End of an Era: Mapkeep Is Shutting Down on 30 May 2026

On 3 May 2026, Tristan Slominski sent a short email to Mapkeep users. The subject line read "Thank You and Goodbye on 30 May, 2026". Mapkeep is shutting down.

If you have maps in Mapkeep, you have until 29 May 2026 to export them. After 30 May 2026, the service goes dark.

This one stings.

What Mapkeep Was

For a few years, Mapkeep was the most ambitious dedicated Wardley Mapping tool on the web. It was not a generic whiteboard with a Wardley template bolted on. It was a real, mapping-aware editor built by someone who understood the practice deeply.

You could open a blank canvas, drop a component, and the tool knew what a component was. Dependencies behaved like dependencies. Evolution behaved like evolution. The editor stayed out of your way when you were thinking and helped when you were not.

It also did the thing every collaborative mapper wants and few tools deliver well. Real-time multiplayer. You could send a link, watch a colleague drag a component across the value chain, and have the conversation that mattered without anyone fumbling with screen share.

Tristan kept shipping. Map layers. Resizing. List view. Value chain view. Each release felt like someone who actually used the tool every day was making it better for the people who did the same.

Why It Matters

The Wardley Mapping community is small. The tooling community inside it is smaller still. When a serious, opinionated, well-built tool leaves the field, it leaves a real gap.

It also reminds us how the tooling landscape actually works. Most of the best Wardley tools are passion projects maintained by one or two people. They exist because someone cared enough to keep the lights on. When the costs no longer make sense, or life changes, the lights go off.

That is not a complaint. It is the shape of the ecosystem. If you have ever found a tool that fit your brain, thank the person who built it. They probably did it on weekends.

What To Do Before 30 May

If you have maps in Mapkeep, do this now. Not next week. Now.

1. Sign in to Mapkeep.
2. Open each map you want to keep.
3. Export to the Online Wardley Map format.
4. Save the exported text somewhere you control. A git repo is ideal. A folder in your notes app works.

The Online Wardley Map format is plain text. That is the point. Once you have the text, you can render the map in any tool that speaks the format, and you can keep the file forever regardless of what happens to any single service.

If you have maps shared with colleagues or clients, send them a heads-up today. Don't assume someone else exported them.

Where To Go Next

The good news is that Wardley Mapping has more than one tool. The site lists current options on the Mapping Tools page. A few worth knowing about:

• Online Wardley Maps is free, open source, and the canonical destination for the text-based format you just exported. If you only learn one tool after Mapkeep, learn this one.
• Miro and Mural remain solid choices for facilitated, group-mapping sessions where the conversation matters more than the artifact.
• Several newer tools are appearing in the space. The community list at list.wardleymaps.com is the best running inventory.

Pick the tool that fits how you actually work. Solo thinking, group facilitation, and version-controlled strategy artifacts each pull you toward a different choice.

A Thank You

To Tristan: thank you. You built something the community used, learned from, and recommended. That is a real contribution to the practice, and it does not go away just because the servers do.

To everyone reading this with maps in Mapkeep: export them today. Future-you will thank present-you.