You send us data, and we send you back a URL to an image like this one. We have an API you can integrate into your product, or you can upload a CSV like this and we'll send you back the same file with image URLs appended like this. It's that easy.
ChartURL lets you create 'templates' which contain default parameters: chart type,
labels, colors, even custom CSS. Once created, you get a slug, like
weekly-activity
that you can use when making API calls.
In those API calls, you can augment the template with data or override options completely.
There are two methods you can use to create an image URL.
This method lets you
POST
us as much data as you want and get back a short URL
like this: https://charturl.com/r/nXN2.
To avoid introducing the network latency of an API call on every image,
you can also sign your URLs. This method limits the amount of data you
can send, since URLs have a max length, but here is an example URL:
https://charturl.com/i/pt-PTwx/weekly-activity/YTAzMjNj...
It took our developers over 40 hours to build the first version of this internally for Ramen. Save yourself that time, and never worry about keeping the servers up (and there are a lot of servers).
Sick and tired of using different charting libraries for web, iOS, and Android? Just use ChartURL. With 'Templates', you can store all your style options with us and ensure your charts maintain a consistent style across all platforms.
Add ?retina=1
onto any ChartURL
url and get back an image at 2x resolution. Very handy
for use in conjunction with the srcset
attribute when sending images in email.
Pass in height and width settings to get back the perfectly sized image for any device.
You don't need lots of processing power to process screenshots... until you need 10 in each of the 100,000 emails you send out weekly. ChartURL was built to handle millions of image requests.
Under the covers, we're just rendering a webpage and taking a screenshot. But Chartist.js has some pretty awesome animations and interactions thanks to CSS3. Just append `.html` to any URL (Encrypted or Short), use it for the `src` on an iframe
tag, and watch the magic happen.
“We had a critical piece of functionality we wanted to ship to our customers and our development team said it would take weeks. When we discovered ChartURL it cut our development time drastically.”
“ChartURL solved a real pain point for us. We were up and running on day 1. It would have taken many weeks of development time time to building something half as good.”
Forever Free Plan: 200 images/month; includes ChartURL branding on images; basic email support; credit card required.
No Credit Card Trial: Try out ChartURL as much as you want without a credit card. Images will be watermarked (not just branded) until credit card is entered.
Rarely Asked Questions.
Doesn't this already exist?
We couldn't find it anywhere. If it exists, it has really poor SEO :)
But isn't this just Google Charts?
Nope. Google Charts is a JavaScript charting API which lets you embed charts in
web/mobile apps. Google also has a related "Image Chart API",
but it has been deprecated for some time. Although they say they have no plans of
killing the API, we wanted something more reliable than "deprecated." We also
wanted to create a solution that allowed for sending more data without
running up against the 2,000 character max-URL size limitation.
This seems like a pretty new product, is it stable?
Yes ChartURL launched in late 2015 and it is profitable. Rest assured it is not going anywhere.
We built ChartURL because other services were deprecated and no longer reliable.
How does 'per image' billing work?
You get charged based on the number of images we generate. We don't generate an image until
it is viewed. If you send out 100,000 emails each with 2 images, and you get a 10%
open rate you'll be charged for (100,000 * 2 * 0.1 =) 20,000 images. You don't get
billed for loading an image multiple times.
Do I get charged for bandwidth?
We've factored in some generous bandwidth considerations into our pricing,
but if things get crazy, we may require you to give us S3 keys. In that event,
we'll give you a pretty hefty break on our prices.
What happens if I send an email but the image gets opened during my next billing cycle?
The image will get attributed to your next billing cycle. If you canceled your account,
and did not leave a credit card on file with us, we will return a "Chart Not Available"
image. We won't make you look bad. It will be classy.
What does the branding look like?
A small, slightly transparent image saying "ChartURL.com". You can see it in the images above.
How long does it take images to load?
Size of the image and network speeds will obviously have an impact, but an 800x400 PNG
will render on our end in around 500ms.
Can I test on a development environment?
Yes, when you create your account, you'll get two API keys: one for production and one for development
environments. Images generated with the development keys will always be watermarked, but you'll
never get billed for them.