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QGIS is a versatile and user-friendly geoprocessing software that is highly valued by its users for its wide range of use cases. Users …
Overview
What is QGIS?
QGIS (formerly Quantum GIS) is a free and open source geographic information system.
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Pricing
QGIS
Free
On Premise
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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
Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
What is QGIS?
QGIS Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows, Linux, Mac |
| Mobile Application | No |
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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!
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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:
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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.
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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.
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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
(1-2 of 2)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
November 05, 2020
You cannot possibly go wrong with QGIS
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.
- 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.
- We can ingest data in any format, and convert it to industry-standard spatial files for hosting on our online GIS platform.
- Many client projects require us to analyze and understand data before we can report on it.
- Because QGIS is free, and the learning curve is negligible for bright GIS technicians, the ROI is practically infinite because the investment is basically zero.
We've used MapInfo, but it is expensive and lacks the wide support that QGIS has. It also doesn't slot in that well with the open-source stack that we use to develop our online GIS tools.
We've also evaluated Esri's Arc products. Fantastic tools, but a) exorbitantly expensive, and b) they lock their clients in by preferring the use of proprietary formats, and c) they can't ingest nearly as many data formats as QGIS can (which is critical for us since we work with various different data providers).
We've also evaluated Esri's Arc products. Fantastic tools, but a) exorbitantly expensive, and b) they lock their clients in by preferring the use of proprietary formats, and c) they can't ingest nearly as many data formats as QGIS can (which is critical for us since we work with various different data providers).
November 11, 2019
A free-to-use Spatial Analysis Tool you should give a shot!
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.
- 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.
- As it is a free software, I could say that the ROI has been positive throughout.
- Though, sometimes the time required to learn or find a way through solving a business problem using QGIS is a cost we have to pay.
Frankly, QGIS is an inferior tool as compared to ArcGIS as ArcGIS is a market leader in spatial data analysis, offers a family of GIS Suite catering to different needs, has a huge repository of training exercises and tutorials, an organized catalog of data if you need further help and a dedicated support team. But, QGIS has a major advantage that is it is free and that's why we chose it.