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ArcGIS

ArcGIS

Overview

What is ArcGIS?

Esri in Redlands, California offers ArcGIS, a geographic information system.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

ArcGIS is widely used across various industries and departments for a range of tasks. Users have found it valuable for assessing distances …
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Trusted Leader

10 out of 10
May 22, 2022
Incentivized
ArcGIS integrates with mapping and staking platform provided by NISC and is used to map services and is used in multiple iVUE applications …
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Happy Esri User

7 out of 10
October 22, 2019
Incentivized
We are an R&D Center at a University. Our applications are both internal and external:
Internally, we use ArcGIS to manage university …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

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Pricing

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Viewer

$100

On Premise
per year

ArcGIS for Personal Use

$100

On Premise
per year

ArcGIS for Student Use

$100

On Premise
per year

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

ArcGIS Online Join Features Demo 3 – Join to a table based on common attribute

YouTube

How to use Symbology demo in ArcGIS 10 - GT-101 - Washington College

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ArcGIS Collector App (iOS & Android)

YouTube

ArcGIS Maps for Power BI Demo - Drive Time Analysis

YouTube

Introduction to Python in ArcGIS Pro

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Curso online DEMO: ArcGIS aplicado a la Cartografía Geológica l Explorock

YouTube
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Product Details

ArcGIS Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Esri in Redlands, California offers ArcGIS, a geographic information system.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 9.

The most common users of ArcGIS are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(139)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

ArcGIS is widely used across various industries and departments for a range of tasks. Users have found it valuable for assessing distances between clinic sites and patient locations, generating maps, integrating data, and conducting spatial data analysis. It has become the go-to tool for logistics network optimization at FedEx and is extensively used in architecture, engineering, and civil engineering projects. In educational settings, ArcGIS is commonly used for completing projects and research tasks. It also plays a crucial role in research projects related to geography and groundwater chemistry analysis. Furthermore, ArcGIS facilitates collaboration between different fields of research and offers sophisticated visualization and statistical analysis capabilities. The software is integrated with mapping platforms to optimize operations across industries. Additionally, it has been instrumental in solving location and planning problems, promoting organized development, facilitating cartography, creating infographics, and presenting data in a visually engaging manner.

Versatile Tool: Users have found ArcGIS to be a versatile tool for planning and promoting organized development in various territories. It allows for the visualization, management, editing, calculation, and analysis of georeferenced entities and attributes. Many reviewers appreciate its wide range of possibilities with geographic data.

Intuitive Interface: ArcGIS is praised for its easy-to-use interface and intuitive menus. Users find it easy to learn, with localized tools that make navigation straightforward. The intuitive user interface has been mentioned by multiple reviewers as a positive aspect of using ArcGIS.

Powerful Integration: Reviewers highly value ArcGIS's powerful integration with other systems. They appreciate the continuous enhancement and upgrades that keep the software up-to-date. Additionally, the rock-solid ArcGIS.com cloud technology has been commended by users for its reliability and convenience.

Confusing User Interface: Many users have expressed frustration with the user interface of ArcGIS, finding it confusing and difficult to get used to. Some reviewers have suggested that a usability study should be conducted to improve the work process.

Expensive Cost: The high cost of ArcGIS is a common concern among users, especially for small companies and professionals in underdeveloped countries. Reviewers mention the expensive price of the software itself as well as the high annual maintenance fees compared to the new features provided.

Installation and Technical Support Issues: Users have reported problems with the installation process for new versions of ArcGIS, often requiring technical support. They have requested training materials and user-friendly videos to better utilize and understand the software.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-18 of 18)
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Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I have been a user of ArcGIS Desktop since the initial release of 8.0, and I manage a team of people that use it. It's currently used by pretty much every department at my municipality, from Emergency Operations, field data collection, internally mapping requests to name a few. The tools are used daily by staff that need to create report maps, determining if an planning application is viable. Our staff have also developed 3D models and are served up through web services to internal and external parties. We have also taken advantage of their portal technology for the publishing of Open Data. The tools have streamlined our business processes, and we can not function with out them.
  • Easy to use and learn
  • Extremely powerful for integration with other systems
  • Always being enhanced and upgraded
  • The ArcGIS.com cloud technology is rock solid
  • If your not on an Enterprise License Agreement, it can be expensive
  • If you are migrating to, this can be difficult. Use a consultant to assist
The application is best for organizations that need an enterprise GIS system. All students that are graduating from School that took GIS classes will have learned ArcGIS. If you need a GIS to do high end analytics, data science, or down to basic mapping, this is the tool for you. If you need to integrate your GIS with systems such as SalesForce, SharePoint, or virtually any other system, this is the tool that you should use. My organization can not survive with out ArcGIS
Charles Tremblay | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Territory development.
  • Powerful.
  • Intuitive.
  • User friendly.
  • GIS software for big or specialized business.
  • Expensive.
  • Weak service.
  • Weak and slow technical support.
  • Complex method to licensing (6 months later, we don't have access to all purchases).
  • Dependence on technical support.
Spatial Analyst and 3D Analyst are very powerful and easy to use. I'm learning QGIS and it can make up to 90% of my needs. I think that this software is for big business; for smaller ones, I recommend taking QGIS and saving money to do complex analyses by a specialized company. In our case, it's more cash efficient.
Licensing methods are very complex and technical support is very slow. Dependent on technical support but it is hard to work with in low communication service territories.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My organization uses ArcGIS for many different applications across the firm, ranging from uses in our 3D models to design and structural drawings. More specific uses include extracting exact coordinates for purposes of surveying, geophysical modeling, AutoCAD drafting, digitizing old construction drawings into 3D using LiDAR data, and geo-processing functions in ArcGIS. It has proved to be the go-to software package for anything involving mapping or coordinate calculation/extraction.
  • Digitization of 2D data into 3D
  • Multi-functional
  • ArcMap has a very old/cluttered interface
  • Can be a bit complex to learn
ArcGIS (ArcMap and ArcPro) is extremely useful in the engineering industry, especially in construction, subsurface geology determinations (for my case), utility locating, natural gas industry, 3D modeling (for working with shapefiles), georeferencing, the list goes on. There are better software packages out there for more specifics (such as with the 3D modeling), but I find ArcGIS to be great at many different things, rather the being the best at one task.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
ArcGIS is used by our organization to accomplish many geographic modeling tasks. The tasks include geocoding, building interactive web maps, creating analytical models to answer business questions, and for other advanced geographic analyses. The software is used across the organization by IT professionals as well as professional analysts with the technical know-how to address geographic questions.
  • ArcGIS is world-class with geographic analyses.
  • ArcGIS works well with web applications.
  • ArcGIS takes forever to open, and it seems to be getting slower with every new release.
  • The creators of the ArcGIS software make it more difficult to create add-ins for the product than what could be done with an open-source solution.
ArcGIS is well-suited for firms that need the most advanced geographic modeling capabilities. ArcGIS is capable of accomplishing most anything, and if the method is not programmed into the point-and-click interface, ArcGIS allows for custom programming extensions from professionals that know languages such as Python. The software is not for beginning geographers.
Yoni Dvorkis | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have one named user license with ArcGIS as well as Open Streetmap Premium to enable us to geocode addresses for what is otherwise considered to be protected health information. This geocoded data is then plotted on map visualizations usually outside of ArcGIS where we can asses visual and geographic distance between our clinic sites and where our patients live.
  • Geocoding is very fast with StreetMap Premium.
  • Easy to use interface good for novices and experts alike.
  • Allows for geocoding to building location vs. mapping address which is useful for several of our applications.
  • Exporting data into excel as a CSV is a little clunky there should be a more intuitive way to do this.
  • License configuration is impossible to do for the end user. I needed customer support to walk me through every step is was much too complicated.
  • Updating street maps is confusing I would prefer a more intuitive interface that launches directly from ArcGIS to do this.
Geocoding addresses locally without sending PHI over unsecured internet this tool is very good to use. Map functionalities are intuitive and easy to implement, Also the process to export latitude and longitude from the tool into a data extract is easy to do once you do it a few times but the first couple of times might be tricky. I had to ask customer support to show me how to do all of these things the first time around.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My organization engages is civil engineering projects related to transportation planning, traffic operations and safety planning. We support the Iowa DOT on their projects. We use ArcGIS extensively for working with geospatial data such as traffic and vehicle locations, crash sites, pavement monitoring sites etc. We use geodatabes and shapefiles extensively for handling large data sets. We also use queries to find specific information.
  • Storing information in the form of shapefiles is a big advantage
  • Using geodatabases to work with large data sets is a strength of ArcGIS
  • The ability to solve spatial problems using ArcGIS is a great tool
  • Publishing online maps is a great feature
  • Improvement in processing speed using CPUs
  • Importing CSV files could be made smoother
  • The pricing is too high to fully leverage using all the software's capabilities
The software is a great tool for working and manipulating spatial data, creating and publishing maps, reports and pdf documents. It can import data from spreadsheets. It can be used to solve complex spatial problems. It is not well suited for analyzing data that does not have a geospatial component.
October 22, 2019

Happy Esri User

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are an R&D Center at a University. Our applications are both internal and external:
Internally, we use ArcGIS to manage university needs, such as campus mapping and inventory. We also use the suite of products for teaching and production work.
Externally, it is used as a core solution for extramural projects - like building a county GIS or similar client needs.
  • Enterprise GIS - multi-user, multi-versioned geodatabase access through a host of apps and web tools really help people stay connected to data.
  • Cartography - fantastic control and customization available with the ability to automate workflows.
  • Training - tons of training videos, seminars, and other learning materials are easily accessed. The help documentation is superb.
  • Ability to manage an organization through dashboards is extremely helpful.
  • Hard to find things in Pro that I used frequently in ArcMap.
  • Dislike increasing reliance on having everything run as a script.
  • User management can get buggy.
Desktop GIS analysis is a continuing strength as are enterprise-wide applications and data management. Advanced configurations of Portal and the Amazon pricing model are a nightmare to sort out.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our research group, specifically, is using ArcGIS to spatially and statistically analyse groundwater chemistry across a large regional area. It allows for a really comprehensive understanding of the data and how it is spatially constrained, or not. Other research groups across the university, especially geography-related, use ArcGIS in their classes and in their research projects.
  • Various kriging/interpolation options for mapping out data and seeing the spatial variance.
  • Decent organizations structuring available for folders and subfolders.
  • Ability to project data on-the-fly simply, by dragging previously input data into a new data frame.
  • Aesthetically, it isn't exactly a modern looking interface, although that doesn't create issues with functionality.
  • If happens that if there are any special symbols in the excel spreadsheet you are trying to input, it will not allow the data to be input and will not state what the issue is. Best practice is no spaces, no special characters, join words with underscores.
  • Probably highly dependent on how much 'power' your computer has but often the interpolations and calculations take quite a long time to compute.
If you are managing data that have spatial coordinates associated with them, ArcGIS is a wonderful tool. Anything that has to do with data and location of that data is a well-suited case for the usage of ArcGIS. Clearly, if your data is not associated with spatial coordinates, ArcGIS is not going to be the best tool for you, since it is a GIS software...
Gabriella Lott | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
It's used across the whole organization for neighborhood analysis, geographic presentation of data, and more.
  • ArcGIS Online simplifies complicated functions in ArcMap.
  • Allows you to layer various data points on top of each other
  • Enables for some spreadsheet calculations within the platform (instead of having to do every single step in Excel before bringing it in as a CSV.)
  • Faster processing speeds.
  • Ability to work in multiple maps at once.
  • A "tips" indicator and better help blog posts.
Well suited when working to assess Census data and other metrics across a city at a tract or council district level, when you need to see things spatially. I also think ArcGIS is just good for making simple maps with clear labels, thanks to the ability to draw your own boundaries as map notes.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
ArcGIS is being used by our organization to map incidents, assets, work orders, and other features. It is used by almost all departments organization-wide to provide quick answers and analysis to spatial questions. Many problems can be better represented and analyzed in a spatial format. GIS provides the tools for that and in particular, ESRI's ArcGIS set of tools is expansive.
  • ArcGIS has continuously developed its toolset to provide an effective and easy to use GIS application to solve any problems that present themselves in a spatial format (the where in a who what where problem).
  • The tools themselves while complex in nature are fairly easy to learn and ESRI provides excellent training for them as well.
  • The software itself is an industry-standard and this makes it easy to find educated, experienced, and skilled employees.
  • Their support is very good. They are responsive, knowledgeable, and good with follow-through.
  • The newest user interface is well designed, easy to pick up and very comprehensive.
  • As the software has developed, the primary application has gone a couple of different directions. The latest versions have seemed to bring that back together. Hopefully, that will continue for the foreseeable future.
  • Cost is something that can be a hindrance to smaller organizations. We hope they would continue to work on their cost model to improve it in particular as it relates to the smaller government space.
When it comes to GIS applications, ESRI is the standard. We have been using their applications for 27 years and ArcGIS is a well-oiled product that has no rivals that we are aware of. We have used spatial mapping to analyze and solve problems in days that would have taken weeks to resolve in tabular formats. These analyses might not have been possible to even resolve without spatial data. ESRI's ArcGIS applications and online SAAS provisions allow this work to be done anywhere in the world at any time.
October 15, 2019

My Thoughts on ArcGIS

Arron Davis | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
ArcGIS is a valuable and much needed program in my organization. Transitioning from paper to a digital format through maps and various data over the years. The capabilities make it possible for this to happen. Digitizing data and having it shown on a map allows our workers, contractors and other entities to be able to see our utilities and structures.
  • Many data and editing features.
  • Analysis
  • Easy functioning
  • Keyboard shortcuts
I believe the software is appropriate to manipulate the data in anyway that you want to.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Used by our research team:
- Audience and reach generation using census data
- Proximity Reports
- Spatial Analysis
- Market insights
- Infographic creation
  • Create availability to ESRI and Census data
  • Easy to use online platform that does not require you to download an application
  • Allows you to seamlessly share maps/layers within the team
  • Often times on the Business Analyst app, the site will crash or result in random glitches when handling large datasets
  • I would like the ability to handle more than 5000 geolocations while using the Arcmaps proximity search
Well suited for advertising agencies looking to create targeted campaigns (using census and geolocation data). The geolocating processing limits can be very limiting when you are trying to analyze large data sets.
Cesar A Siso L | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Well, ArcGIS has been used in my organization since 2010, when happened de Mayon change in the municipality, with the intention of obtaining real data of the urbanization and people for making them pay taxes. The software is only used in the Catastral Department, not in other locations. The main problem that is the transition from a trial version for one that had been paid, it was very expensive for the organization and limit the number of users.
  • ArcGIS has an excellent core of tools to make possible everything you need in spatial analysis, from analysis of raster data to the conversion of CAD file to shapefile to simplify their use
  • The simple use of the software is its other great virtues, it is very easy to use, very friendly with the user, the localizations of the tools, the intuitive nature of the menus and the facility to open and save the files
  • The exit format of the maps maybe it is other of the great advantages of ArcGIS in comparison with other GIS, you have a big range of formats to save your map images, and that allows you to uses in any way you like
  • The first thing is the cost, it is a very expensive software for countries of the underdeveloped world, so the professionals of GIS who want to use it, sometimes observe a big range of limitations, because we can use only a few tools that the organization pay and our analysis sometimes are limited because of that.
  • For a rookie user, maybe the software can be overwhelming, seeing so many tools and so many options and features maybe can be afraid or do not know where to start, so it is necessary to prepare a big range of tutorials for people that do not know anything about the GIS, because they can be a possible users but maybe they can be afraid of the software
  • The process of installation of a new version in our case bring us a big problem because the software does not want to be uninstalled so we have to contact technical support to make the transition from version 9.3 to 10 and that delay many of our work
ArcGIS can be used possibly in any private or public organization that needs a kind of spatial analysis, the software allows you to use a big range of tools to analyze everything you have in your territory or market, like people, frequency of buying, transit, transportation, pollution, green areas, urbanization, soil use, travelers, etc. All these categories allow us to make plans or organize a budget and generate a better use of information.

On the other hand, maybe ArcGIS can be a threat to politicians because the big quantity of data you allow makes an analysis of everything you want including the behavior of people and what their needs are. Sometimes that is something that politicians do not want the public to know for security reasons.
Nikardi Jallah | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
ArcMAP/ArcGIS is new for the department that I work with. I, on the other hand, have previous experience working with ArcGIS from my university. I currently use ArcGIS as a way to map prevalence and incidence estimates of several behavioral risk factors in my state. The prevalence and incidence estimates can be entered or uploaded to the attribute table in ArcGIS, where differences are illustrated using symbols (graduated colors or polygons). Spatial mapping is also important for our team. Hotspot analysis, address geocoding, and spatial rate and smoothers are easily done on the ArcGIS system. ArcGIS does a great job mapping X,Y coordinates which you can then spatially join on your map. In addition to spatial analysis, ArcGIS allows you to use python code to run the geo-processing tools that allow you to do the spatial analysis, buffers, joins, and much more!
  • ArcGIS is great at mapping geo-coded data (specifically data with X,Y coordinates like addresses or events in certain places).
  • Using ArcToolbox on GIS allows you to do many different analyses including spatial analysis, spatial statistics, hot-spot analysis, and joins with the many geo-processing tools.
  • ArcGIS is a great application for mapping health-related data, visually. Incidence and prevalence data can easily be visualized by using symbols or colors on your map. The layout view allows you to customize your map by adding a North arrow, legend, and scale bar.
  • ArcGIS can sometimes freeze or perform tasks slowly when too many geo-processing tools have been used on the MAP.
  • ArcGIS could be improved by having a better support page. It is difficult to get the answers you need if you are unsure of how to, for example, perform spatial auto-correlations on your map.
  • ArcGIS is only for data that can be spatially represented, and that is its limitation.
ArcGIS is great for data that can be spatially illustrated, primarily in the health or environment sector. ArcGIS does not do well with data that is better off seen on a graph or table. It is also important that you have X,Y coordinates if you want to correctly plot data on a map.
October 24, 2017

The good old ArcGIS

Flávio Carmo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our GIS department uses as the main GIS tool, as an individual and collaborative tool. Our use is supported by our clients' needs. We use it to make vectorial databases for cities and states in urban and rural areas. ArcGIS provides to us a full set of tools to make our work organized and productive.
  • Full set of tools
  • Interoperability
  • Collaboration
  • Tools are too bureaucratic
  • Toolbox tools have a slow interface
It is suited for large applications with a complex server side integration, that makes ArcGIS desktop and ArcGIS server a perfect pair, with great collaborative tools for GIS teams.

It falls short when the job is simple, such as making a small vectorial database, when tools like QGIS are more suited or when the client has money issues, because it is a pricey solution.
September 11, 2017

ArcGIS Software Review

Lance Huntley | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I can't discuss in any detail how we use ArcGIS to address problems as it would compromise our competitive advantage. Suffice it to say, we are very pleased with the overall performance of the software. Let there be no doubt, we are winning business because of ESRI's ArcGIS. Other than that I am not really at liberty to say. I do hope you understand.
  • Spatial analysis.
  • Mapping.
  • Customer Support is some of the best I have ever received, ever!
  • Secondary data for use with it's products. Good as it is, but add more to it if you could, that would be great.
  • I have used ArcGIS for a long time, it does everything I need it to. In fact it has WAY more features than I will ever use.
  • Add more secondary data.
  • Demonstrate space time boxes... what are they, when are they being used.
Everyone knows where it should be used and where it shouldn't! It's mapping and spatial analytics software, you use it to do that. If you need to map some locational data then ArcGIS can help, if you want to understand socioeconomic characteristics around a particular location, you can do that as well. There are tons of spatial tools, from analysis to creation to joining, whatever you need, spatially, this is the program to get. There are free online add-ons as well, so you can go the cloud route if you want.
Tiffany Puett, GISP | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
ArcGIS provides the tools for both our customers and our team to catalog, visualize, and analyze spatial data. When training, I always ask my class what industry wouldn't benefit from spatial data and it's really a trick question because I believe there isn't one. In other words, being able to add dimension and depth to data that an organization already has from a spatial perspective is invaluable. Let's say you have some addresses of all of your customers in a database. With a flat table, there isn't much more you can do. But with GIS, you can map those addresses and come up with hot spots or areas where most of the customers are concentrated. For retail, it may be beneficial to put new stores in these areas. Further, you could introduce things like household income, age range of population, driving distance, and more that may help you make that decision.
  • ArcGIS has some really strong cartographic aspects. Users can print or export to various formats such as pdf for sharing with decision makers Or they may leverage some of the interactive capabilities of an ArcGIS Online app which can be made public or secured by logins.
  • The current state of ArcGIS Desktop is intuitive and user-friendly. Users can add data, symbolize it and start working with tables in rapid time. In addition, users can easily push their data to a web map with a couple of clicks.
  • My favorite aspect of ArcGIS is being able to quickly query out data based on a certain criteria. Users can also merge the data into another layer based on its location. For example, you may have a bunch of building all over the map that need a situs address. Users can merge the building data with underlying parcel data and grab the situs address. The number of buildings per parcel can then be extracted from the data to see if it matches the tax listing. The buildings that don't match up can then be extracted for field work.
  • It would be nice if more functions from the Desktop application worked on a tablet. I understand that it is a beefy application so this would be dependent on the capabilities of the device.
ArcGIS is well suited to those who need more than just a map as a visual representation of some data. Users will benefit from the vast amount of tools available for modeling and analyzing spatial trends. That said, if you just need a map, then there are many more affordable options out there.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
ArcGIS is used across the organization and in many departments. It is a fantastic tool for any kind of georeference.
  • A wealth of options - this is a powerful piece of software.
  • Many ways to display data which is critical in getting your findings across.
  • Easy to share work with others.
  • It can be slow so be prepared to wait if you have complex data/maps.
  • Very expensive. If it was not provided to students many simply have no means to access it.
  • Very large piece of software - an SSD is recommended.
  • It has crashed on occasion - which can be frustrating when working with complex data.
ArcGIS is useful in almost every case where you need to demonstrate something with a map. It is incredibly powerful and can produce amazing analysis. Since these are on maps, they make great tools for presentations or talks. However, using it is not easy and the software is expensive. If you would like to map some data only once or twice it is probably not worth the time or money.
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