On July 16, 2018, Google released a new pay-as-you-go pricing plan that went into effect for Maps, Routes, and Places, which meant that everyone wanting to use the Google Maps API have to sign up for a Google Cloud account, and register a credit card with the account so Google can charge you if you go beyond the credit they give you for free. 
Google will give you $200 worth of monthly credit which for most is more than enough as it calculates to around 28500 views on a dynamic map - you can see their pricing structure here: https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/sheet/ and calculate your potential cost here: https://mapsplatformtransition.withgoogle.com/calculator

Don’t want to input your credit card details to use a Map service?
Neither does most of our custom project clients as they only require a simple map to show a single location on a map!

HERE Maps to the rescue!
To give you a bit of introduction to who HERE is, and what they are offering we have to start back in 2007 when Nokia acquired the digital map data company NAVTEQ for $8 billion! Nokia was acquiring multiple other smaller map services to boost their efforts in that section. Back then, Nokia still had it’s own Nokia Maps, but eventually rebranded it as HERE in 2012 - come 2015 and Nokia sold HERE for $3 billion to a group of German car manufacturers(VW, Audi, Mercedes). 

Not long after that HERE WeGo was launched, a map service much like Google’s with an App that included offline navigation as well as turn-by-turn voice navigation - which I personally used in Vietnam from 2016-2018 as Google Maps didn’t have that option in Vietnam until early 2018.

Fast forward to the beginning of August where HERE announced that they would be changing their pricing structure to a Freemium model, which was a very welcome change to that of what Google was doing in their pricing structure. Read all about their Freemium plan here: https://developer.here.com/blog/our-here-freemium-developer-plan-in-detail 

HERE gives you 250,000 monthly transaction limits and does not require a credit card to sign-up and use their API. They will notify you via mail if you ever are to go beyond those transactions, but if your need is as most of our customers - you won’t need to pay a dime for their service. Read more about Here’s pricing and plans here: https://developer.here.com/plans

So HERE(pun intended) it is, a functional and simple Maps module for Joomla! that only requires a few steps to setup and use!

Setup instructions:

1. Download and install redHERE Maps Module on your Joomla 3.x site.
2. Go to the module in the backend of your Joomla site - you need to enter App API and App Code - which you can get by signing up here: https://developer.here.com/ - after signing up you can login and click on the "Get started for free" button.
3. Click on “Generate App ID and App Code” in the “JavaScript/REST” section - copy the codes over to the module.
4. Input your address - the address field have suggestions based on your search to maximise accuracy.
5. Choose module position and menu selection and see the map in action!

If you have any feedback or feature requests to this module please feel free to contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - thanks!

Thanks.
Jerri K. Christiansen
Product Owner
redCOMPONENT.com