Need more robust IP address to location geocoding

Hey y’all,

So I’m building an app that needs to grab a user’s current location based on their IP address. I’m using the awesome geocoder gem, but the data that it uses to convert IP’s to city+state doesn’t seem robust enough. Every once in a while it just doesn’t have the data. I know that it uses the free Maxmind GeoIP data set, and I’ve been researching other databases that I could possibly purchase that have a little bit more reliable data. Does anybody else have any experience and/or input? Just want to make sure if I pony up for a better database, it is worth it.

As a backup, if we can’t grab the user’s location from their IP, we try to grab it client-side when we render the page, but I’d like to prevent this as much as possible.

Thanks in advance,
Casey

@caseyjenks because it’s based on IP addresses, there are definitely going to be some inaccuracies with the data.

If the data is absolutely critical to your success, spending money (or finding other ways to calculate the user’s position, like requesting via the browser) may be necessary, but I’ve not found it worthwhile personally to go down that route.

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