I build Topologis. You should read this post knowing that, and weighing what I say accordingly. I’ve tried to be fair about where Felt is better, because if I’m not, you’ll close the tab, and rightly so.
Here’s the short version. Felt is a cloud-native GIS platform with the best map editing experience in the category. Topologis is a narrower tool focused on one job: shipping client-facing maps with embeds, for a flat per-editor price. If you’re choosing between them, it mostly comes down to which job you’re hiring the tool for.
The long version is below.
The one-line summary of each
Felt is a full modern GIS. Upload data, do spatial analysis (buffer, clip, dissolve, intersect), draw on maps, collaborate in real time, build dashboards, connect to cloud data warehouses on the Enterprise tier. It’s aimed at teams that want one tool for the whole geospatial workflow.
Topologis is a publishing layer. Import, style, curate a view for a specific audience, share via link or embed. No spatial analysis, no dashboards, no SQL. It’s aimed at people who already have their data and need to get it in front of a client.
If that distinction is clear to you, you probably already know which one fits. If it isn’t, keep reading.
At a glance
| Felt | Topologis | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $200/mo annual ($250/mo monthly) | $29/editor/mo ($290/year per editor) |
| Trial | 7-day Enterprise, downgrades to Free | 14-day full access, no credit card |
| Shared links after trial | Data locked, maps watermarked | Stay live, editing goes read-only |
| Editors included | 3 (Team plan) | Pay per seat, no minimum |
| Members / viewers | 25 named members | Unlimited anonymous viewers |
| Embeds | Enterprise only | Included, with domain allowlist |
| Map views/month | 10,000 cap (Team) | Unlimited |
| Storage | 25 GB (Team) | 10 GB per editor seat |
| Data processing meter | 5 GB/mo (file size × runs) | None |
| Spatial analysis | Buffer, clip, dissolve, intersect, etc. | None |
| Real-time collaboration | Yes (live cursors) | No (async) |
| Drawing tools | Strong | Basic |
| Import (CSV/Shapefile/GeoPackage) | Solid | More forgiving on CRS and encoding |
| Viewer filter controls | Limited | Per-filter, per-view toggle |
| Database connections | Postgres, Snowflake, BigQuery (Enterprise) | Google Sheets + URL refresh |
| Data location | United States | Germany (EU) |
| Best for | Full GIS workflow, analysis, storytelling | Client-facing maps with embeds |
Pricing: where the real decision happens
This is almost always what makes or breaks the choice, so I’ll lead with it.
Felt
Felt has three tiers: Free, Team, and Enterprise.
The Free plan doesn’t allow data uploads. You can draw on basemaps and share those, but you can’t import a GeoJSON or a CSV. This means the actual trial is Felt’s 7-day Enterprise trial, after which your account downgrades to the Free plan and your uploaded data becomes inaccessible (the maps get watermarked with grey tiles).
The Team plan is $200/month annual or $250/month monthly. That’s $2,400 to $3,000/year committed up front. It includes 3 editors, 25 members, 25 GB of hosting, 5 GB/month of data processing (measured as file size times number of “runs”), and 10,000 map views per month.
The Enterprise plan is quote-based. This is where embeds live. Also SSO, API access, database connections, dashboards, and higher usage caps.
Topologis
One plan: $29/editor/month, or $290/year per editor (roughly 17% off for annual). 14-day trial with no credit card required. When the trial ends, projects go read-only but shared links stay live, which means your client’s embed keeps working whether you subscribe or not.
Everything is included at that price: embeds with domain allowlist, secret links with revoke and expiry, PIN-protected views, scheduled refresh, unlimited viewers, 10 GB of storage per editor seat.
The honest comparison
For a solo consultant: $29/month versus $200/month is a real difference. That’s $2,052/year saved.
For a 3-person agency: $87/month versus $200/month. Still meaningful.
For a 5-person team: Topologis is $145/month. Felt’s Team plan caps at 3 editors, so you’d be on Enterprise, which is quote-based and almost certainly several times more.
Where Felt wins on pricing: if you have 10+ members who need to view and comment on maps as named users inside the product (not as external viewers of shared links), Felt’s 25-member inclusion in the Team plan is reasonable value. Topologis treats everyone outside the editor seats as an anonymous viewer, which is the right model for client-facing work but not for internal team collaboration with named commenters.
Embedding: the wedge I built the whole product around
Felt does not include embeds on the Team plan. Embedding a Felt map on a website requires Enterprise. Felt’s own help center documents this.
Topologis includes embeds on the base $29/editor plan, with domain allowlist, revoke, and token rotation.
This is the single feature difference that drove me to build Topologis. A small agency delivering a client map typically wants a link and an iframe snippet on the client’s website. On Felt, getting to an iframe means a sales call and a contract in the tens of thousands. On Topologis, it’s in the plan. If your deliverables don’t involve embeds, this gap doesn’t matter to you. If they do, it’s decisive.
What Felt is genuinely better at
I want to be specific here, because it’s the part people writing vendor comparisons usually fudge.
Drawing tools. Felt’s drawing experience is the best in the category. Marker, highlighter, route-snapping, clip, hand-drawn annotations that feel natural. If your deliverable involves significant annotation on top of data, Felt is a joy to use and Topologis isn’t trying to compete here.
Spatial analysis. Felt has buffer, clip, dissolve, intersect, count points, centroid, bounds, subtract. Topologis has none of these. If your workflow includes “compute the area within 500m of each bus stop” or “find polygons that intersect these points,” Felt does this in the UI. In Topologis, you’d do this in QGIS or Python before importing.
Real-time collaboration. Two people editing the same Felt map see each other’s cursors and changes live. Topologis doesn’t have live cursors or co-editing. Multiple editors can work on the same project, but it’s async.
Cartography defaults. Felt’s out-of-the-box map style and typography are more refined than Topologis’s. I’ve put work into this and will put more, but Felt has been at it longer and it shows.
Database connections (on Enterprise). Postgres, Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks. If your data lives in a warehouse, Felt Enterprise reads from it live. Topologis has scheduled refresh from URLs and Google Sheets, but no direct warehouse connections.
If any of the above is core to your work, Felt is the right tool and you should stop reading this post.
What Topologis is better at
Embeds at an accessible price. Covered above. This is the main one.
Import forgiveness. I’ve put disproportionate effort into the import pipeline. CSV with a WKT column and a non-standard CRS, Shapefiles with unknown encoding, GeoPackages with multiple layers, Google Sheets with column types that need inference. The import wizard lets you review everything before it commits, and the server handles reprojection, geometry validation, and spatial indexing. Felt’s import is solid but less tolerant of edge cases, especially around CRS and character encoding for non-English data.
Viewer-side controls. In Topologis, each filter and each layer toggle can be exposed to the viewer or baked into the view. You ship an “exec view” with three filters baked in and a “detail view” with ten filters exposed as interactive controls, from the same dataset. Felt’s viewer experience is more uniform, more about consumption than interaction.
Predictable pricing. $29 per editor, unlimited viewers, 10 GB per seat, no usage meters. Felt’s Team plan meters data processing (file size × runs) and caps map views at 10,000/month. If a client’s marketing team embeds your map on a high-traffic page, you can hit that ceiling in a week. In Topologis, views are unlimited.
EU data residency. Topologis hosts in Germany (Hetzner). Felt hosts in the US. For EU agencies with GDPR-sensitive clients, this removes a conversation with legal.
Trial without a credit card, shared links survive trial expiry. Felt’s trial is 7 days of Enterprise followed by auto-downgrade. Topologis is 14 days of full access, and when it ends, your client’s shared link keeps working. This matters because the worst possible user experience is “my trial ended and now my client can’t open the map I sent them last week.”
Who should pick Felt
- Teams doing real GIS analysis where buffer/clip/dissolve are daily operations.
- Cartographers whose deliverables are hand-annotated maps or story maps.
- Organizations with 10+ people who want to collaborate on maps internally as named users.
- Teams with data in cloud warehouses who need live database connections (Enterprise tier).
- Anyone who doesn’t need embeds.
Who should pick Topologis
- Consultants and small agencies shipping client-facing maps.
- Anyone whose deliverable includes an iframe on a client’s website.
- Teams that want flat, predictable per-editor pricing with no usage meters.
- EU-based operations that need EU data hosting.
- Anyone who wants a 14-day no-credit-card trial to actually validate the tool on their data before committing.
The uncomfortable honest answer
Felt is the more capable product. It has a larger team, more features, a longer track record, and a bigger budget. If you listed every feature both tools have and scored them, Felt wins on points.
But “more capable” isn’t the same as “better for your job.” If your job is shipping client deliverables with embeds, Felt’s capability in areas you don’t use doesn’t help you, and its gaps in the areas you do use cost you real money every month. That mismatch is the entire reason Topologis exists.
If I were evaluating these two tools from scratch, I’d ask one question: does my deliverable involve an embedded map on someone else’s website? If yes, Topologis is the direct path. If no, Felt is probably more tool than you need but you’ll be fine there.
FAQ
Can I embed a Felt map without Enterprise?
No. Felt’s help center confirms that embedding is Enterprise-only. Free and Team plans can share via public link but cannot generate an iframe snippet. If you need to embed on a client’s website, either budget for Felt Enterprise (quote-based) or use a tool like Topologis that includes embeds at the base tier.
How much does Felt actually cost for a small team?
Felt’s Team plan is $200/month billed annually or $250/month billed monthly. That’s $2,400-$3,000/year. It includes 3 editors, 25 members, 25 GB of hosting, and 10,000 map views/month. Embeds are not included. Scaling beyond 3 editors requires Enterprise, which is quote-based.
Is Topologis a replacement for Felt?
For most client-delivery workflows, yes. For workflows involving spatial analysis (buffer, clip, dissolve), real-time collaboration, or live database connections, no. Topologis is narrower by design.
Does Topologis have spatial analysis?
No. Not buffer, intersect, dissolve, or similar operations. I deliberately scoped these out to keep the product focused on publishing, not analysis. If you need spatial analysis, do it in QGIS or Python upstream of Topologis, or use Felt.
Where is my data stored?
Topologis hosts in Germany (Hetzner). Felt hosts in the United States. For EU-based organizations under GDPR, Topologis removes a compliance conversation. For US-based organizations, either is fine.
Can I try Topologis without a credit card?
Yes. 14-day trial, no card required. When the trial ends, projects become read-only but any shared links you created during the trial keep working, so your client’s map doesn’t break.
What happens when my Felt trial ends?
Felt’s 7-day trial is actually a trial of the Enterprise plan. When it ends, your account auto-downgrades to the Free plan, which does not allow uploaded data. Your existing maps with uploaded data get watermarked with grey tiles until you upgrade.
What’s the best migration path from Felt to Topologis?
Export your data from Felt as GeoJSON or GeoPackage, then import into Topologis. Styles need to be recreated (the two tools have different styling models), but filter logic and tooltip configuration map over without much pain. For a typical project, this is an afternoon of work.
Methodology and disclosure
I am the founder of Topologis. Pricing and feature claims about Felt were verified against felt.com/pricing and help.felt.com in April 2026. If any of this becomes outdated or inaccurate, email me at contact@topologis.com and I’ll update the post.
If you think I’ve been unfair to Felt somewhere, I’d genuinely like to know. The whole point of writing this instead of a generic marketing page is that I think an honest comparison serves you better than a slanted one, and it only serves that purpose if I actually keep it honest.
