One of the finest ways to emphasize your business locations is to use a map on your website so that users can easily find the nearest store and quickest route for it. Google Maps widget is such a helpful widget for any business that wants to add a map location widget to a site.
In this article, you will find the top six free Google Maps widgets for your site. These tools let you create your own Google Map with multiple locations without needing any coding knowledge.
5 Tips to consider when using Google Maps on a website
- Pinpoint all business locations – If your business has multiple locations, make sure to add them so Google Maps will suggest the closest site based on the user’s location. Most Google Maps widgets listed below support it.
- Embed on suitable locations – Some Google Maps plugins for websites might cause the site’s loading speed. Therefore, embed it only in suitable places such as your site’s “Contact page.” Additionally, you can test using a service such as Google Tag Manager or Zaraz by Cloudflare to load the Google Maps widget’s script asynchronously to find out the impact on page speed.
- Set map controls – Make the Google Maps widgets easy to use by enabling map controls such as map types (roadmap, satellite, terrain), zoom, scale, rotate, full screen, and more.
- A/B test – To determine the performance, try different map colors, widget placements, etc..
- Use other conversion boosting elements – Suppose you have set up your business’s Google My Business profile. So, why not embed Google Reviews on website?
Store locator vs Maps widget
You either use a map or a site locator widget on your site to showcase your business location. However, those two are slightly different:
- Both Google Maps and site locator widgets can showcase any location. However, the key difference is in a maps widget, especially in a Google Maps widget, users can click on the ‘Directions’ buttons to obtain routes to destinations.
- The site locator showcases business store details, including physical address, website address, contact details, and business hours.
Use the following business locations widget builder to create one for your site.
Best Google Maps widgets for Your Website
Note: You might have to create an API for Google Maps on your Google Cloud platform, which might cost based on your usage.
Elfsight Google Maps Widget
Elfsight is a popular service that provides different plugins for websites such as Event Calendar with CTA button, Form Builder, Yelp reviews, Contact Us form widget, Audio player, and Testimonials slider. It provides many features, including projects (to manage websites/brands and widgets), visual widget builder (that requires no coding know-how), and universal code to embed the widgets on any platform, including Shopify, WordPress, or any classic HTML website.
Its Google Maps widget is filled with many features and lets you seamlessly create custom responsive Google Maps widgets for your website.
Key features
- Make your business easy to reach with detailed contact info — Elfsight’s Google Maps widget lets you show different types of contact info on the map. Add markers and display maximum details in their info windows, including phone, address, opening hours, and more; unite all your locations into a single list on the Location panel for a user-friendly view. Furthermore, you can have custom icons and categories (and location filters) to create a custom user experience.
- Automatic route search and time calculation — Your website visitors will be able to see the most efficient walking or driving paths and route calculation on the directions panel without leaving your page.
- Five map layers — POI (Points of Interest) (a dedicated geographic entity such as a milestone, an institute, a heritage site, or a corporate office), Traffic, Transit, Bike, and Street View. You can enable all items on a map. However, I recommend keeping layers at a minimum to not overwhelm users.
- Multiple locations and 50+ icons – Add an unlimited number of markers to your map: stores, restaurants, public places, and parks – choose from a library of 50+ categories, each with its icon, or upload your own.
- Map controls — Elfsight Google directions map widget lets you enable controls such as map type (satellite, terrain, roadmap), street view, zoom, scale, fullscreen, etc.
- Custom Google Maps styles (JSON) — There are four built-in styles (Default, Silver, Night, Retro), and you can create a custom color map or add one using JSON. If you want more styling, create a custom style through Google Data Studio (here is a tutorial) or Snazzymaps.
- Actions on marker click — Open info window (a panel containing details you specify), Redirect to URL (best to direct users to appropriate pages such as booking or sign up page), None (nothing will happen)
- Bounds restriction — This setting reduces how far a user can zoom out, ensuring that everything outside of the restricted bounds stays hidden. You can restrict bounds based on latitudes and longitudes.
- Animations — Take readers’ attention with marker animations.
- Embed on any site – No matter whether you use WordPress, Google Sites, Blogger, Brizy, Weebly, Wix, Webflow, Squarespace, Clickfunnels, or any HTML site, you can easily install the Google Maps location widget by placing the code snippet.
- Statistics and site control — Find out how many views each widget has received and on which sites widgets were embedded. You can easily block sites from your Elfsight dashboard, which is an excellent option for agencies.
Google Maps widget generator
Select a template, click on the ‘Continue with this template’ button, add your markers, categories, and locations, and customize the widget. Once you’re finished designing, click on the ‘Add to Website’ button to get embed code.
Or create your own Google Map widget by registering your free account from here.
Pricing
Elfsight has two pricing models. Single app pricing and all app pricing. Pricing for the Google Maps plugin only is shown below.
- Lite – FREE – 1 website, 200 views per month, 1 widget, Elfsight logo
- Basic – $5/month – Unlimited websites, 5,000 views per month, 3 widgets, No ElfSifght logo
- Pro – $10/month – Unlimited websites, 50,000 views per month, 9 widgets, No ElfSifght logo
- Premium – $20/month – Unlimited websites, 150,000 views per month, 21 widgets, No ElfSifght logo
Apps Packs plans include the Google Maps widget and 85+ other apps, such as the All-in-one reviews widget. Pricing details are shown below.
Click here to try the Elfsight Google Maps widget.
CommonNinja’s Google Maps widget
CommonNinja, like Eflsight, provides 160+ widgets for websites to collect information, showcase details, and essentially upgrade websites with easy-to-use widgets. It features projects, collaborators, a visual editor, integrations, analytics, and universal widget embed options.
CommonNinja’s Google Maps widget is equipped with many features and customization options, including many skins, to help you create an embeddable, multi-location Google Maps widget.
Key features
- Add multiple locations — In your maps widget, point to multiple locations by entering addresses or latitudes and longitudes. You can customize each location by adding a description, uploading a featured image, and adding the address, working hours, website address, and phone number.
- Drawer — It has a pane within the Google Maps widget that lists all items and a search box.
- Map Skins — You can select from 19 map skins and several pin icons. Watch our video demo below for examples.
- Customize appearance — CommonNinja’s Google Maps widget editor includes many customization options, including changing fonts, colors, sizes, and the widget’s width and height. You can also style on the element level in custom styles settings and use custom CSS for your own styles.
- Map layers — Add extra layers (e.g., Traffic, Transit, and Cycling) to your HTML Google Maps widget.
- Customize widget — Change the visibility of items such as drawers and popups, set the map zoom level, and set the default item pinpointing on the maps widget.
Create a Google Maps widget with multiple locations
Sign up on CommonNinja, search for the Google Maps widget in your catalog, and start customizing it. Add multiple locations, change pin icon/color, change visibility of items and dimension of widget. Watch the video tutorial below to learn how to use the widget editor.
Demo
Pricing
CommonNinja’s Google Maps widget is free to use. However, the free plan is limited to one widget, one project, and up to 200 views per month. Also, some features, such as customer styles and controlling visibility of items in the Google Maps widget, are unavailable on the free plan. Therefore, you have to upgrade to a paid plan to remove CommonNinja’s branding from widgets, receive more features, and get unlimited views.
Click here to try CommonNinja’s Google Maps.
Powr Maps plugin
Powr is an Elfsight alternative with a free plan that provides powerful plugins to upgrade a site. Currently, there are over 60 different apps on the Powr apps library. Form Builder, Pricing table maker, and Count-up timer are some of them.
Like most Powr apps, the Powr Maps plugin is feature-rich, and unlike the Elfsight Google Maps widget, Powr does not require a Google Maps API key.
Key features
- Two map providers – Open Street Map or Google Maps.
- Up to 5 location pins – Pin point up to 5 locations on your Google Maps widget.
- Interactive maps for any location – Users will be able to zoom, scale, change map type, etc., directly from your site.
- Location panel for quick navigation – List all the locations you want to highlight, and people can click on each item and see the exact location, distance, and route from their current location.
- Nine unique display styles – Adjust widget style to resonate with your website theme.
- Supports text in any language – Localize widget with custom texts
- Custom fonts, colors, backgrounds, and more – Select from 10+ different fonts, change font size, text colors, and more.
- Customize widget size – Adjust the widget’s width.
- Custom CSS – Powr lets you style the Google Maps plugin with custom CSS.
- Custom JavaScript – Execute JavaScript codes when the plugin loads on a site.
- Install on any platform – Easily embed the Google Maps location plugin on any platform by copying and pasting the HTML code snippet.
Here is how to create a free Google Maps widget for a website with the Powr Maps plugin.
Demo
Pricing
Powr’s Google Maps plugin is free of cost. However, you might have to upgrade to a paid plan to use extra features such as mass location import via CSV and displaying the nearest location.
- Free – 3 locations, Powr branding on the widget
- Starter – $5.49/month – 10 locations, search bar, custom pin, display the nearest location, No Powr branding
- Pro – $13.49/month – 50 locations, search bar, custom pin, custom CSS & JS, display nearest location, mass import via CSV, No Powr branding
- Business – $89.99/month – Unlimited locations, search bar, custom pin, custom CSS & JS, display nearest location, mass import via CSV, No Powr branding
Click here to try the Powr Map plugin.
Related: Powr vs Elfsight Compared
WP Maps
In case you are using WordPress to power your site and looking for a maps plugin, WP Maps by flippercode is an excellent one with tons of features and customizable options.
Key features
- Unlimited maps and locations – Pin unlimited locations with various information on unlimited maps.
- Customize markers – Assign your own markers to categories or choose colorful markers from 500+ readymade markers from the Maps Icon collection.
- Four map types – Roadmap, Satellite, Hybrid, Terrain
- Street view – Enable street view, POV (Point of view) heading, and POV pitch for street view.
- Map Stylization – Custom Google Maps from Snazzymaps.com.
- Search control on frontend map to search location
- Multilingual support, 45° imagery functionality, and more.
WP Maps is a free maps plugin for WordPress. Its paid version (PRO) includes more features, such as importing/exporting locations, direction and route suggestions for visitors, and multisite support.
Snazzy Maps
Snazzy Maps is an online service that lets you generate stylish Google Maps widgets online for free. All styles are licensed under Creative Commons and are completely free to use.
Key features
- Style library – There are thousands of Google Maps widget styles, each with a favorite score based on people’s choices. You can explore thousands of styles, get their JSON codes, and use the styles when building embeddable Google Map widgets.
- Build your own Google map widget styles – The step-by-step process makes it easier to create your own style.
- Build a map – Use a map style, set the widget’s size and locations, add markers, customize language, controls, and behavior settings, and generate source code for Google Maps.
- Plugins – Use the WordPress plugin to build and install Google Maps inside your WordPress site.
SnazzyMaps is a free website that lets you explore Google Map widget styles, create your own styles, and generate embeddable Google Map code for the website.
WordPress Maps Plugin for Google Maps
If you are using WordPress to power your site and looking for a maps plugin, the Google Maps widget plugin by WebFactory Ltd is excellent.
Key features
- Custom Google Map size
- Multiple Google map types – Road map, Satellite map, Terrain map, Hybrid map.
- Google map color schemes
- Link type – lightbox map, custom URL
- Control zoom level
- Set Google map language, custom pin icon, shortcodes to embed Google map anywhere on your WordPress site, and more.
WebFactory LTD provides another plugin called “Map Block for Google Maps” for the Gutenberg block editor.
The plugin is free of cost. There is a Pro version that includes more features.
Final Words on Best Google Maps widgets for websites
Using the correct widgets in the right places can turn poorly performing campaigns into break-even or profitable ones. Our previous articles shared how to add a custom PayPal Pay button, social proof notifications, countdown timer widgets for websites, and more to improve your sites’ conversion rates. Likewise, using a Google Maps widget on a website is particularly helpful for local and international businesses.
Personally, I recommend using a service such as Elfsight or CommonNinja since they provide more widget types that will be useful in the future.