FAQ - Ellipsis Drive

Why do I need to register an Ellipsis Drive account?
As a (non-registered) public user, you have fewer capabilities when using Ellipsis Drive. When you don’t have an account, you can’t be invited to join blocks, edit or comment under your registered name, or host blocks of your own. As a registered user, you can be invited to join blocks, make edits and comments, and host content of your own.
How do I create an account?
To register a new Ellipsis Drive account, please visit the registration form available here.
Fill in personal details and click on REGISTER button. Read more about registration process here.
Is Ellipsis Drive a paid service?
No. Your account is free. Ellipsis Drive is only a paid service for users who host content of their own. Want to know more about different user types? Click here.
How can I make a cost estimation upfront for using Ellipsis Drive?
Below are some of the key depending factors that need to be considered: 
1.Data type (To read more about this, click here) 
2.Data owner: You or your client? (Refer to the data transfer option in the drive so that your clients pay for the services instead of you as a data producer). 
3.CTA: Upload some of your datasets to explore how they behave in Ellipsis Drive, enabling you to extrapolate data size from a sample set to your entire dataset. Our team is happy to actively support you in this process to make your time investment kept at a minimum.
How can I make payments?
Ellipsis Drive applies a simple storage-based pricing model: You pay a monthly fee for the amount of data in your Drive. You can pay as you go based on the amount of data that you have activated.
To learn about the payment options, click here.
How can I receive payments?
You can generate revenue with your Drive content by setting a monthly subscription price. You receive payments from subscribers as a balance on your Ellipsis account. These funds can then be transferred to your preferred bank account from there. Costs incurred during financial transitions, due to for example currency exchange, are costs for the user.
How can I share my data with my customer/target audience?
There are 2 ways to share your data -
1.Host your data in Ellipsis Drive yourselves and share the data by inviting your client.
2.Transfer data ownership easily from your own account to your client's Ellipsis Drive account, having them pick up the bill instead. This is a strategic partnership with us and includes revenue sharing when your client becomes an Ellipsis Drive user. Read the full article here to know more.
Can I share my data with people who do not have an Ellipsis account?
Yes, definitely! As an owner, you can decide who can find and access your data, and what permissions should they have. You can set these visibility preferences in the ‘General‘ tab in Settings.  Click here to learn more.
Can I share my data privately?
Yes, definitely! As an owner, you can decide who can find and access your data, and what permissions should they have. You can set these visibility preferences in the ‘General‘ tab in Settings. Click here to learn more.
How can I increase or decrease my storage space?
Go to Drive and navigate to storage in the menu to the left. Here you can increase and decrease your storage limit.
How can I reduce my storage cost?
1.Remove raw data. This will remove the lzw compressed tile pyramid and can clear up to 95% of your data. This is only an option if you are interested in the visualizations only. If you also want to query the actual raster values you cannot remove the raw data.
2.Make sure your files do not contain large amounts of transparent values.
3.Permanently remove captures that you have deleted. If you delete a capture it is only archived, in the Danger Zone (in the General tab of Map settings) you can permanently delete one.
What is the difference between hot and cold storage?
Projects in hot storage are activated for all Drive functionalities. You and your collaborators can use your content simultaneously and in any tool. Not using your project very frequently anymore? Then you can place your project in cold storage (3 Euro cents per GB). Here the meta data remains searchable but you need to activate your data again in hot storage to be able to use it.
Is my data stored safely?
Yes. Your data security is very important to us. We refer to our privacy policy to learn more. Feel free to contact us for more information!
How can I upload my data?
Go to How to upload raster files to see how to upload raster files to a Raster Block

Go to How to upload vector files to see how to upload vector files to a Vector Block.
How long does it take to upload my data?
Uploading vector data, except for point clouds, is instant and visible in the viewer right away.
Uploading point cloud data can take 10 minutes up to 5 hours to upload.
Uploading raster data and creating a map can also take 10 minutes to 5 hours.
Which data formats are currently supported?
We support the most commonly used vector and raster data formats and are always actively looking to support new data formats based on your needs.
Which Coordinate Reference Systems (CRS) are currently supported?
Any type of CRS of your spatial datasets are suitable to upload. The drive re-projects your heterogeneous datasets to Web Mercator (WGS84). This reprojection can change the size of your data as it effectively changes the surface area that your data covers. Read more about how the drive processes and changes the size of your data in this article: https://docs.ellipsis-drive.com/troubleshooting/data-size-difference/
How can I plug my data into other applications such as QGIS and ArcGIS?
Ellipsis Drive is developed as an interoperable framework. You can use your data via standard protocols such as WFS, WMS, and WMTS. You can find these links right next to the map layers in the viewer, as well as in the 'general' tab in settings.

Go to the Developer Center to learn more. Ellipsis Drive is developed as an interoperable framework. You can use your data via standard protocols such as WFS-t, WMS, and WMTS. You can find these links right next to the map layers in the viewer, as well as in the "General" tab in Settings. Click here if you run into problems when looking to connect to drive-generated web services via QGIS or ArcGIS.
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