Why can't I host my own Matterport 3D Showcase?

Over time we’ve had some customers express interest in downloading their Matterport Space so they can self-host it or upload it to their site for hosting as opposed to embedding.

Let me explain why it might make more sense to have Matterport host your space for the following reasons:

PERFORMANCE

For starters, Matterport uses Amazon Web Services as our host for your Spaces. This is very important for a number of reasons, but mainly performance.

Amazon prides themselves on their processing and delivery speeds. Many businesses use AWS for this reason.

Another service Matterport uses is Fastly. Fastly supports a global network of servers to maximize streaming efficiency and enhance the end user experience no matter where your visitors may be around the world.

NEW FEATURES

Matterport is committed to continually updating and upgrading 3D Showcase to provide the end user with the best experience possible. For example, because of a recent upgrade, you can zoom in to get a closer look at various objects in the scene within the 3D Showcase. Had you been self-hosting your Spaces, you would not have been a part of that upgrade and you would not have that functionality. It’s very important that the end user’s experience is as consistent as possible regardless of whose Space they may be looking at. Without updates to 3D Showcase, self-hosted Space visitors would have an outdated experience.

RELIABILITY

Finally, what happens when your visitors start updating their browsers to the latest version? A self-hosted version of 3D Showcase would be outdated very quickly and require new bug fixes or potentially a complete update itself. Keep in mind a Matterport Space is not like the ubiquitous and self-contained video file. A lot of effort is put into maintaining the integrity of 3D Showcase so that it works with as many systems as possible.

I completely understand the concern some may have and why they may want to self-host their Spaces. However, I just wanted to point out that proper self-hosting is not be as simple as one may think. It’s also certainly not as inexpensive when you start adding up the costs of a high performing host, the web engineer required to maintain the high performing host and reliability, as well as a caching service such as Fastly to provide proper performance world-wide.