Felt vs StoryMapJS
Felt
felt.comStoryMapJS
storymap.knightlab.comSide by side
| Figure | Felt | StoryMapJS |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $199/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 7 | 1 |
| Spec score · Interactive Map Software | 9.3 (#3) | 7.1 (#37) |
| Spec score · Map Creation Software | 9.3 (#3) | 7.2 (#23) |
| Founded | 2021 | 2013 |
| Headquarters | Oakland, California, United States | Evanston, Illinois, United States |
| Intended users | Felt lists GIS teams, field and operations teams, data science and analytics teams, product and engineering teams, and large GIS organizations as audiences. | Knight Lab describes StoryMapJS as a tool for journalists and storytellers whose stories depend on place. |
| Support | Professional includes priority email and chat support and a one-hour onboarding session; Enterprise includes a dedicated customer success manager, technical support, and custom onboarding. | Knight Lab points users to a StoryMapJS support forum and a private support request form. |
Plans
Felt
- FreeFree
- PersonalFree
- Team$199 a month
- Business$599 a month
- Platform$1,000 a month
- Enterprise$1,250 a month
- ProfessionalPrice not published
In their own words
Felt
Felt is a cloud-based GIS platform for building maps, dashboards, and apps from spatial data. It combines spatial SQL and cross-table analysis with plain-language analysis through Felt AI. Connections include Amazon S3, BigQuery, Databricks, Esri, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, MS SQL, Postgres, Snowflake, STAC, WFS, WMTS, Wherobots, and Amazon Redshift. A QGIS plugin carries styling, symbology, and layer structure into Felt when publishing. Its iOS and Android Field App supports surveys, GPS capture, geotagged photos, offline work, and later syncing. Teams can collaborate on maps in real time, share them, use threaded comments, and manage permissions. The Personal plan is free forever and allows unlimited maps and sharing, but it is for personal use and excludes uploads of your own data files. Professional and Enterprise are annual contracts with prices not published; Professional lists 25 GB monthly data processing and 100K monthly map views. A seven-day trial is listed. Felt supports web, desktop, mobile, API, and self-hosted platforms.
StoryMapJS
StoryMapJS is a free, open-source web tool for building narratives tied to place. A story is arranged as slides, each representing a segment and carrying a map location that readers can follow. Slides can contain photos, video, sound, tweets, and other embedded media. Authors search for locations by name and adjust the position by dragging a map pin. Stories may use ordinary cartographic maps or large images, including gigapixel maps. Basemap choices include OpenStreetMap Standard and Cooper Hewitt Watercolor, with Mapbox maps also supported. OpenStreetMap Standard is listed as a no-cost option; Mapbox and Stadia basemaps may have usage-based fees. The publishing tool supplies HTML for embedding a finished StoryMap on another website. The authoring tool asks permission to store files in the user’s Google Drive. StoryMapJS runs on the web, supports custom data import and built-in location data, and offers interactive output, web embedding, HTML export, and brand customization. Knight Lab describes it for journalists and storytellers whose work depends on place.