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The good old ArcGIS
October 24, 2017

The good old ArcGIS

Flávio Carmo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with ArcGIS

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 excels on production with a corporate solution, but it is a costly one. So if you have money restrictions, don't use it.
  • Legacy versions (8.x, 9.x and the early 10.x) have a complex and expensive environment, with ArcIMS, ArcSDE and ArcGIS Server. The service packs are confusing and the upgrade path sometimes is nonexistent or simply confusing.
Both ArcGIS and QGIS are professional GIS applications. The price tag on ArcGIS is equivalent to the cost to train a professional on QGIS. ArcGIS is a more mature solution and is a stable tool with many years in production. QGIS is the new software, with almost the same tools and a different workflow to do the same kind of work. If you have a large crew with ArcGIS experience and money to keep buying additional licenses and upgrades, keep it. But try QGIS. Small jobs are a perfect test ground.
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.