The short version. Overland Map Studio is a planning and navigation aid, not a guarantee. Maps can be wrong, offline data goes stale, devices fail, and remote country is dangerous on its own merits. You are responsible for your own safety, your own judgment, and your own legal access to the places you go. Your map data belongs to you. Don’t abuse the service. That’s most of what follows.
What this is
Overland Map Studio (“the service”) is a web app for keeping your own waypoints, routes and areas on an overland-focused map, online and offline, at app.overlandmapstudio.com. It is currently invite-only and free while it is being built and tested. Paid plans may come later; if they do, billing terms will be added here before anyone is charged anything. By creating an account or using the service you agree to these terms. If you don’t agree with them, don’t use the service.
The map can be wrong
The maps, overlays and points of interest are assembled from third-party and government sources — OpenStreetMap contributors, USGS, BLM, the Forest Service, NWS and others — plus our own curation. All of it can be inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date. In particular:
- A road on the map is not permission to drive it. Roads and trails may be gated, washed out, overgrown, seasonally or permanently closed, on private land, or illegal for your vehicle. Legal access changes constantly. Verify with the land manager — the current Motor Vehicle Use Map, the ranger district, the BLM field office — before you go.
- Offline data is a snapshot. A downloaded state does not update itself. Fire perimeters, weather, alerts and closures on a device that has been out of signal are only as fresh as the last time it wasn’t.
- Positions are approximate. GPS drifts, elevation models are estimates, and hand-placed markers are wherever the hand put them.
- Live layers depend on their sources. Weather radar, alerts and fire data come from government services that can lag, go down, or be wrong — never use them as your only source for safety decisions.
You assume the risk out there
Backcountry and overland travel are inherently dangerous: weather, terrain, remoteness, heat and cold, wildlife, vehicle failure, and plain bad luck. The service is a planning aid. It is not a substitute for your own judgment, skill, preparation, and common sense, and it is not an emergency service — it cannot call for help, and it cannot promise you a signal. Carry a paper map and compass and know how to use them. Carry water. Tell someone where you are going. By using the service you accept that you travel at your own risk, and that decisions made in the field — and their consequences — are yours.
No warranty
The service is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, express or implied — including fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and uninterrupted availability. It is one person’s actively developed product: features change, downtime happens, and despite real backups (see the privacy page), no promise is made that data can never be lost. Export your data whenever you like — that door is always open.
Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, Overland Map Studio and its operator are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages, or for injury, death, property damage, citation, or getting lost or stranded, arising from your use of — or reliance on — the service or its maps. To the same maximum extent, total liability for any claim is limited to the amount you paid for the service in the twelve months before the claim arose — which, while the service is free, is nothing. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain of these limitations; where that is the case, they apply only as far as the law allows.
Your map data is yours
Everything you put in — waypoints, tracks, areas, folders, names, notes — remains yours. You give us only the permission needed to operate the service: to store it, encrypt it, back it up, sync it to your devices, and hand it back in exports. We do not sell it, share it, or use it for anything else. The details live in the privacy page.
Your account
Accounts are invite-only for now. Sign-in codes go to your email address, so keeping that mailbox secure is part of keeping your account secure — along with your recovery codes, which are shown once and stored by no one. You’re responsible for what happens under your account. You can delete your account yourself, any time, in the app.
Fair use
Don’t attack, overload, or probe the service; don’t scrape or bulk-download map tiles to feed another product; don’t resell access. The built-in map is made from data under open licenses — map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) — and using the app keeps you inside those licenses; wholesale extraction may not. Accounts that abuse the service can be suspended or closed.
Third-party services
Some overlays and any custom map sources you add are fetched from their publishers — government map servers and services you choose. Their uptime, accuracy, and terms belong to them, not us.
Changes
These terms will change as the service grows — most visibly when paid plans arrive. The date at the top is the record; material changes will be called out on this page. Continuing to use the service after a change means you accept the changed terms. If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still stands.
Questions
Reach us through starbuck.org ↗.