Google Cloud Messaging is free and how does google make money from it. Is there any catch in using GCM.
How does google profit from Google Cloud Messaging?
One of the prevalent business model software companies and developers use nowadays is called Freemium Model.
Freemium is a pricing
strategy by which a product or service (typically a digital offering
or application such as software, media, games or web services) is
provided free of charge, but money (premium) is charged for
proprietary features, functionality, or virtual goods.
Google offers GCM/FCM for free at a certain extent. But, if you wanted to exceed beyond the FREE services, you have to pay for it. Just take a look at this Pricing Plans for example.
Also, don't forget that Google's primary source of revenue is ads. Let's say you have a successful working GCM/FCM app due to a large user base. When you integrate ads like AdMobs, Google also makes a certain amount of money out of that.
Lots of software companies are doing this- offering basic FREE services with an option to pay for an updgrade. You have Dropbox, Mapbox, Coronalabs and so on. The catch would be for users to keep using the company's products throughout and for the company to be able to gather data from them.
Related
Can Whatsapp Cloud API be used for business as a reseller?
like what is the difference between the new Whatsapp Cloud API and the API we get from Resellers?
Also, is there an API to automate the signup process?
Those Resellers you mention are often Business Solution Providers (BSPs), or BSP partners.
So that implies, in order to be WhatsApp Cloud API reseller, you will need to be either a BSP or BSP partner.
The Cloud API architecture significantly simplifies the BSP’s operational and infrastructure requirements to integrate with WhatsApp Business Platform.
See "What is the architecture of the Cloud API?", in Cloud API FAQs
As a BSP or its partner, a reselling program is available to you both for On-premises/Managed WhatsApp Business API and Cloud API. However, you need to take into account Cloud API is relatively new and all BSPs are currently adapting/expanding their current solutions to new service offered by Meta.
In other words, Cloud API is not yet available everywhere and current services offered by BSPs are more versatile and feature rich than Cloud API until this will eventually change.
The largest WhatsApp BSP is 360dialog, offering WhatsApp Business API integration Platform as a Service, and on-premises plans.
Since you asked about differences between Cloud API and BSPs, let me give a short comparison between Cloud API and 360dialog key differences, as an example:
Differences
360dialog
Meta Cloud API
Message Throughput (Per Second)
Flexible scalability setups for small to large businesses. Send up to 70 text messages per second for single-connect. Send up to 250 text messages per second for multi-connect.
Up to 80 messages per second of combined sending and receiving (inclusive of text and media messages). In the event of high system loads, a business may experience reduced message throughput. Starting in July 2022, support up to 250 messages per second of combined sending and receiving (inclusive of text and media messages), by request
SLA - Uptime
Standard and Premium support with different SLAs: >99%, >98%
Goals of 99.9% at GraphAPI.
SLA - Disaster Recovery
Average response time of 4h. Escalation Path to Meta team after 360dialog investigation.
No SLA
Sources:
Full comparison table of differences between On-premises and Cloud API solutions.
360dialog Pricing
So, as you might've noticed, with BSP will work more closely with you as a solution provider and will offer you more flexibility depending on the business scale.
WhatsApp Business API requires some developer effort, but there are also different WhatsApp API based solutions that make this whole process a lot easier.
One of them is get.chat WhatsApp Business Team Inbox & WhatsApp Integration API which will help you to integrate with WhatsApp much faster. Plus, it will enable access to non-technical people in your team/company, too!
I am a co-founder and CTO so I am open to answer any questions if you want to know more about our solution. Here is also a link to the docs if you're interested in learning more by yourself.
Further reading:
An easy guide about WhatsApp Business API by get.chat
Cloud API FAQs - offered by Meta directly
On-premises WhatsApp Business API FAQs - hosted by BSPs and resellers
now there are two types of Whatsapp Business API. The ones from the diferent Busniness Solution Providers (BSP) and the one from Meta (Whatsapp CloudAPI).
I think that untill now, each BSP has develped it´s own APIS starting off the one provided by Meta. So each BSP offeres his own APIs (endpoints, libraries..).
Meta has now published the API offered to the BSP and now every business has direct access to it. No more BSP are needed, unless you want and easy to use solution.
The main difference I see between BSP and Meta API is that BSP are easier to use. MetaAPI is a huge complex system.
Now you don't need to look at BSP, all you can do is set up, create a business account and developer effort to make things work according to your business desire, and create message templates.
please have a below link for further eloboration.
https://www.facebook.com/business/help/338665938087159
I'm just wondering if anyone can provide me with some information into how e-commerce websites automatically calculate the postage and shipping costs for items ordered on-line?
Do these websites use plug-ins/web services to dynamically request this information from the postage/shipping provider? Or do developers manually retrieve the postage costs from the associated shipping provider and then develop their own approximate postage/shipping cost calculation algorithm (in agreement with the e-commerce business of course)? Or are there any alternative approaches used?
Any help is much appreciated. Thanks.
EDIT: I have done some basic research on the topic. I've seen some plug-ins for WordPress but each plug-in was limited to specific postage/shipping companies only.
Do these websites use plug-ins/web services to dynamically request
this information from the postage/shipping provider?
Yes, this is certainly an option. In my experience, the APIs provided by UPS and FedEx are decent and work for the UK market.
Or do developers manually retrieve the postage costs from the
associated shipping provider and then develop their own approximate
postage/shipping cost calculation algorithm?
I would not recommend this - a maintenance headache for one reason - and have never seen it done.
Or are there any alternative approaches used?
Sometimes, fixed shipping-costs can be used - for example, when delivery is to a single country or products weights are relatively static. No API call is needed in these scenarios.
Based on my research, I've found that there doesn't seem to be a single standardised way of calculating shipping/postage costs on e-commerce websites. Some companies provide plugins for WordPress, etcetera, to assist in this process, while others companies provide API's.
Primarily, I'm interested in using a UK based shipping/postage provider.
The Royal Mail is the largest postal provider in the UK and it provides an API for a number of tasks; however no official API appears to be available for cost calculation. I did however manage to find an unofficial Royal Mail cost calculation API. It can be found at the following link.
We are about to develop new mobile application that requires the end user to fill his payment information, which will be redirected to a third party’s portal to pay for a certain services through the application ( using Web Services )
user send billing information using web services , Is this legal for apple ?
It's OK to integrate 3rd party credit card payment systems in your app (for example PayPal, Amazon payments, etc. or your own system) as long as you do not sell services, extensions, etc. to your app. As you say you're going to sell physical goods, it is OK for Apple. Amazon app does the same thing. Btw it is even explicitly prohibited to use in-app payments to sell physical goods.
EDIT: more answer to the detailed questions in the comment
IMHO (see disclaimer):
Shipping fees of physical goods and signup fees for your physical service are NOT services or extensions - in the sense that Apple uses it, it applies only to some additional features to your application, for example a new level in a game or a new map in a mapping app
to be legally store, transmit, process credit card information, you will have to be compliant to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. Here Apple has nothing to do, but both Visa and Mastercard (and maybe also other card issuers) require that you implement these practices if you wish to process credit card data of their cards
this last requirement might be tricky so I really suggest you to look for some ready solution instead of implementing your own. See also the first answer to this question: Use In App Purchase For Real Goods
DISCLAIMER: I am not a legal authority or somebody from Apple so I can give you just hints but not a legal advice - will have to ask a lawyer for an "official" answer :)
I have developed one app in which i have used the Google Place API. This is what places doc says about limitation.
The Google Places API has the following query limits:
Users with an API key are allowed 1 000 requests per 24 hour period.
Users who have also verified their identity through the APIs console are allowed 100 000 requests per 24 hour period. A credit card is required for verification, by enabling billing in the console. Your card will not be charged for use of the Places API.
So my question is that if i enable billing for Place API then its free? Is it really true?
Yes, you will have what they are saying. I have done that, so I can confirm... If you put your credit card info, you are letting them know that you are a verified user, and that therefore you won't misuse their services.
And for the second question, we are talking about Google here. It is really true, you won't be charged, they can make money from other sources :)
EDIT:
Actually, if you need more than the "verified" option, it seems you can contact them as stated by Thor Mitchell (Product Manager #Google) in this topic at Quora: Pros and Cons of Places API
"The limits on use (after identity verification) is 100,000 requests
per day, and we're happy to talk to developers who need more about
their requirements."
As of today, the limit is 150,000 free requests per day, but the documentation is hard to make sense of in terms of how they bill overage.
Latest update March 2019:
"For an overview of pricing for the Google Maps Platform products, please see the Pricing Sheet.
To learn more about how Google Maps Platform APIs are billed, please see Understanding billing for Maps, Routes, and Places."
I'm very confused reading the online term of use of some Online Map Service (like Google Maps, Bing Maps, OpenStreetMaps and Mapquest)...
There is a way to use Google or Bing Maps on a website for non-commercial or commercial pourpose without any daily limitation of request?? What kind of Api I can use for free without any limitation of use or request, if I want to see a map on my site with several point of interest inserted by me??
I have read that in free version of Google or Bing some ads may appear sometimes inside the maps, and I cannot insert in my webpages any ads from another provider different from Google or Bing. It's true?
If I want to use OpenStreetMaps (an opensource Maps Database) or the partner MapQuest, it's true that there aren't any limitations of daily request or appearing ads on the maps or policy of exclusive banner campaign??
But, at the end, If I try to build a portal with this maps, and I want to plan in the future the insertion of some ads and the creation of a little company, I'm doing a commercial or not-commercial use (now and in future)??
Google recently announced new advertising and rate limiting in their terms of service. Websites will be forced to display ads in their maps, or pay for a premium account. Popular websites (resulting in lots of hits of google map tile server) will also need to pay for a premium account. It's not clear if your intended use will trigger those limits.
OpenStreetMap might offer a viable alternative. They do run a map tile server which can be used to embed a slippy map on your website. There is also an open source javascript library called OpenLayers (among other options), meaning that you can be free of google and their ads. OpenStreetMap do however operate a strict tile usage policy to protect the service which is paid for by donations, and run by volunteers.
OpenStreetMap also uniquely offers another approach: Create your own tile server, rendering the raw map data yourself. This might be a sensible option if you run a very popular website, or if you require only a limited area of the world to be shown. It's also really neat because you have full control over rendering style. It's a fairly technical process though ...but
Because this is possible, a number of third parties will offer you a map tile service built using OpenStreetMap data. e.g. MapQuest, CloudMade, TileServer, TileDrawer, or MapBox