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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
  • 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.
  • Easier adjustment of name labels on maps.
  • Big improvements in exporting to SVG, which often fails.
  • More efficient import of Autodesk AutoCAD files.
November 23, 2021

QGIS Review

CHANCY SHAH | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Geospatial Data Analysis
  • 3d Visualization
  • Satellite Image Processing
  • Vector Data Processing
  • Network Planning
  • Big Data Handling and Processing
  • 3D Anlaysis tools should be added
  • Bugs in few plugins
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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.
  • 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.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
  • 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.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
  • 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.
Maike Holthuijzen | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
  • 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.
Ember Urbach, LMSW | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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
  • 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.
Isabel Huamani | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
  • 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.
Cesar A Siso L | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
  • 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.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • The FOSS nature of the software means any and everyone can have access to it, and that those same people can contribute to its growth and development.
  • The ever-expanding library of analyses and tools are a testament to the power of FOSS model, and the advantage it provides compared to the other commercial suites.
  • Cross-platform (Win, Mac, Linux, Android [Beta]).
  • Low (relatively) system requirements.
  • Wide data format support for import/export, with ability to expand via Plugins.
  • Tight integration into OpenStreetMap and other Web Mapping Services (WMS).
  • Acts as a graphical front-end to the GRASS analysis suite, which has been in development since 1984 and contains over 350 modules.
  • GUI still trails others in terms of ease-of-use and modernness (No Ribbon UI, no command searchbar like IDRISI).
  • No direct/easy migration path from ArcGIS (mxd2qgs is not under development and fails under ArcGIS 10.5).
  • No dedicated support channels like you get with commercial GIS software.
Vladimir Salnikov | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Processing of multispectral satellite imagery. Using an internal raster calculator you can perform virtually any calculation upon bands. Using Python scripting - you can perform anything.
  • Vector information manipulation and solving some practical tasks as area zoning, weighing factors from the spatial side of view, optimizing grids. A lot of algorithms supported out of the box. And yes, we can always develop our own, using mighty Python scripting.
  • GPS recording and areas digitizing. I've done about 95,000 hectares using a mixed approach - vectorizing upon aerial images and walking around objects with a laptop, connected to a GPS receiver and QGIS, engaged on record.
  • Processing terrain shading, roughness index, and using digital elevation maps. I've used these capabilities for the calculation of erosion danger for agricultural lands.
  • Prepare maps for printing. QGIS allows you to create amazing mockups for maps and export it to PDF up to A0 size. I've used it to print a lot of analytic maps.
  • QGIS lacks predefined support of standard packages for satellite imagery sources. To process metadata from packages (which is used for radiometric correction, atmospheric corrections, DEM corrections, etc) - you need to develop your own scripts or extract metadata manually.
  • QGIS' mobile version for Android does not work so well, because this is a port of the desktop version actually, and a lot of controls are adapted for the use of a mouse, and it's hard to operate with it on touch screens.
  • Caching of tiles when using WMS/WMTS layers. QGIS doesn't manage it, so working with remote layers can be a real pain [during] a slow internet connection.
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