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Mapbox is great for newbies wanting to get into map making.
April 04, 2016

Mapbox is great for newbies wanting to get into map making.

Firaz Peer | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Mapbox

As a student, I used Mapbox as part of a personal class project. In my role as an instructor, I reviewed Mapbox for students in a Visual Design class.
  • Excellent documentation and worked examples makes it easy for newbies to get started.
  • Works well across web or mobile platforms.
  • Clean looking default map styles make your designs look professional.
  • Since it is built on top of Leaflet.js, it is easily extensible. So any feature or function that is not available within the Mapbox.js API can be imported from other API's.
  • Storage space for free users of Mapbox Studio is very limited. Having a slightly higher storage limit for students might be helpful.
  • I used the free version. The only investment was time, and I was rewarded with learning how to make maps with a great tool. I'd say I'm happy with my ROI!
One feature that made me go in favor of Mapbox was its stellar documentation. Google Maps and Bing Maps are the other alternatives I considered, but the learning curve with both of them is steeper than it is with Mapbox. Also, Mapbox Studio gives newbies a very simple, clean and easy to use environment to make and store maps online.
Beginners can start making simple maps very quickly. Mapbox Studio makes getting started very easy.

For complicated maps, one should consider the cost of hosting it on the Mapbox server. Using the API might make more sense in that case, but it requires learning how to code with Javascript.