Yelp's Lack of Transparency Around API Charges Angers Developers

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: On July 19, Yelp informed select indie developers that they would have to switch to paid accounts, due to high API usage. Developers were given four days to make the change, in a move that echoes recent communication bungles by Reddit and Twitter. When the developers replied to the July 19 email, Yelp sent a deck of pricing tiers with base pricing starting from $229 per month for a limit of 1,000 API calls per day. Developers were concerned that other, more affordable options weren't mentioned in the deck. Yelp said the pricing is equivalent and simply presented in different ways. The method of communication and lack of transparency has angered developers, some of whom shuttered their services, even after Yelp gave them a 90-day leeway and apologized. While the company has issued an apology email to developers and extended their free usage by 90 days, it may not be enough to keep these frustrated developers from moving to new platforms.

"We apologize for last week's abbreviated transition that impacted a small percentage of developers and have extended access to these users," a company spokesperson told TechCrunch. "Yelp sunsetted free, commercial, unlimited use of the Yelp Fusion API in 2019 and has been in the process of migrating developers to a paid program over the last several years. The developer community is important to Yelp, and we've heard their feedback about the transition period from the free Yelp Fusion API to our paid program."

Yelp?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who even knew they still exist?

It is their walled garden!

[oldgraybeard]

They get to set the prices. And it is every developers choice about whether the ROI for your time and resources is acceptable.

Yelp is the most annoying

[FudRucker]

They ruin Apple maps, I wish their was a way to amputate yelp from apple's maps app on iOS, so I also have map quest and organic maps too as alternatives on my iphone

How is that Yelp's fault?

[_merlin]

How can Yelp insert themselves into Apple Maps? Isn't it Apple who's made their maps app query Yelp and display the results? You should be mad at Apple for not allowing you to disable this.

Re:

[FudRucker]

I agree, it's Apple's fault, I am guessing yelp paid apple money to be inserted as a niche in apple maps app, it usually offers help when I am searching for a store in a nearby city offering info and photos & reviews, but as soon as you check what yelp is offering they want a paid subscription, this is my first iphone and will be my last iphone because I now see what apple is all about =(wanting to nickel & dime users over every thing they want to do on their phone)

Re:

[Malay2bowman]

"Yelp can't be disabled - $$$" -- This video can't be rated high enough: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/comm... [fsf.org]

Huh

[paul_engr]

Who in theeee literal FUCK os doing any Yelp API shit?

Re:

[micheas]

Who in theeee literal FUCK os doing any Yelp API shit?

It used to be cheaper than the google places API.

That doesn't seem to be the case anymore. But, it depends on your usage.

Resy and OpenTable have more or less undocumented and unsupported APIs. Which makes them a bit sketchy to develop on.

just a simple translation needed

[conorjh]

Developers were concerned that other, more affordable options weren't mentioned in the deck.
translation: hey wheres my free stuff give me back me free stuff wah wah