Beacons vs MapToSite

Yes, for one job: putting the answers a customer asks for — the price, the hours, where you are, how to call — on one page behind one link. Beacons is a creator business platform: an AI teammate, a media kit, a digital store, email and Instagram DM automation. Its own plan comparison (beacons.ai/i/pricing, read 13 November 2026) lists more than forty features and none of them is an opening-hours block, a price list or an address card. MapToSite's page is those four things and a call button, typed in about 30 seconds, for $0 with no account.

Not as hours the page understands. You can type your hours into a text block or a link — but nothing on the page works out that it is 8pm on a Tuesday and you closed at six. MapToSite takes the hours you type and prints them with an “open now / closed” state worked out from them, so the visitor knows before they call. Beacons does have appointments and a calendar integration, but those book a slot; they do not tell a walk-in whether the door is open.

Beacons Free is free forever with unlimited links, a daily-updating media kit, a store with 9% seller fees, 50 email sends a month and 1 website with 1 page — no custom domain. MapToSite Card is $0 with no account and no card, and the page carries the price list, the hours with an open-now state, your address with directions, review highlights and a pinned call button. The difference is not the price; it is what a visitor finds without tapping, and whether the “free” plan takes a cut of anything you sell. MapToSite has no store, so it takes nothing.

Card is $0 forever. Board is $6.99 a month and is live now: a six-photo gallery, a notice line under your name, and no “Free page” line in the footer. Sign is $13.99 a month at its launch price (list $20.99), live now, and adds your own domain, the page built for you once by us, and priority support. Payments are taken on Polar's checkout page, never on this site, and you can cancel from the receipt.

Beacons Free and MapToSite Card are both $0, so at the bottom it is a tie on money and a loss for Beacons on the page: no hours, no price list, no address card. Beacons Creator, the first Beacons plan with a custom domain, is $100 a year billed annually — $300 over three years — and it charges 9% on sales. MapToSite Sign, the plan with a domain, is $503.64 over three years: more money, but it includes the page built for you once and takes no cut of anything. If a domain is the only extra you want, Beacons Creator is the cheaper subscription — we would rather write that down than pretend otherwise.

Yes, and for a creator that is the sane split: Beacons stays the switchboard — media kit, store, email, DM automation — and the MapToSite page goes at the top of it as “Menu, hours, prices”. If the bio link itself is the MapToSite page, the shop's answers are one tap away instead of two.

Paste the link from your Google Maps listing and the page starts with the shop name, the business type and a working Directions button taken from the link. Then type the phone, the hours and your three most-asked prices. A logo and photos are optional; the page works without them and never invents a fact you did not type.

Yes. A published page is a public address such as /s/your-shop with its own title, description and preview image, and published English pages are listed in this site's sitemap. Demo pages are kept out of search on purpose.

No, and it does not pretend to. There is no card processing and no commission: a visitor who wants to book or ask something leaves a name, contact and message on the page, and it arrives in the page's inbox on your dashboard. If you sell merch, courses or digital products from your link, that is what Beacons' store is for — keep it.