What type of geofences do you offer?

We offer two types of geofences: static and moving (dynamic/roaming). Static geofences can be in a circular shape or polygon shape (irregular shapes, e.g. shape of a building or park). A moving geofence can be in a circular shape only.

For the static geofences we offer four different sub-categories.

  1. Polygon: Geofences can come in different shapes. The most basic shapes being a standard circle or square with a certain radius. These geofences are useful when speed and efficiency are the most important variables. However, for use-cases that require a more customizable geofence, certain companies support polygon geofences. This enables developers to fully customize the shape of a geofence, to fit around a park, block, parking lot, or whatever the use-case might call for.
  2. User-specific: User-specific geofences are an advanced feature of geofencing APIs that allow developers to create geofences tailored to the needs of specific users. Unlike standard geofences that apply to all users, user-specific geofences are personalized to individual users and can be triggered by their unique profile information. By grouping users, further customization can be added to geofences by creating geofences specific to a group of users rather than an individual user.
  3. Time-sensitive: Time-sensitive geofences are an essential feature of geofencing APIs that enable developers to set geofences that are active only during specific time periods. This functionality can be useful for businesses that want to target users with location-based offers during certain hours, such as happy hours at a restaurant or sales at a store. It can also be used to set up temporary geofences for events or campaigns that only run for a limited time, ensuring that users are only targeted with relevant information when it is most valuable to them.
  4. Metadata: A very rare but powerful functionality when it comes to geofencing is the ability to pass metadata into the parameters of the geofence. Each company collected data on their users, some might be more personal than others. This can be demographics, purchase history, or other more specific data points. Imagine being able to pass that data into certain geofences, to ensure the events are only triggered in hyper-specific use-cases. For example, creating a geofence that only triggers events for females aged 30-40 that have recently purchased a certain product.

As for the moving geofence: traditionally, geofences are set around a specific area and trigger events when moving users enter or leave said area. However, some geofence software companies allow you to place a geofence around a specific user, which creates a moving geofence. This creates very interesting use-cases for delivery, ride-hailing, or even certain dating apps like Happn.

Published on:
October 21, 2020
Updated on:
June 21, 2023