Hello, World! squidmaps is now in beta

Map it. Style it. Share it. The easiest way to make a map worth sharing.

Chris WhongFounder and Builder at squidmaps

October 26, 2026

Today I’m opening the public beta of squidmaps, a web-based tool for making good-looking maps of the places you care about and sharing them with a link. Drop some pins or import a spreadsheet, style it, and hit publish. No repo to set up, no hosting to manage, no API keys to babysit.

Request an invite → The beta is open to anyone who asks, and I’m approving invites quickly.

I built squidmaps because making a shareable web map has always been harder than it should be. Once you’ve made one, it ends up on a Vercel app, a CodePen or GitHub Pages: places that never feel like a real home for a map, where every edit is a code change. That’s more mental energy than anyone should spend moving a pin. And the tools built to spare you all that are either dated or too expensive. Most maps people need aren’t custom apps. They’re presentational web maps with a little interactivity: pins, shapes, popups, a legend. squidmaps puts a best-in-class editor and publishing into one seamless flow, built for exactly those maps.

How it works

The editor: drop points on the map, then style and name them.

1. Map it

Sign in, create a new map, and you’re in the editor. Search for an address to drop a pin, draw points, lines, areas, and text by hand, or import GeoJSON, CSV, KML, shapefiles, and more. Group features into folders to stay organized and control what’s drawn on top.

Drawing an area: click to add corners, and click the first one to finish.

2. Style it

Pick colors, symbols, dashes, fills, and labels that read at a glance. Copy and paste styles between features, or select many similar features and style them all at once. Add tooltips and popups so visitors see more when they hover or click. Set a title, description, legend, basemap, and zoom range in map settings, or make a custom basemap in your own colors. Then preview exactly how the map will look on desktop and on a phone.

A styled point with a popup: photos, a description and directions, when visitors click it.

Hit publish, and your map goes live at a clean link built from your username and the map’s name, like squidmaps.io/jane-doe/favorite-coffee-shops. Published maps appear on your profile. Copy the embed code to put the live map on your website, blog, or newsletter, where visitors can pan, zoom, and click without leaving the page. You can keep editing after you publish: visitors see the published version until you publish again, and embeds update on their own.

A published map, embedded with its embed code: Park Slope Certified Bangers.

What will you map?

I’m genuinely excited to see what people create with squidmaps, because everyone needs maps. A business with a single pin showing where to find them. A youth sports team sharing away-game locations. A sales team carving up territories. An influencer mapping their must-try eats. An urban planner outlining ground floor retail on a busy commercial corridor.

For GIS teams and spatial data scientists, squidmaps can be the last mile of your pipeline or analysis. Every map is defined by an open map spec: a single JSON document, built on GeoJSON, that describes the whole map. Have your pipeline write one, send it to the API, and get back a styled map ready to review, tweak, and publish, without spinning up a web project.

AI-friendly, not AI-native

squidmaps isn’t an AI product. It’s a map editor built for people, and it works great without a chatbot in sight. But our open map spec makes it AI-friendly by design: it’s easy for an AI agent to learn the format and start making maps. The ephemeral maps endpoint accepts a map with no account or API key and hands back a link, so an agent can iterate with zero setup.

Remember that HTML file with a web map that Claude handed you? Skip it. Add the squidmaps MCP server to Claude, ChatGPT, or another assistant, ask for something like “the best taco spots in East Austin, grouped by neighborhood,” and get back a link to a real squidmaps map you can keep editing and publish. More on using squidmaps with AI →

Doing the 30 Day Map Challenge?

The 30 Day Map Challenge kicks off November 1. If you’re planning to make web maps this year, use squidmaps and skip the hosting headache. Share a link or embed the live map instead of a screenshot. I’ll be using it for mine, and I’d love to see what you make.

What to expect from the beta

It’s free during the beta. I’ll use what I learn from the beta to figure out which features should belong to future paid tiers.
Things will change, and occasionally break. Features, the map spec, and the docs are still moving. I’m a team of one, and I’ll ship fixes fast.
Your maps are yours. You can export a copy of any map, so do that for the ones that matter to you. Unpublished maps are visible only to you, and private maps are coming.
Tell me what’s broken. Use the Beta feedback button in the app, email [email protected], or join the Discord to share feedback, request features, and show off what you’ve made.

Kick the tires

Request an invite, make something, and tell me what you love, what you hate, and what it needs for your use case. I can’t wait to see what you create!