The Esri–or–Code Dilemma: A New Wave of GIS Tools Offers a Third Way

 In GIS circles, the debate is familiar: use the dominant tools, or build your own. With Esri holding an estimated 40–50% of the global GIS software market, most professionals still rely on its powerful but rigid ecosystem. Others turn to QGIS and open-source stacks like PostGIS and Python, which offer flexibility but often require manual workarounds, scripting, and fragmented tooling to replicate full-stack workflows.

Nearly every corner of tech has modernized—with intuitive, collaborative, cloud-native tools replacing legacy systems. But in GIS, many professionals are still stuck using software that looks and feels like it hasn’t changed since the ‘90s. It’s no wonder entire Reddit threads are dedicated to the question: Why hasn’t GIS moved on?

That shift is finally happening. A new generation of platforms is reimagining GIS for today’s team, focusing on usability, automation, and real-time collaboration.

One of them is Atlas, a European GIS platform releasing several major features this week. Its new Workflows engine, launching Thursday, lets users build and automate spatial analysis chains without writing a single line of code. It’s paired with Relations (launching tomorrow) for linking datasets, as well as newly released Forms (for structured field data) and Mobile Views (a builder for interactive mobile map apps). Together, these tools bring full geospatial capability to modern teams — no dev team required.

“The GIS community is filled with highly skilled professionals spending hours writing scripts just to keep basic workflows running,” said Fredrik Moger, CEO of Atlas. ”We want to get them back to doing the work that actually matters.”