Mapbox is the location data platform for developers building custom geospatial features into mobile, web, and on-premise applications.
$0
Per 1000 users
QGIS
Score 9.7 out of 10
N/A
QGIS (formerly Quantum GIS) is a free and open source geographic information system.
N/A
Pricing
Mapbox
QGIS
Editions & Modules
Starting Price
$0.00
Per 1000 users
QGIS
Free
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Mapbox
QGIS
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
Designed for businesses of all sizes, Mapbox is free to start building with and offers free tiers for most products. As usage grows, volume pricing is applied automatically, no negotiation necessary.
Pricing is based either on pay-as-you-go usage or negotiated sales contracts that unlock additional discounts for annual commitments.
Paid support plans are also available.
Mapbox is great if you have a BI or Data Visualization problem while working with either large datasets or you want a high level of control on the design of your geospatial data. Also fantastic options for integrating maps onto your website or into your Android or iOS app. Basically, if you need a map in any shape, way, or form and you want a lot of detailed control over it, Mapbox is the way to go.
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.
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.
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.
It is a good tool to use. We can perform various customisations; I always end up exploring and finding a new feature that can be used in my work somewhere. And one good thing is that is actually quite reasonable in terms of cost, with the free tier being quite adequate
I wasn't a GIS user at all when I started using QGIS, nor did I have any background working with data in anything other than Excel, and as a result, I struggled quite a lot in the beginning (it's not quite Google Maps). But having said that, I haven't come across anything that I couldn't do with a little help from the online community. I've done complex spatial analyses on large datasets of metropolitan cities, designed custom multi-page pdf reports that automatically cycle through different areas of an area, etc.
And the GIS staff that I've appointed, after their initial resistance, took to the tool like a fish to water, and I haven't heard them complain after starting to use the tool for a week or two.
But if you're new to GIS, be patient and invest some time to learn how to use the tool. It is absolutely worth it.
Even though there is a no dedicated support team for QGIS (or at least we are not aware of it), there is a huge online community and a large number of forums catering to every question you may have regarding any particular functionality of QGIS. So, you have a lot of help available but you will have to sift through it on the web.
Mapbox provides many more services, like the Navigation SDK, Vision SDK (currently in beta), and Styles Gallery that allows companies to create a much more design-friendly frontend for a very low cost. Mapbox has also put a lot more resources into their search-related APIs to make them just as quick and accurate as the Google Maps search products. There is also a lot more innovation happening at Mapbox, with new geo/map products released regularly. Innovation and growth at the Google Maps API seems to be happening much slower.
QGIS is open source and freely available for Windows and Mac iOS Geographic Information System Software. QGIS is highly customizable as per project requirements and different application usage. QGIS has ample tools and plugins that are useful for the analysis of raster and vector data. It also supports GRASS, GDAL, and SAGA tools.
I don't think this is a fair question for me to answer. Apart from our time we have not invested anything into Mapbox - so from that perspective the ROI is great! Great returns without any investment!
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.
