Top Rated Esri ArcGIS Alternatives
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ArcGIS is unparallel when it comes to mapping
ArcGIS is every water and environmental engineer must have
531 Esri ArcGIS Reviews
Overall Review Sentiment for Esri ArcGIS
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The best thing about ArcGIS is the fact that it has become a standard in the industry. This means that mastering the application increases overall productivity and hire-ability. It is an incredibly powerful program with hundreds of applications in the field of planning. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The most difficult part of ArcGIS is that the file reference system makes managing a database very difficult between users. It also complicates saving data over time as file paths are changed or modified between users. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I like that ArcGIS is the standard in GIS -- cartography and analysis. This software is what most with a traditional background in GIS learned on. The interface is nice and the tool is powerful. The company also offers free licenses for nonprofit use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
For individuals the price is quite expensive. The tool is so powerful that it can be hard to learn all of the intricacies. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Ubiquity among gis users but most gis users have never tried using anything else like Maptitude or Transcad gis. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Bad software architecture; no design principles -- changes data-structure and interface frequently. Sloppy algorithms (mistakes due to lack of clear topology implementation)
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- ArcGIS online software because it allows you to share your work with the GIS community.
- Analysis Tools
- Data is easily exportable to other forms of data (KML, Spreadsheet, etc.) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
- Some of the analysis tools are only available in the professional version but they are basic functions which should be in the basic version of the software
- One analysis tool in particular is the Network Analyst Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I've been using ArcGIS since version 8.0, and ArcView 3.2 before that. Whether you want to admit it or not, the ArcGIS platform is THE commercial software package of the GIS world. ArcGIS is an incredibly powerful suite of applications and tools that all work together seamlessly for a complete desktop, mobile, and web solution - and this is what I like about it the most.
The Python (arcpy) integration and REST API are incredibly powerful and fun to work with, allowing you programatic access to your data in a variety of ways. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I have a few beefs with ArcGIS, I challenge you to find a real user that doesn't.
1. The online help/forum presence - just when you get used to the online help, they change it, often resulting in horrible redirects and 404s. Their forums have been a mess for years, and they have only gotten worse.
2. Publishing a geoprocessing task from Desktop to Server is about the most unintuitive workflow ever, and it has always been that bad. I struggle to make sense of this for clients regularly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
ESRI has been a staple software for me since 2007. Overall it is easy to use, there is always more than one way to complete a task, and just about anyone can learn it. I have formal training and a degree in Geography that was centered on ArcGIS. I use the software to build maps and maintain all of my geospatial data throughout the upper midwest region. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
BUGS. Being one of the only paid GIS softwares, there is no real competition. This always leads to lack of innovation and bugs in the software releases. That is my only big gripe. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
ArcGIS is the only GIS worth having. There's almost no other product that comes close, although I once had to use quantum GIS while on a Mac.
ArcGIS helps me input huge amounts of data and use it two ways. I'm a writer. The first way is to understand my audience for marketing. I can see if my target audience is all clustered in one are and overlay demographics, egg, and with this greater understanding of them, I get to write messages that I feel are more compelling and valuable to what they actually care about. That's the marketing side.
The second side is the storytelling. I'm also a freelance journalist and the GIS helps me develop correlations that can help tell a story. I can show you where all the voters are behaving a certain way, for instance, as it correlates to their income average in a particular area. The uses for storytelling are really endless, depending on what data you can get and put in there. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The system is a little count in the sense it's hard to use and you have to take training. I've taken a few ArcGIS classes and you definitely have to keep up o. The software. It's also moving to online, which dumbs down the deli films although this gives way more people way more access to making maps, so that's good. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Ability create and edit my own layers and the analyst toolbars are the strongest capabilities in ESRI ArcMap (a program I use the most). The ability to interface with other ESRI programs within one (for example ArcCatalog or ArcGIS online while using ArcMAP) is incredibly convenient. I am also able to easily able to convert and merge ESRI products with other industry programs such as AutoCAD, Google Sketchup, or handheld devices (such as Trimble). Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I dislike how generally slow that ESRI products are when running on a personal computer. Additionally, I find the ESRI website and users guides to be very sparse, or they simply route you back to a page you were previously on. Help and troubleshooting are almost non-existent, which is uprising for such a robust range of products. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
