GeoJSON layers,
• Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license

Also, here's a comparison of the two above solutions.

Hopefully, these help in your search for the optimal solution.

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EDIT 0

MapBox (http://mapbox.com) looks like a pretty cool pay solution, that looks to be within your budget. It appears to support everything you need and more.

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EDIT 1

I performed some more searching and found the following.

• Modest Maps - http://modestmaps.com/

• Custom Build - Build it yourself? SO user provides basic explanation.

  My personal opinion would be to use the effective "standard" OSS libraries that form this type of stack.

  OSGEO has a bunch of resources for exactly this.

  • PostGIS (database)
  • Apache (webserver)
  • MapServer (WMS compliant GIS server)
  • OpenStreetMap (the maps you'll need)
  • OpenScales or OpenLayers
  • (Flex or JS API) Total cost: a few hours of setup.

• Polymaps - http://polymaps.org/
• CloudMade - http://cloudmade.com/; pricing; SO user feedback on the company
• Google Maps - Not sure why it wasn't already mentioned, but Google maps (http://www.google.com/enterprise/earthmaps/maps.html; more here) might be a possible solution. The high usage limits seem promising; you'll have to contact them for pricing, unfortunately. Still, it might be worth a look.
• Bing Maps - http://www.microsoft.com/maps/
• Nokia Maps - http://developer.here.net/