Ordering

You can place an order in the My Account section, but see below for a detailed explanation of your options. You can also click on a price below to add an item to a sales order or quotation. The content below is customised based on your country of origin. Please log in to ensure that we have your correct location. See prices in ZAR.

Software#

Software Licences#

A software licence is perpetual, but access to updates does expire and must be renewed after one year.

Licensing is per user, not per installation. A user may install PlanetGIS software on as many computers and devices as required for the user's work with PlanetGIS.

A licence is represented by a licence key, which is issued once to an organisation (or when the name of the organisation changes). Additional users (including Operators) are recorded as an enhancement to an existing licence, except in cases where this is not possible (e.g., the use of Solo licences as well as Operator licences in the same organisation.)

Software Updates#

A software licence includes access to updates from this website for one year. After a year, you have the option to purchase an update subscription for continued access to the latest versions.

The cost of an update subscription is 33% of the licence fee per year, or 25% per year for two years in advance.

Late renewal of updates is possible, but will extend access to updates for the period from the expiration date of the prior update period (e.g., renewing 6 months late will only give you six more months of access to updates).

Software Upgrades#

As an alternative to annual or biennial payments for updates, a year's worth of software updates may be purchased as an upgrade at a 33% discount on the fee for a new licence.

Licensing Options#

Explorer

PlanetGIS Explorer is free, but is limited in the number of features that you are allowed to capture. Explorer is not allowed to send changes to a data stream, though can be used to view the progress of synchronised projects.

Operator

An Operator licence is for users that do data collection and maintenance but do not create new projects or alter the structure of existing projects. This licence can be used with Explorer (which turns it into Explorer+) and/or Mobile. A user with an Operator licence can use it with Explorer+ on a desktop as well as with Mobile on a tablet PC.

An Operator licence costs $165 per user. After one year, updates will cost $55 per year, or $83 for two years in advance.

Solo

A Solo licence is for expert users that work mostly independently or create and customise projects for use by others that do not make any changes. This licence will typically only be used with the desktop PlanetGIS software, while produced maps (your data products) will typically be used with PlanetGIS Explorer.

A Solo licence key can be used to install PlanetGIS Explorer (turning it into Explorer+ upon registration) as well as PlanetGIS Mobile, for use by the same user. It is also possible to combine an Operator licence with a Solo licence to use PlanetGIS on a data stream.

Solo replaces the previous Professional licence.

A Solo licence costs $495 per user. After one year, updates will cost $165 per year, or $248 for two years in advance.

Specialist

A Specialist licence is for expert users that create and customise projects that are synchronised (viewed and modified by multiple users). A Specialist licence adds administrative functions needed to run a team of Operator users, as well as the ability to create web pages to create reports with your data.

Similar to Solo, the licence can be used to install PlanetGIS Explorer or Mobile for use by the same user. This licence will allow changes made by any of these applications to be synchronised.

A Specialist licence costs $825 per user. After one year, updates will cost $275 per year, or $413 for two years in advance.

Architect

An Architect licence is for systems architects who design complete end-user solutions. This licence provides full functionality for designing web pages to serve live information directly from your GIS database. You can create a full-fledged website (like the one you're visiting right now) or any kind of report for your database, accessible inside PlanetGIS Explorer (for example).

An Architect licence costs $1320 per user. After one year, updates will cost $440 per year, or $660 for two years in advance.

Cloud Services#

DataStream#

Synchronised / online projects require a change stream to keep all the nodes of the distributed database in synchronisation. Every change made by every user is uploaded to a server in a data centre, from which every user that has the project open, receives nearly instantaneous updates so that every member of the team is looking at the same information.

We provide hosting in reliable data centres, as a monthly or yearly service. Pricing is determined by the expected traffic (number of changes per year).

DataStream 1

Small projects can start with DataStream 1 until they require more than 1 million changes per year. The cost is yearly up-front, and is currently $180.

DataStream 10

Most projects with fewer than 10 users making regular changes, will be adequately served by the DataStream 10, which provides for up to 10 million changes per year. The cost is yearly up-front, currently $270, or short-running projects can purchase the required number of months, at $27 per month, limited to 1 million changes per month.

DataStream 20

The most popular option, DataStream 20 provides for up to 20 million changes per year that can be topped-up as needed. The cost is yearly up-front, currently $360, or short-running projects can purchase the required number of months, at $36 per month, limited to 2 million changes per month.

DataStream 40

The most cost-effective option for large projects, DataStream 40 provides for up to 40 million changes per year that can be topped-up as needed. The cost is yearly up-front, currently $540, or short-running projects can purchase the required number of months, at $54 per month, limited to 4 million changes per month.

DataStream Topup 10

For projects that are busier than expected, extend the service by an additional 10 million changes, which can be carried over to the following year. The cost is $180.

DataStream Topup 20

For large projects that are busier than expected, extend the service by an additional 20 million changes, which can be carried over to the following year. The cost is $240.

BLOB Storage#

Photographs and documents (attachments) in PlanetGIS are not entered into change streams, since they typically are not needed by each user. To be more precise, the binary data (BLOB) of each attachment skips the change stream, but each attachment is also an entity that does go into the change stream like any other data item in PlanetGIS, so that each user's database is aware of each attachment. When an attachment needs to be viewed, its BLOB (image/document content) is downloaded from a BLOB server, though it is then stored in the (.blobs) local database, so that it is only downloaded once by each user.

Similar to data in a PlanetGIS data stream, BLOBs cannot be deleted (making it possible to un-delete attachments, like other types of entities). An occasional purge of unneeded BLOBs is possible, but will require a process similar to re-uploading all BLOBs that are still needed, similar to how a data stream can be recreated (losing all history, i.e., prior changes to entities).

For projects with a large amount of attachments, we recommend that you use your own Microsoft Azure account, but using storage space on a PlanetGIS cloud server is very convenient. Our storage fees are currently $1 per 50 gigabytes per month, but we do not charge for the bandwidth used to upload or download the data (as Microsoft Azure does). Your first 50 gigabytes is provided free of charge, but thereafter a monthly charge for additional (including partial) blocks of 50GB will apply. (For example, if you are using between 51GB and 99GB of storage, your monthly charge will be $1.)

In order to keep invoicing simple, storage fees will be added to invoices for other cloud services, and will only be invoiced separately when a certain threshold is reached. You will therefore likely be paying for storage only from the end of the first year. Storage charges are payable in arrears, while all other cloud services are payable upfront. Lastly, your total storage consumption as on the last day of each month will be used as the indicator of storage used for the entire month.

PageServer#

PageServer is a web server that serves web pages, including zoomable maps, images, and other things, to browsers on the Internet. This website runs on a PlanetGIS PageServer; we eat our own dog food!^†

Pricing is determined by the resources that must be allocated in order to ensure that a specified number of nearly simultaneous requests are processed without waiting. Processing times can vary wildly depending on the complexity of the page being generated (often determined by the complexity and number of SQL queries used to generate a page), so this is a rough estimate. A lot depends on the skill of the page designer to ensure that requests take the least amount of time to process. Also keep in mind that a typical web page requires several requests (e.g., one for each image) to render its content in a browser, though this can be managed through proper caching settings on content that doesn't change often. We use the requests per minute (rpm) metric to approximate the load that a server should be able to handle. This is not an average, but the peak load that the server must be able to handle without noticeable delays.

PageServer 6

An entry-level web server for projects that only need to serve occasional requests (no more than 6 requests per minute). This option is adequate for projects with a single (or very few) report-style or dashboard-style pages with no zoomable maps, that will be accessed infrequently by a small number of people. The cost is yearly up-front, and is currently $180.

PageServer 20

A web server for a more typical workload: projects that need to serve more frequent requests (no more than 20 requests per minute) to a small number of people. (The number of people depends on how frequently each person will need a page rendered in their browsers.) Not recommended if a project needs to provide zoomable maps. The cost is yearly up-front, currently $450, or short-running projects can purchase the required number of months, at $45 per month.

PageServer 60

A web server for a typical workload: projects that need to serve frequent requests (no more than 60 requests per minute) to a larger number of people, some of whom will be using live (zoomable) maps. (The number of people depends on how frequently each person will need a page rendered in their browsers and how many of them will be using zoomable maps.) The cost is yearly up-front, currently $900, or short-running projects can purchase the required number of months, at $90 per month.

PageServer 120

The recommended option for projects that will have a small team (up to 5 people) using live maps for capturing information in the field (using cellphones). This is in addition to a moderate number of reporting pages that will be accessed by the desk-bound members of your team or your clients. The cost is yearly up-front, currently $1350, or short-running projects can purchase the required number of months, at $135 per month.

PageServer 240

A web server for projects that will have a larger team (up to 20 people) using live maps for capturing information in the field (using cellphones). This is in addition to a larger number of reporting pages that will be accessed by the desk-bound members of your team or your clients. This is the recommended option if the project will be providing public-facing pages for a small pool of interested people (at most 100 unique visitors per day, depending on how active your visitors will be during the day). The cost is yearly up-front, currently $2700, or short-running projects can purchase the required number of months, at $270 per month.

PageServer 480

A web server for projects that will have a large team (up to 40 people) using live maps for capturing information in the field (using cellphones). This is in addition to a large number of reporting pages that will be accessed by the desk-bound members of your team or your clients. This is the recommended option if the project will be providing public-facing pages for a moderate pool of interested people (at most 1000 unique visitors per day, depending on how active your visitors will be during the day). The cost is yearly up-front, currently $5400, or short-running projects can purchase the required number of months, at $540 per month.

Further scaling

The distributed nature of PlanetGIS' database makes it easy to scale a website out to multiple servers. For scenarios that require more resources than described above, you would simply add additional PageServer 480s to meet your demand.

In-house / On-premises / Own datacentre hosting

The PlanetGIS Stream Server is your option if you only need to host DataStreams (plus BLOBStorage) on your own infrastructure. A single Stream Server licence can be used for up to 10 DataStreams (plus 10 BLOBStorage services) with no limitation on capacity. The current cost for such a licence is $2700.

The PlanetGIS Application Server can host DataStreams, BLOBStorage and PageServers on your own infrastructure. This option should be considered carefully, as it may require a lot of initial training and support. A PageServer requires a lot of resources (memory and CPU), and pages need to be carefully designed for minimal response times. A single Application Server licence is limited to 16 workers in addition to 10 stream and 10 BLOB services. A typical low-use page server (e.g., for internal use at a medium-sized organisation) would need a minimum of 4 workers. Each worker is a running instance of a PlanetGIS project and uses one of the server's CPUs to process requests. For serving zoomable maps, you would need 8 to 16 workers, even for a relatively small number of simultaneous users (up to 40 on a server). This means, depending on many factors, that you are likely to require a server licence for only one or two of your projects and perhaps even several server licences for a single project. A busy server also works best when its change stream and BLOB storage service runs on a separate physical server, requiring a separate Stream Server licence. The current cost for an Application Server licence is $4200.

Yearly updates or upgrades are calculated in the same way as described above for other software licences.

Training & Support#

Online consulting

Consultations via Zoom (or Teams, etc.) can be booked at a fee of $60 per hour. This may include preparatory work or time to implement a custom solution to address your needs. Your first 30 minutes will be provided at no charge.

Please log in to see if we offer in-person training near you.

Development & implementation#

We can design and implement a solution that suits your needs perfectly, from database design to web development (in Planet, of course). Our hourly rate is $60, but it is negotiable based on the type and amount of work required.

Summary Pricelist#