Is a sales or operations team paying for GIS it never opens? For a team holding an ArcGIS seat or two, the answer depends on what happens inside that seat each week.
Full GIS, in Esri’s sense, means a desktop analysis suite, scripting tools and a cloud service billed in credits, all licensed per user every year. Most business teams use it to plot a customer list, shade regions by a number, draw territories and share the result. Nine lighter tools cover those jobs, and five of the nine cost a business nothing to start using.
What Full GIS Includes
Two parts of an ArcGIS license account for most of what a business team pays for and skips.
Geoprocessing and Analysis Tools
Geoprocessing is the set of operations that take map layers and produce new ones, such as buffering, overlaying, clipping and network analysis. ArcGIS Online’s creator-level user types each come with a desktop ArcGIS Pro license, from Basic up to Advanced, and every one of them includes tools to script and automate workflows.
A sales or operations team rarely touches that layer. Its weekly jobs look more like this:
- Plot an account or customer list from a spreadsheet
- Shade ZIP codes, counties or states by a number such as revenue
- Draw and balance sales territories
- Measure what falls within a drive time of a site
- Share a map with people who do not have a license
Licensing and Credits
ArcGIS Online is sold through annual user-type licenses, and the cost of a seat never appears on the page where it is sold. Usage is billed in credits on top of the seat. Batch geocoding, which turns addresses into map points, costs 40 credits per 1,000 addresses, and each drive-time area is charged as it is generated. A CSV file over 4,000 rows cannot go straight onto a map and has to be published as a hosted layer first.
1. Maptitude
Maptitude, from Caliper, covers territory building and demographic analysis for a team that still wants a desktop tool, at a published per-seat price. Caliper’s homepage lists pricing starting at $795. The desktop edition has the deepest analysis toolset among the business mappers here, with territory optimization, clustering and balancing, and a facility location tool. It also syncs two ways with Excel, Access, SQL Server and other databases.
Maptitude is the closest thing here to the software it replaces, and its Mac page describes running it through Windows virtualization. Maptitude Online, which runs in a browser, is the lighter route for a team that wants to leave installs behind.
2. Maptive
Maptive covers the spreadsheet-to-map job for a team with no GIS analyst. It runs entirely in a web browser, and its site says nothing needs installing and no GIS skills are required. The Pro plan is $1,250 a year for one user, and the Team plan is $2,500 a year for five users.
Maps export as PNG, PDF or JPG images, and data exports as xlsx, tsv or csv files.
Having nothing to install cuts both ways. There is no desktop or offline version, so working offline means exporting a PDF of the map beforehand.
3. CARTO
CARTO handles the analysis job for a data or SQL team, and it makes no pretense of being anything other than GIS. The company positions itself as a 100% cloud-native GIS platform. It runs spatial analysis inside the customer’s own data warehouse, such as BigQuery or Snowflake, through low-code Workflows and a map Builder.
That makes CARTO lighter in infrastructure than an Esri deployment, not lighter in skill. The low-code tools still assume a data team that already works in that warehouse and writes SQL. Every plan is priced by quote.
4. Atlas
Atlas is a browser-based GIS from Atlas AS in Oslo, built for collaborative mapping with travel-time analysis. Its free Starter plan goes further than most free tiers. It includes 3 projects, 3 editors, 5,000 geocoding runs a month and 1,000 travel-time requests a month, and Atlas labels it free forever.
The limits arrive with growth. Geocoding stays capped each month on paid plans too, at 10,000 runs on Pro and 25,000 on Team. Atlas’s pages also do not confirm any built-in census or demographic data, so a team that needs population figures brings its own tables.
5. Mapline
Mapline pairs spreadsheet mapping with the office workflow around it. Rows come in by paste or by Excel and CSV import, and the Pro plan adds workflow automation, forms, e-signatures and scheduling, for teams that gather information in the field as well as map it.
Its free Starter plan does not expire and needs no credit card, so a team can load a real account list before any sales call.
6. Google Earth Pro
Google Earth Pro covers the viewing and presenting job, and it is free on PC, Mac and Linux. It imports and exports GIS data, turns a CSV of addresses into placemarks, and lets a team go back in time with historical imagery.
It has a firm end date. Google says Google Earth Pro on desktop will no longer be available for download beginning June 25, 2027. Address import works only for locations in seven countries, and there are no business analysis tools.
7. BatchGeo
BatchGeo covers the lightest job on the list, plotting a pasted set of addresses on a Google map. Rows copied from Excel or Google Sheets geocode into pins with a shareable link, and the free plan needs no install. The Pro plan is $99 a month.
There are no territory or drive-time tools. Updating a map means opening the edit link, changing the data and saving again.
8. Kepler.gl
Kepler.gl is free under its MIT open-source license and built for visualizing very large point sets. It runs in the browser, can render millions of points, and keeps data on the user’s own machine. It is also a JavaScript library, so developers can build it into their own apps.
The file must already include latitude and longitude, because Kepler.gl does not geocode addresses. There is no vendor support.
9. Felt
Felt covers shared maps for a team that works partly in the field, with a browser app plus iOS and Android apps. It now markets itself as AI-native GIS software, and its no-code side handles uploads, styling, dashboards and H3 hexagon grids. For a team leaving Esri, that label is a clue that Felt is heading closer to full GIS than most tools here.
Felt quotes prices rather than publishing them, and drive-time areas and built-in census attributes are not confirmed on its pages.
Esri Alternatives Side by Side
The table sets the nine side by side on where they run and what a first seat costs.
| Tool | Job it covers | Desktop or browser | Entry price or free option |
| Maptitude | Territories and demographic analysis | Windows desktop, plus Maptitude Online | From $795 |
| Maptive | Spreadsheet mapping and sharing | Browser | Pro $1,250 a year, one user |
| CARTO | Warehouse analysis for data teams | Browser | Quote |
| Atlas | Collaborative mapping with travel time | Browser | Free Starter plan |
| Mapline | Spreadsheet mapping plus forms and workflows | Browser | Free Starter, paid plans by quote |
| Google Earth Pro | Viewing and presenting places | Desktop | Free, downloads end June 25, 2027 |
| BatchGeo | Plotting pasted addresses | Browser | Free plan, Pro $99 a month |
| Kepler.gl | Visualizing very large point sets | Browser | Free, open source |
| Felt | Shared maps with field apps | Browser, iOS and Android | Quote |
When a Team Still Needs Esri
Some teams should keep the seat. Staying put makes sense when:
- The work includes geoprocessing on the team’s own layers, such as network analysis or overlays, not just colored maps.
- Partners, utilities or public agencies exchange data in ArcGIS formats and expect it back that way.
- Someone on the team opens Business Analyst’s bundled demographic reports every week and would have to rebuy that data elsewhere.
- The company runs ArcGIS Enterprise and the seat is part of a wider deployment.
For a team that needs full GIS but not the annual license, QGIS is the free, open-source desktop route, though it trades license cost for learning time.
