Social media decision
Friends Map
A simple community map is realistic for one technical person to build and run in ~36 hours; the vendor shows no apparent durable moat in the provided pages.
Visit website↗Not priced
No pricing page we fetched carried a figure, so there is nothing to compare against. The build side is still real.
$100one-off36 h to build
$20/mo3 h/mo upkeep
No published price to break even against.
No open-source build does this yet
Nothing published replaces this one, so a replacement starts from an empty file. Here is what it would have to cover.
What a replacement has to do
- Users add community member locations which are stored and displayed on an interactive map; other members view and search the map.
What it still won’t have
- Hosted polish, UX and product integrations provided by the vendor
- Brand, pre-existing user base and trust
- Any proprietary integrations the vendor may provide with Skool if not public
- Support, moderation, and managed uptime/SLAs
What remains hard
- Product polish and ongoing maintenance
First-year cost
No published price
Friends Map does not publish a price we could read, so there is nothing to compare against. What building costs is below.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a small self-hosted 'Skool Map' web app using Node.js (Express) + Postgres, a React frontend, and Leaflet for maps. In scope: OAuth login (or simple email login), fetch or accept basic profile info, create/read/update/delete location markers linked to profiles, geocode address inputs via Nominatim (with rate-limit handling), paginated map listing and a search box, Dockerfile and docker-compose for Postgres + app, HTTPS setup instructions for deployment on a single VPS, basic automated tests for API endpoints, and error handling for failed geocoding and DB errors. Out of scope: replicating vendor branding, advanced analytics, multi-tenant billing, and large-scale tile hosting. Include unit and integration tests, logging, and a README with deployment steps.
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Build verdict base78
- 2 cited sources+1
- Evidence score79
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 2
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productSkool Map official product
- official productSkool Map welcome
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
