Hosted vs on-premise web GIS: the hosted offer or LizPack Entreprise

Hosted vs on-premise web GIS: two forms, one and the same infrastructure

LizPack is an open source geospatial infrastructure: it deploys, connects, updates and monitors well-established free software (Lizmap, QGIS Server, PostGIS, GeoServer, QField), without replacing any of it. This infrastructure is available in two forms, which share the same software and the same principles. The table below shows, point by point, how the two forms differ in practice.

In both cases, your projects remain standard QGIS projects and your databases remain standard PostgreSQL databases. Nothing is locked into a proprietary format. The choice is therefore not a final one: you can start with one form and move to the other later, without having to rebuild your maps from scratch.

Criterion 1: how sensitive your data is

This is often the first criterion, and sometimes the only one that really matters. Before looking at anything else, ask yourself the following three questions.

• Does an internal rule or a regulation require you to keep this data on your own infrastructure? If so, LizPack Entreprise answers that requirement directly: maps, databases, files and backups all stay on your infrastructure, or on the storage that you choose.
• Is your data public, or meant to become public? Information maps, local government plans, open data: the hosted offer is a good fit, with all traffic over HTTPS, isolated spaces for each customer and databases reached over encrypted connections.
• Do you require a certification or a specific server location? This information does not appear on our public pages: ask the support team about it before subscribing to the hosted offer, or choose LizPack Entreprise, where the server is your own.

The guide Security of GIS hosting at LizPack describes in detail the protections of the hosted offer, and On-premise GIS and data sovereignty explores more deeply the reasons for keeping your data in-house.

Criterion 2: your directory and how accounts are managed

In an organization of just a few people, accounts created by hand are perfectly sufficient. In a public administration or a large company, however, accounts live in a central directory, and every new tool that asks for its own passwords is one more problem for the IT department to manage, secure and clean up when people leave.

On the hosted offer, each person uses a LizPack account. The same account opens both the customer area and LizPack Field. On the LizPack Map Pro plan, you can invite up to five collaborators; the Enterprise plan of the hosted offer advertises unlimited team members. Who can view which maps is then configured in the Lizmap administration.

LizPack Entreprise connects to your directory: Active Directory, LDAP or OpenID Connect, for example with Entra ID or Keycloak. Roles, groups and access are managed map by map. When an employee leaves the organization and their account is disabled in the directory, they lose access to the maps at the same moment, without anyone having to remember to remove them by hand.

If signing in through your own directory is a requirement of your IT department, that alone is a strong argument in favor of LizPack Entreprise.

Criterion 3: the technical team you have available

The hosted offer is designed for teams that do not have a system administrator, or that do not want to tie one up with their maps. LizPack installs and maintains Lizmap, QGIS Server, PostGIS and the certificate; you never access the server itself. Everything is done from the customer area, the online file manager and the LizPack Publisher plugin for QGIS.

LizPack Entreprise greatly reduces the amount of administration work, but it does not eliminate it. Someone in your organization needs to be able to:

• order or reserve a server that meets the system requirements;
• give it administrator access on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or 24.04 LTS and open ports 80 and 443;
• install the portal from a Windows 10 or 11 workstation with the portal manager, then create the first administrator account;
• connect the directory and define the roles;
• decide on updates and start them;
• monitor disk space and check the backups.

These tasks only come up from time to time: the portal and the portal manager do most of the heavy lifting. They do, however, assume a person who is comfortable with a Linux server and with the organization's network.

Criterion 4: the server required for LizPack Entreprise

If you are leaning toward an on-premise installation, first check that you are able to provide the server. The system requirements are published on the LizPack Entreprise page:

• an x86_64 (amd64) processor; ARM servers are not supported;
• Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or 24.04 LTS, with administrator access;
• an NVMe or SSD disk, never a mechanical hard drive;
• ports 80 and 443 open.

GeoServer on its own reserves 4 to 8 GB of memory, and LizPack Field needs another 6 GB. If your license includes both of these products, start from the recommended profile. If in doubt, contact LizPack before ordering your server.

The volume of stored imagery (orthophotos, rasters) is often what tips the balance from one profile to the next. A department that mainly publishes vector data will fit within the minimum profile; a department that distributes orthophotos covering an entire territory should aim for the intensive imagery profile.

Criterion 5: budget, and the internet connection

The two forms cannot be compared line by line, because they do not put the same things on your side of the ledger. The table below lists, item by item, what each form includes and what remains your responsibility.

For a small team, the hosted offer is almost always the cheaper option: a few dozen dollars per month, with no server to buy and no administration time to spend. LizPack Entreprise becomes relevant when the number of maps, accounts or data justifies a dedicated server, or when one of the previous criteria makes an on-premise installation mandatory. The guide The cost of an open source web GIS helps you put figures on both options, and Understanding LizPack plans and quotas explains the pricing grids of the hosted offer in detail.

A hosted map can be reached anywhere there is internet access, which is an advantage for a public portal or for teams spread across several locations. It is also a dependency: without a connection, there is no online map (field data collection with QField, on the other hand, works offline and synchronizes once the network is back).

With LizPack Entreprise, internet access is required to install and update the portal. In day-to-day use, your users' workstations only need to be able to reach your server. This is a point worth considering for an internal network, or for a site where the outside connection is limited.

Product by product: what changes between the two forms

Not every LizPack solution is offered in the same way in both forms. Here is, for each of them, what the product pages say.

LizPack Catalogue is a special case: it is deployed in both forms on quotation, and the choice depends above all on where your data needs to run. In both cases, it is built on GeoNode and GeoServer, with a store added by LizPack.

Two typical situations

To make these criteria more concrete, here are two fictional organizations and the form that the product pages point each of them toward.

• A six-person engineering consultancy. It publishes maps for its clients and collects data in the field. Its data is not subject to any location requirement, it has no system administrator, and it wants a predictable monthly budget. The hosted offer suits it: a LizPack Map Pro plan for two instances and five collaborators, LizPack Field Pro for the PostGIS connection, and GeoServer Cloud within its free tier.
• A regional administration. Its employees sign in through Active Directory, its IT department requires the data to stay on its own servers, and it distributes orthophotos across its entire territory. LizPack Entreprise suits it, on a server matching the intensive imagery profile (16 vCPU, 64 GB of memory, 1 to 2 TB of NVMe disk), with LizPack Field and GeoServer included in the license.

Between these two extremes, many situations are open to discussion. The simplest approach is often to start with the hosted offer to validate how the maps are actually used, as described in the last section, and then to reassess.

Decision grid

In summary, here is how the criteria point toward one choice or the other. A single answer in the right-hand column can be enough on its own to justify LizPack Entreprise.

Start hosted, move on-premise later

Being undecided does not have to stop you from getting started. A project can begin on the hosted offer to validate how it is used, then move on-premise once the portal becomes a central tool for the organization. This move is possible because nothing is proprietary: QGIS projects, PostgreSQL databases and OGC services can all be taken over exactly as they are.

1. Test on the hosted offer. A LizPack Map instance is online in about four minutes; GeoServer Cloud and LizPack Field have free tiers.
2. Build the projects. QGIS projects configured with the Lizmap plugin, PostGIS databases and field collection projects are the same in both forms.
3. Talk to LizPack. Describe your needs through the help center: number of maps, number of accounts, field data collection.
4. Prepare the server according to the system requirements, then install the portal with the portal manager and your license.
5. Bring the projects over. Create the instances, connect the directory and publish your projects with LizPack Publisher.

The guide Host Lizmap or install it yourself also compares these two forms with a third option: installing Lizmap entirely on your own, without LizPack. And to see how all the solutions fit together, read How LizPack solutions complement each other.

Frequently asked questions