5 Great Options for Overlaying Data on Geographical or GIS Maps

One of the most powerful data visualizations available today is Geographic Information System (GIS) maps, which allows data to be displayed on custom or geographical maps. Overlaying data on custom maps is useful for a variety of groups, whether you’re an online retailer who needs to visualize the locations from which orders are being source, a political candidate who wants to visualize poll data, or a doctor who needs to visualize disease outbreak locations.

At 5000fish, when customers come to us and present GIS mapping as a core feature for their business intelligence (BI) solution, we’re very upfront about the fact that Yurbi cannot overlay data on custom or geographical maps at this time. Though this feature is on Yurbi’s product roadmap and is slated to be released in Q3 of 2016, it is not a current capability. However, if Yurbi is a great fit for a customer in its remaining core categories, we will often recommend that the customer integrate Yurbi with an outside custom mapping tool versus purchasing a more expensive BI solution.

If you’re searching for an integrable mapping solution, check out the below list of our top picks for custom mapping. (Note: The below solutions range in price from free to expensive.)

1. Microsoft Power BI Desktop: Power BI Desktop is the free version (Pro is $10 per month) but in either version you can create maps that display from an excel like dataset.
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2. Colore Maps: Colore is a free web-based mapping tool that allows users to quickly upload spreadsheet data and choose a Colore map template to display the data.
3. Carto: Carto (formerly CartoDB) is a more advanced SaaS mapping tool that not only has simple, web-based custom mapping capabilities but also has SQL mapping and Map API capabilities. Carto is set up as a freemium model that allows users to access more advanced features if they pay a fee.
4. Mapbox: Mapbox is an open source mapping platform for custom designed maps that has both free and paid versions. This tool was specifically built for developers who want to include mapping capabilities in their applications, without the hassle of building the mapping capabilities on their own.
5. Maptive: Maptive is a cloud-based mapping solution that allows users to quickly transform small or large sets of raw data into custom Google maps.

Each of these solutions allows users to easily transform data into different types of maps online. These map types range from heat maps, to pin and polygon maps, and can be shared via links. Each solution’s web-based links can be integrated into the Yurbi dashboard, which is a workable solution for those seeking custom mapping capabilities until we release our mapping feature later this year.

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