QGIS

Score8.1 out of 10

38 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for QGIS are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Fast and Easy Installation: Many users have found the installation process of QGIS to be fast and extremely easy on both Windows and Linux. They appreciate how quickly they were able to get the software up and running without any complications.

Abundance of Documentation and Tutorials: Users greatly appreciate the abundance of documentation and tutorials available on the QGIS website as well as other online sources. This wealth of resources makes it easy for them to learn and use the software effectively. They mention finding step-by-step guides, video tutorials, and forums where they can find answers to their questions.

Free with No Licensing Issues: One major advantage mentioned by users is that QGIS is free to use without any licensing requirements. This saves them time and frustration compared to other GIS tools that require licenses or subscriptions. Users value the accessibility of QGIS as an open-source software option for their mapping needs.

Reviews

12 Reviews

QGIS - the ideal suite to turn that one "a thousand words" into captivating and inspiring maps!

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

May 31, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I work constantly with geoprocessing products, and QGIS is fundamental for all phases of this work, from data collection to the final result. Displaying originally textual data (albeit with a spatial reference) on maps, and then analyzing (quantitatively and qualitatively) those maps are the main reasons to use this software here at GISMarxev.
Finally, the possibility of printing and exporting the map to various formats (PDF, JPEG, SVG) with the help of tools that add even more information (scale rulers, wind roses, titles and legends, etc.) free and open source, are decisive for choosing QGIS.

Pros

Fast and extremely easy installation on both Windows and Linux.
Lots of plugins and extensions, reliable and constantly updated.
Documentation (manuals and also tutorials) abundant, both on the QGIS website and on the Internet.
Quickly and easily combines plain text, spreadsheets and databases with vector format maps.

Cons

Easier adjustment of name labels on maps.
Big improvements in exporting to SVG, which often fails.
More efficient import of Autodesk AutoCAD files.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Mauricio E Gleizer

CEO in Information Technology at GISMarxev (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

7 years of experience

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QGIS Review

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

November 23, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

QGIS is open-source software that can create, edit, store, analyze, visualize geospatial data. In our organization, we used QGIS for the interpretation and analysis of the satellite images for the application related to Climate Change, Mangroves analysis, Land Use, and Landcover Analysis, Watershed analysis. QGIS software is also used for network planning, route optimization, and creation of Vector data. QGIS software can be used for various applications such as Urban Planning, Environment Conversation, Hydrographic Analysis, Transportation planning, etc.

Pros

Geospatial Data Analysis
3d Visualization
Satellite Image Processing
Vector Data Processing
Network Planning

Cons

Big Data Handling and Processing
3D Anlaysis tools should be added
Bugs in few plugins

Likelihood to Recommend

QGIS is well suited to create, analyze and interpret, visualize and store Geospatial Data. It can be used for multiple applications from Urban Planning, Climate Change Analysis, Forest Mapping, Site Selection, Risk Analysis, etc. QGIS is not suited when data doesn't have location information. Although users can add location data into their data using QGIS.

CHANCY SHAH

Geographic Information Systems Engineer at Earth Love United Foundation (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

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An Open-Source Mapping Powerhouse!

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

January 5, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Similar to RStudio, QGIS allows any user within our organization with an interest in map-making and spatial analysis to explore data and produce results without needed to go through corporate hoops to get access to commercial software. It allows for the democratization of GIS skills across the organization, without the need to silo it to a few people that would make the most of a commercial license.

Pros

Producing polished maps.
Converting between spatial data formats.
Applying templates to existing data layers.

Cons

Interfacing between the underlying data and the mapping component.
Including a variety of base layers.

Likelihood to Recommend

Whenever I need to produce a presentation-ready map I will use QGIS and either produce a full layout from it or just export the map as a bitmap. I often hear back from colleagues asking how I made such a nice map as many don't have experience with GIS software. QGIS is not a "wizard-type" tool, and the number of options can be overwhelming to a number of users. This being said the same could be said of most GIS applications, Google Earth being maybe the one with the lowest barrier of entry, but also the most limited in terms of producing polished outputs.

Verified User

Manager in Engineering (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

You cannot possibly go wrong with QGIS

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

November 5, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use QGIS to do spatial analysis of large property datasets, develop styling for thematic layers, convert the styling into SLD format to use in Geoserver, and build monthly reports for our clients of the results of their spatial analytics. QGIS is our go-to tool for working with spatial data. We also recommend it to local government/municipalities who are our clients, as a functional and cost-effective replacement for other proprietary GIS packages. By reducing licensing costs, organizations can spend the budget on appointing more spatial analysts or even developers to customize the application to suit their unique requirements.

Pros

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.

Cons

Support is tricky to find: because QGIS is open source, there isn't one single company responsible who I can call when things don't work. However, there are numerous companies that provide support on a consulting basis, often contributing actively to the code base as well (e.g. Kartoza).
Doesn't access graphics card: to the best of my knowledge, QGIS doesn't make use of hardware graphics acceleration. But this only becomes an issue when I work with massive datasets (500k+ polygon geometries with 30+ fields).
Less well known: ESRI is the default product that most students use when they study geomatics because it is free for academic institutions. So new hires often haven't worked with QGIS before, and find it intimidating. But the learning curve isn't too steep, so it's not a major issue. The biggest challenge is overcoming the natural resistance to change.

Likelihood to Recommend

QGIS should be the tool of choice for any taxpayer-funded institution, like a municipality of a governmental department. The GIS budget can be spent on employing developers and GIS analysts rather than just siphoning it out to multinational corporations. The staff can then work on improving the product for all users globally, and pretty soon we'll have an unbelievable product that does great good for management.

QGIS is perfect if you don't use GIS absolutely every day, because it is free software, and offers pretty much anything that you can do with proprietary software.

I don't think QGIS has such amazing 3D capabilities yet (although it does exist, and maybe I'm just not proficient enough in its use yet).

Verified User

C-Level Executive in Product Management (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

A free-to-use Spatial Analysis Tool you should give a shot!

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

November 11, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

QGIS is the go-to tool for us to work with the spatial files. It is being used to create and modify shapefiles, generate spatial data, and create maps. We have been using it to add or remove layers in the shapefiles and extract data to and from SQL Server.

Pros

A major strength of QGIS is that it has a very simple and effective GUI making it easy to work with.
It has numerous plugins covering a huge number of functionalities spanning across multiple systems.
It is seamless to connect with databases and export and import spatial data to and from.

Cons

Some of the even simpler tasks need a bit of digging around to find the proper procedure to perform them.
There are some quirks in making the OGR work. You need to search and find the best appropriate version if you wish to work with OGR as some of the latest versions don't work too well.
I guess the version updates need a bit more work as sometimes it doesn't link with the shapefiles and if you try to open the shapefiles directly you get an error message.

Likelihood to Recommend

QGIS is very well suited for simpler operations like editing, modifying shapefiles, labeling and coloring it, changing projections. But if you want to export or import data to and from SQL databases, you need to OGR and that's a bit of a hit and miss because of the version incompatibility and whatnot.

Verified User

Analyst in Marketing (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

QGIS is our workhorse for political mapping.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

May 24, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use QGIS to visualize US election data sets. We are focused on Florida, and Congressional District 17. We publish maps of registered voter demographic data such as age groups, race, gender, and turnout. We also use QGIS for strategic mapping of voter precincts to better target volunteers and canvassing. The majority of our maps are proprietary.

Pros

Compatibility with ArcGIS allows us to easily use shapefiles published by local municipalities.
QGIS has a wealth of plugins for data and shape manipulation.
We found the Leaflet export particularly nice to accelerate the development of our live web maps.
Compatibility with OpenStreetMap is a great benefit.

Cons

Editing joined datasets is quirky.
Direct connections to SQL are tough. We needed to export the data to Excel for shapefile joins.
The print layout is difficult. It's hard to control data marker placement.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you don't have access to ArcGIS, QGIS is great. It's cross-platform, open source, and free to download. For our purposes it gets the job done. If we had the money we would seriously consider upgrading to the ESRI products for more features. The QGIS ecosystem is widely supported online in forums. We are not professional cartographers, but we were able to figure it out and produce professional-looking maps for our clients.

Verified User

Executive in Information Technology (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Free, powerful software for GIS

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

September 18, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Within my department, we do a lot of GIS. About half of my coworkers use ArcGIS and half use QGIS. QGIS addresses the problems associated with licensing. It is open source software, so no licensing is required. It is also much easier to install than ArcGIS and (in my experience) crashes less often than ArcGIS. Less crashing and faster install times result in more efficiency and productivity.

Pros

QGIS is free and very easy to install, and no license is required. Not having to deal with licensing issues has saved me considerable time and frustration.
The QGIS help community is very active, and it is easy to find answers. Although QGIS does not offer support in the way that ArcMap does, I was always able to google my question and find either a tutorial or website that solved my problem.
QGIS seems to crash less often than ArcMap. It is super annoying to have a program crash when you are in the middle of a project, but I have not had any issues with QGIS. Also, QGIS is updated frequently.

Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

QGIS is great for companies or individuals who are on a budget but still need powerful GIS software. QGIS is excellent in that it can consume many data formats and basically has all the same capabilities as ArcGIS. In addition, since QGIS is cross-platform it is Linux and Mac friendly, making it more versatile than ArcMap, which only works on Windows machines. In my opinion, it is a little less beginner friendly, so I'd recommend it more to those who have some previous experience with GIS. I would, however, not recommend it for those who mainly want to create maps. I found the map making feature in QGIS very cumbersome.

Maike Holthuijzen

Ph.D student in Research & Development at University of Vermont (5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

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QGIS a great solution for nonprofit organizations

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

June 14, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

QGIS was used by select researchers who utilized the mapping software for social and economic data visualization in line with our organization's mission and views on children and adolescent health. This is a low cost/free option for us to create reports and tools for grantors and funders, as well as legislators.

Pros

Demonstrates geographic-centric data for all levels of readers
Makes complicated data more easily digestible and reviewable
Increases the ability to explain data to funders, grantors, and stakeholders

Cons

QGIS is hard to use for beginners. A better tutorial and clearer online tutorials could improve this.
Labeling interface is overly complicated. Allowing users to manually add labels to relevant items could be helpful.
QGIS should have more "wizards" that can easily import common data points (median income, population density, etc) and cross tabulate that with other categories easily from uploaded data.

Likelihood to Recommend

QGIS is a great alternative to expensive GIS software for non-profits and new users who are looking to enhance their data visualization and reports to stakeholders. Organizations who are afraid to make a jump and invest in comprehensive GIS software should feel safe and comfortable giving QGIS a try and introducing employees to GIS information software to help improve how they use and learn from data.

Ember Urbach, LMSW

Assistant REsearcher in Research & Development at Non-profit Quarterly (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

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Powerful GIS in development

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

March 16, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

QGIS is a very complete tool for spatial analysis as well as the elaboration of topographic and thematic cartography. It seems to me an excellent advantage that QGIS allows the connection with R, which is also open source statistical software, allowing to directly relate the data of the various variables with their spatial location.

Pros

QGIS is an excellent open source GIS tool that has been strengthening over the years.
It is not necessary to pay an expensive license to use all the options that it offers us and that is a great benefit, especially to professionals who use the GIS for the development of our work and research
It has a friendly interface, it is very easy to use, especially if you have previously handled a GIS tool.
I also like the great variety of functions that it offers us and that allows us to solve almost any problem.

Cons

This software unfortunately tends to be unstable, because sometimes unexpected closures occur.
At times I have had problems because I do not execute certain actions and I must restart the program in order to execute the action satisfactorily.
On the other hand, the quality of the cartographic output is weak compared to other software.

Likelihood to Recommend

It's a very good GIS tool. It is a free software that has had a rapid development, it can even be compared with other GIS proprietary software of world reknown.
QGIS allows you to download a large number of add-ons developed by other expert users, which are available to all for free.
In addition QGIS accepts multiple formats such as shapefile, mapinfo layers, binary coverage, raster, among others, which gives the user the facilities and ability to work with the information available.

Isabel Huamani

Planificador Territorial II at MPPP (201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

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A Great Option for Users of GIS

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

January 19, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

QGIS has helped us to make all the cartography and maps to do the spatial analysis or urban areas, with the tools for edit, create, customize and print, we have build maps of the entire city emphasizing the maintenance of the highways, sidewalks, and recreational spaces. The software is used only in the planning area with some implications in others spaces like administration or any office who needs gathering information some particular place or of a specific category of urban space. Qgis it is a really good tool to makes plans, organizes information, manages spatial data, makes maps, and for explaining the people who work in the company or general public which are the places where we need to act and how these are distributed in the city.

Pros

QGIS can manage virtually any kind of spatial data that means you can manage shapefiles, tab files, raster files, cad files, and so many other formats that can help you to make the maps and analyze data in the best way.
With QGIS you can add or modify the tools, for example, if you know some programming experience you can modify the software and include your own tool or extension, this can be very useful if you are an entrepreneur who it is starting to involve in the GIS world.
QGIScome GNU license and that means that anybody can easily download the software on his computer and manage all the information available on the internet of spatial data or share information with other people who manage the software or has some interest of build some applications or extensions to it.

Cons

Being an GNU software has some limitations and one of them it is the instability of the software, it can be closed randomly or without any warning and this can be so annoying if you are doing a very hard work, this happens because you do not have any professional customer support, you only have it from other users.
The continuous actualizations can be very annoying because the series bring to fast and you can manage the version 2.14 a little and quickly you can have available, who has not so many modifications and the most of time if not even necessary.
You have to be aware of the data, with GNU license the data that you download can be wrong or cannot have all the information that you need, sometimes you could find errors in "datum" o coordinates you have to be aware because the data that it uses is made all over the world without any supervision, virtually anyone can put wrong data for the users, and you do not know until you work with it.

Likelihood to Recommend

QGIS can be a tool for beginners or for users who are not familiar with a private software, the interphase it is very easy to manage, and you can have no problems working with a variety of files like cad, shape or tab because the software allows all. For people who it is starting with GIS this the best to get a basic knowledge and start to develop their abilities.

The users, especially the new ones have to be aware of the dysfunction of the free software, some versions can be very unstable and bring some complications in the middle of a job, you have to be aware of the data and where that data comes from, that data can be wrong or have so many mistakes. Another consideration is related to the basic knowledge of programming language if you do not know a little you can have some troubles because to do a modification in the software you have to know a little about programming.

Cesar A Siso L

Analista in Professional Services at Gobierno del Distrito Capital (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

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A Great Option for Users of GIS

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

January 19, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

QGIS can manage virtually any kind of spatial data that means you can manage shapefiles, tab files, raster files, cad files, and so many other formats that can help you to make the maps and analyze data in the best way.
With QGIS you can add or modify the tools, for example, if you know some programming experience you can modify the software and include your own tool or extension, this can be very useful if you are an entrepreneur who it is starting to involve in the GIS world.
QGIScome GNU license and that means that anybody can easily download the software on his computer and manage all the information available on the internet of spatial data or share information with other people who manage the software or has some interest of build some applications or extensions to it.

Cons

Being an GNU software has some limitations and one of them it is the instability of the software, it can be closed randomly or without any warning and this can be so annoying if you are doing a very hard work, this happens because you do not have any professional customer support, you only have it from other users.
The continuous actualizations can be very annoying because the series bring to fast and you can manage the version 2.14 a little and quickly you can have available, who has not so many modifications and the most of time if not even necessary.
You have to be aware of the data, with GNU license the data that you download can be wrong or cannot have all the information that you need, sometimes you could find errors in "datum" o coordinates you have to be aware because the data that it uses is made all over the world without any supervision, virtually anyone can put wrong data for the users, and you do not know until you work with it.

Likelihood to Recommend

Cesar A Siso L

Analista in Professional Services at Gobierno del Distrito Capital (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

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