Question 1

Do I need to know GIS to use Spatly?

Accepted Answer

No. If you can drop a CSV with a lat/lng column or a GeoJSON, you can publish a story. The Style library gives you sensible defaults; you only touch the layer editor when you want to.

Question 2

What basemaps are included?

Accepted Answer

CARTO Dark, Light, OpenStreetMap, Esri Satellite, and Stamen Terrain are included on every plan. Mapbox and custom tile servers on Pro and Team. Bring your own MBTiles or PMTiles.

Question 3

Can I embed a Spatly story in my newsroom CMS?

Accepted Answer

Yes — every published story has an iframe embed and a responsive oEmbed endpoint. We test against WordPress, Ghost, and the major newsroom CMSes. Embed is on by default on Pro and above.

Question 4

Do you support sensitive or confidential data?

Accepted Answer

Team plans include private-only stories, SSO via Google/Okta, audit logs, and a no-AI-training data policy. We're SOC 2 Type II in progress; ask for the report.

Question 5

What's the difference between Stage and Layers mode?

Accepted Answer

Stage is discrete — slide A, slide B, click to advance. Layers is continuous — a timeline with keyframes, like After Effects on a map. Use Stage for talks; use Layers for video and patient narratives.

Question 6

Is there a self-hosted option?

Accepted Answer

Not yet. We open-source the reader runtime so published stories work without our servers, but the editor is hosted-only for now. On the roadmap for late 2026.