MapQuest Tiles Discontinued
As some customers have already noticed, MapQuest recently discontinued its popular map tile service. As far as we are aware, this was the only widely available free map tile service on the market.
A number of commercial vendors offer alternatives (though it is important to carefully read the licenses and terms of use - which can be quite tricky!), such as:
- https://www.mapbox.com/
- https://developer.here.com/
- http://www.geofabrik.de/
- http://maps.stamen.com/ (seems to be free)
Unfortunately OpenStreetMap tiles is not an option - see their Tile Usage Policy.
Consequently, TatukGIS is seriously evaluating hosting its own Map Tile Server (serving the same OpenStreetMap data and content that MapQuest until recently offered), for the benefit of TatukGIS customers. Though we are at a pretty early stage of the development, the TatukGIS hosted OpenStreetMap tile service is actually already available, for free to all TatukGIS product users (though we make no guarantee about for how long).
TatukGIS has not yet decided on a business model for the web map tile service because much depends on user demand and the server capacity required. Generally we think about offering the service for free (at least to some reasonable usage limit) to existing DK and Editor customers with active support maintenance.
Access the TatukGIS service by downloading and using the "TatukGIS-OpenStreetMaps-Tiles.ttkwp" connector. Improvements still to be implemented include:
- improved styles
- tuning performance
- evaluating user demand
Please report any problems and suggestions on the Q&A or drop an email to support@. We appreciate feedback from interested customers on this endeavor.
Updated 2016/07/14 - added maps.stamen.com and proper copyrights on .ttkwp. file