Pin Drop vs Google My Maps

Google My Maps is genuinely good at the first job. It is free, it imports a spreadsheet, it draws lines and shapes over a Google basemap, and it shares like any other Google file. For a delivery round, a list of sites or a catchment sketch that needs to exist by Friday, it is hard to argue with.

The limits are documented rather than hidden. A map holds up to ten layers, and Google's own import guidance is not to bring in files of more than 2,000 rows. Those two numbers meet each other quickly. A few thousand locations means splitting the list across layers, and there are only ten, so the map that started as one shared view becomes three or four maps that nobody can see together.

The second limit is where the editing happens. My Maps is a desktop tool. On a phone you can look at your maps inside Google Maps, but you cannot really work in them. So what someone learns standing at the location gets written on the back of a job sheet and typed up later, or more often it does not get typed up at all.

Sharing has the same shape as a Google Doc: a link, set to view or to edit, for everyone who holds it. There is no way to give a subcontractor the twelve sites that are theirs and nothing else, and no way to let the field add places without also letting them delete the map.

Then there is what a pin can hold. A name, a description, a photo. Not when it was last visited, not what happened when someone went, not which stage the job is at. My Maps shows you where things are. It was never built to remember what has happened at them.

Pin Drop is built around that second half. Pins are unlimited on every plan, so there are no layers to ration. The phone apps are the product rather than a viewer, with offline capture for the places that have no signal. Check-in and check-out log automatically against the pin, so a location carries its own visit history, notes and photos. Territories are drawn by hand with named owners, and roles decide who sees which patch. Everything exports to CSV, GeoJSON, KML or SHP behind an open API, so the map is never the thing holding you in.

None of that makes My Maps the wrong choice for a map you draw once. If it is doing the job, keep it. The moment to move is the day you hit the tenth layer, or the day the map needs to be changed by whoever is standing at the location.