Start by deciding what you are buying
Vendors in this category sell quite different things under the same words. Before you compare anyone, work out which of these you actually need. Buying the wrong shape is more expensive than buying the wrong brand.
| Shape | What you get | Right for you if |
|---|---|---|
| A finished product | A working map, a CMS and deployment to web, mobile and kiosk | You want visitors finding things and you do not have a development team to spare |
| An SDK or toolkit | A rendering engine and APIs to build your own experience | You have an app team and a specific experience in mind |
| A positioning platform | Precise indoor location, with mapping built around it | You are tracking assets or people, not just guiding visitors |
| Enterprise GIS | Indoor space as part of a wider spatial data strategy | You already run GIS and have the team to operate it |
The eight criteria that matter
1. Who can edit the map
The single best predictor of whether a wayfinding system is still accurate two years later. If moving a store requires a support ticket, the map goes stale, staff stop trusting it, and visitors go back to asking at the desk.
Ask to see a non-technical person rename a room and publish it, live, in the demo. Some well-known platforms are known for long change cycles and limited admin self-service.
2. Destination data, not just the map
Everyone demos the map. The map is the easy part. The work is the destination database: every room, tenant, department and service, with the names people actually search for, plus categories, opening hours, images and contact details.
Ask how that data gets in, who maintains it, and whether it can sync from a system you already run. This is where projects stall.
3. Routing quality
Check that routes cross floors properly via lifts, escalators and ramps rather than drawing a line through a wall. Check there is a genuine step-free mode, not just a setting. Check what happens when a destination has more than one entrance, and whether the route picks the nearest.
4. What the positioning actually requires
Sub-metre accuracy is a hardware conversation. Beacons have a purchase cost, an installation cost and a battery cycle. That is worth it for asset tracking and some clinical workflows.
For guiding visitors it is often over-specified. Decide what you need before letting a vendor's accuracy figure set your budget. A QR code at a known fixed point gives an exact starting position for nothing.
5. Where it deploys
Web, mobile browser, your own iOS and Android apps, and kiosk are different surfaces with different constraints. Confirm all of them come from the same map and the same content, and that publishing updates all of them at once.
6. Language, properly
If you operate in a bilingual market this is a hard filter and it separates vendors quickly. Ask to see it, do not accept a yes.
- Spelling variants
- Does search match what people genuinely type in the second language, not just the official transliteration?
- Direction of instructions
- Do route steps read right to left where they should?
- Bilingual kiosks
- Does a language switch mirror the layout, or break it?
- Labels in 3D
- Do labels stay legible on a tilted map, or does the text distort?
7. Integrations
Whatever matters in your sector: room booking and calendars for offices, flight information for airports, a CMS or property management system for malls, and SSO everywhere. Ask whether a named connector exists or whether it is API work, and get an honest answer rather than a yes.
8. Getting your data back out
You are signing a multi-year contract for something that will become part of how your building operates. Ask what export exists and in what format. A vendor that cannot answer this is telling you something.
The best indoor wayfinding software depends on the building
There is no single answer to this, and any guide that gives you one is selling something. A platform that is right for a university campus in Norway is not automatically right for a mall in Riyadh, because the hard part is different: timetable integration in one case, bilingual search and tenant churn in the other. What follows is what each of the main platforms is genuinely good at, so you can match one to the building you actually have.
The main platforms, fairly
We compete with these vendors and they are all real products with real customers. Here is where each genuinely fits.
| Platform | Strongest at | Consider carefully if |
|---|---|---|
| Mappedin | Breadth, self-serve editing, retail and venue deployments, strong accessibility conformance | You need a regional partner or a bilingual Arabic experience |
| MapsIndoors | A data platform to build on, Google ecosystem alignment, geo-referenced indoor and outdoor | You have no development team, or you need frequent self-service changes |
| Pointr | Sub-metre positioning, spatial analytics, very large enterprise estates | You do not need beacon-grade accuracy and would rather not maintain hardware |
| MazeMap | Higher education, timetable and room booking integration | You are outside education, or 3D matters to you |
| Concept3D | Campus tours, admissions and recruitment experiences | Operational wayfinding is the priority rather than marketing |
| Esri ArcGIS Indoors | Organisations with a GIS team and an enterprise spatial strategy | A facilities coordinator will be running it day to day |
| Mapwise | 2D and 3D from one map, bilingual English and Arabic with native RTL, regional delivery | You need sub-metre blue dot as a hard requirement |
Where Mapwise fits
We are the right choice when the visitor experience and the second language both matter, and when you want a working product rather than a toolkit.
- One map, two views
- 2D and 3D from the same floor plan, points of interest and routing graph. Not a premium tier, not a separate build.
- Bilingual by design
- Predictive search in English and Arabic with native RTL, and billboarded labels that stay readable at any 3D angle.
- Four surfaces, one map
- Web, iOS, Android and kiosk, with QR handoff transferring a live route from kiosk to phone with no app download.
- Start from what you have
- Import .dwg, .pdf, GeoJSON or images.
- Proven at scale
- Two million square metres mapped at Hamad International Airport, serving over 30 million passengers a year.
We are not the right choice if sub-metre blue dot positioning is a hard requirement, or if you need indoor space modelled inside an existing enterprise GIS estate. We will tell you that in the first call rather than the third.
New to the category? Start with indoor wayfinding explained. Evaluating for a specific venue type, see hospital wayfinding, mall wayfinding, airport wayfinding, or all five venue types. Or browse the full platform.