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QGIS

Score9.7 out of 10

38 Reviews and Ratings

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What is QGIS?

QGIS (formerly Quantum GIS) is a free and open source geographic information system.

Categories & Use Cases

Reviews

What users are saying about QGIS.
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QGIS - the ideal suite to turn that one "a thousand words" into captivating and inspiring maps!

Incentivized
Mauricio E GleizerView profile
CEO in Information Technology at GISMarxev (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I work constantly with geoprocessing products, and QGIS is fundamental for all phases of this work, from data collection to the final result. Displaying originally textual data (albeit with a spatial reference) on maps, and then analyzing (quantitatively and qualitatively) those maps are the main reasons to use this software here at GISMarxev.
Finally, the possibility of printing and exporting the map to various formats (PDF, JPEG, SVG) with the help of tools that add even more information (scale rulers, wind roses, titles and legends, etc.) free and open source, are decisive for choosing QGIS.

Pros

  • 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.

Cons

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

Most Important Features

  • To be free and open source software.
  • Work equally well on Windows and Linux.
  • Having new versions being released constantly, which add new features previously available as plugins and extensions.
  • To be widely known and used in the Brazilian market.

Return on Investment

  • Very positive impact.

Alternatives Considered

ArcGIS

Other Software Used

Ubuntu Linux, LibreOffice, Canva, Trello

QGIS Review

Incentivized
CHANCY SHAHView profile
Geographic Information Systems Engineer at Earth Love United Foundation (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

QGIS is open-source software that can create, edit, store, analyze, visualize geospatial data. In our organization, we used QGIS for the interpretation and analysis of the satellite images for the application related to Climate Change, Mangroves analysis, Land Use, and Landcover Analysis, Watershed analysis. QGIS software is also used for network planning, route optimization, and creation of Vector data. QGIS software can be used for various applications such as Urban Planning, Environment Conversation, Hydrographic Analysis, Transportation planning, etc.

Pros

  • Geospatial Data Analysis
  • 3d Visualization
  • Satellite Image Processing
  • Vector Data Processing
  • Network Planning

Cons

  • Big Data Handling and Processing
  • 3D Anlaysis tools should be added
  • Bugs in few plugins

Most Important Features

  • Raster Data Analysis
  • Vector Data Analysis
  • Open Source
  • Support Python Programming

Return on Investment

  • QGIS open source
  • QGIS is versatile and can be customized as per requirement
  • Plugins can be build

Alternatives Considered

ArcGIS

Other Software Used

ArcGIS, Slack, Discord

Free, powerful software for GIS

Incentivized
Maike HolthuijzenView profile
Ph.D student in Research & Development at University of Vermont (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Pros

  • 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.

Cons

  • 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.

Return on Investment

  • Because QGIS is free, it saves our organization money.
  • QGIS is easy to install on Windows/Linux/Mac platforms. Our department uses Linux servers, but many of the employees use PCs or Macs. Since QGIS works on all these systems, we can open QGIS projects on any of these systems and continue our work.
  • The one negative point I have about QGIS is its cartography tools. I frequently have to make maps that are suitable for publication. I spent an inordinate amount of time attempting to make a few maps in QGIS, but I ended up making them in ArcGIS because it was much faster that way. Thus, the use of QGIS sometimes results in a loss of work efficiency due to troubleshooting.

Alternatives Considered

ArcGIS

Other Software Used

Eclipse, Skype, Zoom Video Webinar

QGIS a great solution for nonprofit organizations

Incentivized
Ember Urbach, LMSWView profile
Assistant REsearcher in Research & Development at Non-profit Quarterly (10,001+ employees employees)

Pros

  • 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

Cons

  • 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.

Return on Investment

  • QGIS gives us more impactful data on children and maternal health issues, which in turn has helped us establish more programs, relationships, and funding opportunities because of the excellent data presentations we can give.
  • QGIS has allowed our staff to improve their data analysis skills, improving our workforce across the board, with or without the direct use of geographic data.
  • QGIS has required a lot of staff time to learn, but the ROI on time spent vs the reports we produced afterward has been well worth it.

Alternatives Considered

ArcGIS

Other Software Used

LastPass, IBM SPSS, ArcGIS

A Great Option for Users of GIS

Incentivized
Cesar A Siso LView profile
Analista in Professional Services at Gobierno del Distrito Capital (1001-5000 employees employees)

Pros

  • 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.

Cons

  • 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.

Return on Investment

  • QGIS it is a very useful software to work with spatial data in the way the software helps us to make the plans for maintenance of the urban spaces of the city, we can build this by adding data to the shapefiles and later, selecting which area needs to be prioritized and in what order we have to send the workers to their jobs, and the data bring us the opportunity to do a better use of our personal and budget.
  • The software is very useful making models of any kind of situation that happens in a city, in our case with the Tranus extension we can see which are the roads with more traffic and can choose which one has to have a regular or continuous maintenance or which one has to be used only two or three times per month, making it more effective for the uses of our resources.
  • In the planning area QGIS can be so useful because it allows to select which areas of the city has the major budget allocation and why that happens, with this data we can define which areas that need more money to keep in the best possible condition and which ones do not need so much attention from the government, because the actual condition of them it is really good.

Other Software Used

ArcGIS, AutoCAD, MapInfo Pro