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QGIS

QGIS

Overview

What is QGIS?

QGIS (formerly Quantum GIS) is a free and open source geographic information system.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

QGIS is a versatile and user-friendly geoprocessing software that is highly valued by its users for its wide range of use cases. Users …
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QGIS Review

8 out of 10
November 23, 2021
Incentivized
QGIS is open-source software that can create, edit, store, analyze, visualize geospatial data. In our organization, we used QGIS for the …
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Pricing

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QGIS

Free

On Premise

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

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

QGIS Demo 49: Image Segmentation

YouTube

Demo 16 - Semi-Automated Mapping in QGIS with the Atlas Panel

YouTube

QGIS Demo 22: Raster NoData

YouTube

QGIS Demo 29: Raster Resample

YouTube

Creating a racial dot density map using QGIS

YouTube

Demo 14 – Making Maps in QGIS with the Print Layout (Pt. I)

YouTube
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Product Details

What is QGIS?

QGIS Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac
Mobile ApplicationNo
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(38)

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!

QGIS is a versatile and user-friendly geoprocessing software that is highly valued by its users for its wide range of use cases. Users have highlighted its importance in various stages of geoprocessing work, from data collection to the final output. It has proven to be valuable for displaying textual data on maps and analyzing them both quantitatively and qualitatively. The ability to print and export maps to different formats such as PDF, JPEG, and SVG has been particularly useful for users.

QGIS finds extensive application in the interpretation and analysis of satellite images, making it an essential tool for tasks related to climate change analysis, mangroves analysis, land use, land cover analysis, and watershed analysis. Additionally, it is employed for network planning, route optimization, and the creation of vector data. This versatility extends further into domains such as urban planning, environmental conservation, hydrographic analysis, and transportation planning.

One of the key advantages of QGIS is that it addresses licensing issues by being open-source software that does not require costly licenses. Users appreciate the ease of installation and stability of QGIS compared to other proprietary GIS packages like ArcGIS. Its stability translates into increased efficiency and productivity during usage. Moreover, QGIS offers excellent support for social and economic data visualization, enabling organizations to effectively communicate their mission and views on children and adolescent health through maps.

Planning departments and offices involved in gathering information about specific urban spaces frequently rely on QGIS as a tool for creating plans, organizing information, managing spatial data, and explaining urban areas to the public. With features like spatial analysis, topographic and thematic cartography, and connections with statistical software like R, QGIS serves as a comprehensive tool for researchers to visually present their findings using maps and schemes.

Businesses also benefit from QGIS as it supports spatial analysis of large property datasets, facilitates the development of thematic layers with customized styling options, and aids in building monthly reports for clients. QGIS has even been recommended as a functional and cost-effective alternative to other proprietary GIS packages. Furthermore, it has proven invaluable for tasks such as creating and modifying shapefiles, generating spatial data, and visualizing US election datasets, enabling strategic mapping of voter precincts and targeting volunteers and canvassing efforts.

Over time, QGIS has evolved to become the premiere free GIS software with an improved workflow and a user-friendly interface. Users appreciate the value and accessibility it offers by allowing them to work with open formats and free tools while still utilizing essential GIS skills across organizations. Moreover, QGIS has evolved greatly over time and is now considered the premiere free GIS software with a user-friendly interface and improved workflow. This has made it a popular choice among users who want to keep their work with open formats and free tools while still benefiting from essential GIS skills. The software's customizability through Python scripts and models designer has further enhanced its appeal.

Another key use case of QGIS is research visualization, where it serves as a valuable tool for visually presenting research through maps and schemes. Its comprehensive suite of instruments and seamless integration with statistical software like R make it a preferred choice for researchers in various fields.

In addition, QGIS has proven effective for spatial analysis of large property datasets, allowing users to develop styling for thematic layers and build monthly reports for clients. This functionality, paired with its cost effectiveness, has led to QGIS being recommended as a functional replacement for other proprietary GIS packages.

QGIS also finds utility in strategic mapping of voter precincts for political campaigns and targeting volunteers and canvassing efforts. Its ability to generate visualizations of US election datasets enables a deeper understanding of voting patterns and aids in decision-making processes.

Overall, QGIS's user-friendly interface, extensive functionality, open-source nature, and compatibility with various data formats make it an invaluable tool in geoprocessing work across numerous industries. Users appreciate its versatility, stability, and customizable features that enhance productivity and efficiency.

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.

Clunky and unintuitive user interface: Several users have found the user interface of QGIS to be clunky and unintuitive, making it difficult to make maps quickly and efficiently. They have expressed frustration with the convoluted process of editing and adding feature layers, as well as changing colors of added point or line features. Additionally, they feel that the labeling interface is overly complicated and suggested adding a feature for manual label placement.

Lack of extensive courses and support: Some users have mentioned that QGIS lacks a large library of courses specifically made for the program, which makes it harder for beginners to use. They also pointed out the difficulty in finding support for QGIS as there is no single company responsible for providing support. Although consulting companies are available, some users still find it limiting and frustrating that QGIS relies solely on support from other users due to its open-source nature.

Continuous updates and data accuracy issues: There have been complaints about the continuous updates of QGIS being annoying and unnecessary. Users caution that the data used in QGIS can sometimes be inaccurate or incomplete since it is sourced from various contributors worldwide. This can cause issues when working with the software. Furthermore, stability issues such as unexpected program closures have been reported by some users, requiring them to restart the program to execute certain actions effectively.

Users of QGIS commonly recommend the following:

  1. Try QGIS before purchasing any other software. Many users suggest giving QGIS a try before investing in other GIS software. They believe that QGIS is a reliable tool for all mapping projects and recommend using it for both analysis and geographical analysis.

  2. Utilize online support and add-ons. Users highly recommend taking advantage of the online support and add-ons available for QGIS. They find these resources helpful in maximizing the functionality of the software.

  3. Read the documentation and attend user group events. It is suggested that users who are new to QGIS should read the documentation thoroughly and dive into learning the software. Some users also recommend attending QGIS user group events or utilizing the Google+ page for additional resources.

Overall, users find QGIS to be a great tool for mapping service users, buildings, and key landmarks. They appreciate its intuitive interface and consider it a useful basic mapping tool. To fully explore its potential, users recommend taking courses or using tutorials to learn QGIS and exploring other forums dedicated to this software. Additionally, users urge others to consider trying out QGIS as a free product and installing it via the OSGEO4W installer for proper setup and access to other useful open-source GIS software and tools. The online support community is regarded as fantastic, with many users finding it easy to use and navigate. Users also suggest weighing the cost vs benefits of commercial packages against the potential savings of using QGIS. Lastly, some users recommend procuring a 'crash course' book or video course series on QGIS for beginners, finding it valuable for their specific purposes and staff.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-12 of 12)
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Mauricio E Gleizer | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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.
November 23, 2021

QGIS Review

CHANCY SHAH | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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).
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Maike Holthuijzen | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Ember Urbach, LMSW | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Isabel Huamani | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Cesar A Siso L | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I believe that QGIS should be the tool that students and professionals are introduced to GIS with. Despite the slightly difficult UI, it has an immense library of powerful tools and an incredibly low barrier to entry that ensures that those using it can use it wherever, whenever without fear of licensing costs or other restrictions.

Depending upon your environment, I would likely suggest that QGIS not be put into a "production" role without verifying stability and compatibility with the data, workflows, machine, environment, etc., where it is being deployed, though I personally have not had issues in this regard yet when using the installers provided on the QGIS page.
Vladimir Salnikov | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Imagine a small startup company, which is developing some sophisticated product, but in the situation of financial hunger. In this case, instead of spending a lot of money for buying expensive software, it would be better to use free, open sourced solutions, just like QGIS is. It provides virtually all functionality like commercial software does but with no cost. This will allow you to save money for a company, or use it more effectively.
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