How do I pay for my tours?
You pay for your tours by purchasing a Personal, Plus, or Pro plan. You can pay online using your credit card and our secure checkout pages. Your card is charged only when you make a purchase. There are no monthly or recurring charges.
We accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover.
We can also accept payment using PayPal's Send Money feature. Instructions will be provided when you get to our Shopping Cart page.
Do you bill my credit card automatically?
No. We do not keep your credit card on record and we only charge your card when you make a purchase.
Do you offer educational or non-profit pricing?
We offer a 50% educational or non-profit discount on Plus and Pro plans.
With the discount a Plus Plan costs $49.50 and a Pro Plan costs
$99.50.
How to qualify for a discount:
- Use your interactive maps only on non-profit or educational web sites and;
- Include a back link to MapsAlive on each non-profit or educational web site that uses an interactive map (instructions explaining how to do this are provided below).
How to receive a discount:
- Sign up for
a 30-day free trial account of MapsAlive.
- Send us email requesting the discount and be sure to tell us the trial account's email address.
- Wait for our reply telling you that we have added the discount to the account. We try to reply the same day.
- Make your purchase. You'll see the discount in the Shopping Cart. If you don't see it, try logging out of MapsAlive and then logging back in again.
How to provide a back link to MapsAlive:
Add the HTML shown below to at least one page on each web site that uses an interactive map.
<a href="http://www.mapsalive.com" target="_blank">Interactive map created with
MapsAlive</a>
You may vary the text of the link, but it must include the keyword phrase "interactive map" and the word "MapsAlive" inside the
<a> tag itself. Use of the MapsAlive footer text feature is not an acceptable substitution for a link.
If you have any questions, please
email us or call us at (802) 496-9140
before you make your purchase.
Can I upgrade my plan?
Yes. You can upgrade from a Personal plan to a Plus or Pro plan or from a Plus plan to a Pro plan at any time. The cost is the difference in price between your old plan and the new plan minus a discount for time already used on your old plan.
How many tours can I create altogether?
There is no limit on how many tours you can create. So long as you have not used the total number of hotspots available in your plan, you can create more tours or add hotspots to existing tours.
What happens to my tours if I forget to pay?
Toward the end of your plan year, MapsAlive displays a reminder when you are logged in so that you'll know that you need to make a purchase. We will also send you email reminders when it is time to renew.
If your plan runs out altogether, your tours will become deactivated, meaning that they stay in our database, but you cannot edit them. Anyone visiting those tours will see a message that the tour is not active. You can reactivate your tours instantly by making a purchase.
If you never make another purchase, your tours will eventually be removed from our database.
What am I paying for when I use MapsAlive?
You are paying to use MapsAlive to create, edit, and publish interactive maps. MapsAlive lets you easily upload map images and photos, add text descriptions, add markers to maps and build complete interactive tours without any programming. MapsAlive automatically generates a set of HTML, JavaScript, Flash, and other web files for each of your tours so that a programmer does not have to write them by hand.
In addition, MapsAlive hosts your tour files on mapsalive.com. When you make changes to a tour — for example, to fix a typo or replace a photo — you rebuild and publish the tour and the updates appear on the web instantly. There are no extra steps required to upload your changes to your server — they take effect on mapsalive.com immediately.
You are paying for the use of the MapsAlive application and for the convenience of having your tours (and changes you make to them) hosted on mapsalive.com automatically.
How does MapsAlive save me money?
MapsAlive is web based software that allows both technical and non-technical people to create interactive tours. Prior to MapsAlive, maps like these could only be produced by experienced web developers at great expense. With MapsAlive you can create tours yourself, have non-technical staff create them, or have your web team create them more quickly and less expensively than if they had to program them in traditional ways. In addition, editing and maintaining your interactive tours is fast and easy and does not require any programming so you don't need to call your web developer every time you want to make a change. In short, using MapsAlive costs a lot less than creating interactive tours any other way.
With a Pro plan you can also use the Archive feature to archive tours that you are not actively using, delete these tours from your account and reuse the hotspots for new tours. This features lets you purchase fewer hotspots overall, keeping the cost down.
Do I have to keep paying to use tours I create with MapsAlive?
No. With any paid plan you can
download tours at any time and host them on your own web server. They'll continue to work even if you let your MapsAlive plan expire.
Downloaded tours are read-only and cannot be edited. Your plan must remain active to access your tours for editing.
Do I pay when people visit my tours?
No. You are not charged for visits, clicks, or anything like that.
Are there any other costs?
No. There are no setup fees or monthly subscription costs. The plan prices shown allow you to create and edit tours and have them hosted on MapsAlive.com. With any paid plan you can also download your tours for free.
Can I use my tours after my plan expires?
Yes, with any paid plan you can
download tours and host them on your own web server. You must download your tours while your plan is still active.
How do I purchase more hotspots?
If you have a Personal or Plus plan you can upgrade to the Pro plan.
If you have a Pro plan you can purchase additional hotspots in groups of 100 at any time. We will pro-rate (reduce) the cost of additional hotspots based on the time remaining in your current plan.
Do you accept purchase orders?
Purchase orders are accepted for orders of $199 or
more. Please
email us or call us at (802) 496-9140 for details.
