We read much from the providers of mapping and GIS products. But have you ever wondered the difference? I have both wondered and, through this blog, been asked that exact question. I thought it was time to put this question to bed and to ask each of the main map/GIS providers a set of questions in an effort to better understand the similarities and differences.
GIS/Map Providers Wondering the Difference?
I approached the following 8 companies:
- Esri
- Pitney Bowes
- Boundless
- GIS Cloud
- Carto
- Mapbox
- Mango
- Hexagon Geospatial (no response received)
and asked the following 6 questions:
- Can you summarize your core offering?
- What differentiates you from your competition?
- Does your offering extend or compliment other GIS or mapping solution? If yes, please elaborate?
- Could you summarize your pricing model?
- There is a growing demand for maps and GIS to integrate with popular business platforms (BI, CRM, EAM) and data. Does your offering play well with other non-GIS/mapping systems?
- Do you have a partner program? Why might your clients turn to your partners for help?
We will roll the answers to the questions out in individual blog posts over the next 2 weeks. It should prove to be a very interesting blog post series.
Read the first article in the series:
Author: Matt Sheehan
Matt Sheehan is a Principal at WebMapSolutions. Matt evangelizes GIS and location intelligence around the world through keynotes, articles, tweets and his books. Follow him on Twitter:

Matt…looking forward to your review of the companies…please feel free to coordinate directly with me and we’ll get you the answers you require.
Thanks,
joe
Thanks Joe. We have two articles now published with one more planned for Thursday. Then the rest of the series will roll out the week of 4/10/17.
Hexagon will be nice to add to the list of providers
Thanks Ahmed. I’ll maybe see if I can get feedback from Hexagon, and add them to the blog series.