Mapbox vs. QGIS vs. Webix UI

For services that require maps and basic geo-functionality in production, Mapbox is one of the greatest choices out there. They're free, provide much more refined/modern productions compared to Google maps, and have very good support on different platforms. For services that require higher-computation products, like matrix routing, optimization, etc..., the prices can get quite high very quickly, and you should consider moving those services to an on-premise server at that point.

Incentivized

Well suited:

• To build beautiful and dynamic maps quickly.
• To conduct quantitative and qualitative analyses.
• To work cross-platform, as both the Windows version and the Linux version are identical in appearance and available resources.

Less appropriate:

• To use and import files from proprietary software such as ArcGIS and AutoCAD.

Incentivized

If you need to create an interactive data report, optimize a workflow, handle hierarchical data or make calculations in a powerful spreadsheet, you will find a proper widget for your needs in the Webix UI library. If we want to display data in various forms Webix UI layouts and widget help to organize a web page and define its overall look-and-feel.

Incentivized

• Documentation is clean, easy to read, and very well organized which makes it easy to get going or learn something new
• The online user interface makes it quick and easy to edit maps, upload new datasets, view analytics, or get API keys
• Great integrations with Tableau and easy to develop for Android, iOS, or Web

Incentivized

• Styling: the styling engine is fantastic with raster styling features that I recognize from apps like Photoshop.
• Print layouts: I can set up custom print layouts, and even do automated multi-page atlas style reports that I use for cycling through detailed areas when providing my clients with pdf reports.
• Extendable: the plugins are fantastic, and almost anything I need that isn't provided natively with QGIS is available as a plugin.
• Community: the QGIS community is passionate about GIS, and are always ready to help. There are great training resources available online.

Incentivized

• The Kanban Control allowed to implement a compelling task management system with little effort.
• The Chart Control made it easy to create our dashboard and it was a lot easier than using D3js as we did before. D3 allows a lot more flexibility but it takes often 10 times longer to get a chart done than using Webix.
• Support at Webix is very helpful and responsive.

• The product is not always that easy to use, aimed at professionals understanding colors and palettes etc.
• Being a full cloud product it can be complicated working with the interface when your connectivity is not great.
• Tutorials and samples could be more visual and could cover more ideas on how to use Mapbox.

Incentivized

• Making maps in QGIS is a bit clunky. I also find it to be extremely unintuitive. For basic GIS, it is great, but I would much rather make maps (for publication purposes) in ArcGIS.
• Editing and adding feature layers is not very intuitive. Changing colors of added point or line features is a rather convoluted process.
• ArcGIS has a huge selection of online courses, and if you have the appropriate license, you can access most for free. I found these to be very helpful when dealing with map projections and other issues. However, QGIS does not have a large library of courses specifically made for that program.

Incentivized

• None at the moment

It is a good tool to use. We can perform various customisations; I always end up exploring and finding a new feature that can be used in my work somewhere. And one good thing is that is actually quite reasonable in terms of cost, with the free tier being quite adequate

Incentivized

I wasn't a GIS user at all when I started using QGIS, nor did I have any background working with data in anything other than Excel, and as a result, I struggled quite a lot in the beginning (it's not quite Google Maps). But having said that, I haven't come across anything that I couldn't do with a little help from the online community. I've done complex spatial analyses on large datasets of metropolitan cities, designed custom multi-page pdf reports that automatically cycle through different areas of an area, etc.

And the GIS staff that I've appointed, after their initial resistance, took to the tool like a fish to water, and I haven't heard them complain after starting to use the tool for a week or two.

But if you're new to GIS, be patient and invest some time to learn how to use the tool. It is absolutely worth it.

Incentivized

Even though there is a no dedicated support team for QGIS (or at least we are not aware of it), there is a huge online community and a large number of forums catering to every question you may have regarding any particular functionality of QGIS. So, you have a lot of help available but you will have to sift through it on the web.

Incentivized

Webix UI is a cross-browser, cross-device JavaScript framework which makes it easy to build a complex Web UI. Most features work as expected. While working with large datasets, you can load data dynamically to reduce complexity and improve performance. It provides a set of integration extensions that allow you to add third-party tools into an application.

Incentivized

One feature that made me go in favor of Mapbox was its stellar documentation. Google Maps and Bing Maps are the other alternatives I considered, but the learning curve with both of them is steeper than it is with Mapbox. Also, Mapbox Studio gives newbies a very simple, clean and easy to use environment to make and store maps online

Incentivized

QGIS is open source and freely available for Windows and Mac iOS Geographic Information System Software. QGIS is highly customizable as per project requirements and different application usage. QGIS has ample tools and plugins that are useful for the analysis of raster and vector data. It also supports GRASS, GDAL, and SAGA tools.

Incentivized

React was too time consuming. Kendo was another good one, but more expensive and seemed less responsive. [Sencha's] demo didn't seem to justify the price.

• Mapbox is the only service that has all the products we need to release our product to the market. Without Mapbox, we would've spent far more time integrating multiple different map/geo services like Mapbox and HERE maps together.
• Mapbox was sometimes expensive in the testing period, and we would've definitely moved some of the services on-premise to save money if we had the time.
• Mapbox has functionality for traffic-aware routing in many countries, as well as matrix-structured routing data, which is what enables our service to function. Having all of this integrated within an API allows us to easily scale our service to multiple different cities/countries in a matter of days.

Incentivized

• QGIS gives us more impactful data on children and maternal health issues, which in turn has helped us establish more programs, relationships, and funding opportunities because of the excellent data presentations we can give.
• QGIS has allowed our staff to improve their data analysis skills, improving our workforce across the board, with or without the direct use of geographic data.
• QGIS has required a lot of staff time to learn, but the ROI on time spent vs the reports we produced afterward has been well worth it.

Incentivized

• It saved us 1000s of USD for just using the Kanban Board instead of developing it from scratch.