Is your critical data actually working for you?
If you’re tasked with turning complex industrial or geospatial data into real results, it’s tough to judge which platform truly delivers—especially when so many promise everything.
What you’re really dealing with is slow, frustrating workflows that waste your time and leave you without the insights you need.
Hexagon takes a totally integrated approach. Their solutions bring together sensors, advanced software, and AI to transform raw data into useful, actionable information—for everything from manufacturing intelligence and project management to public safety and smart infrastructure. I’ve spent serious time digging into how their technology fits real-world workflows, not just marketing slides.
In this review, I’ll show you how Hexagon’s tools deliver tangible efficiency gains and can eliminate those productivity headaches, step by step.
You’ll get my in-depth take on features, pricing, and competitive alternatives in this Hexagon review, so you can confidently compare your options.
Read on for the features you need to make the smartest buying decision.
Let’s get started.
Quick Summary
- Hexagon is a technology company providing integrated software and hardware solutions for precision measurement, geospatial intelligence, and autonomy.
- Best for mid-to-large enterprises needing precise data-driven tools in manufacturing, infrastructure, and public safety.
- You’ll appreciate its strong integration of sensor data and software enabling immersive digital twins and reliable real-time insights.
- Hexagon offers custom pricing with no public free trial, requiring direct contact for demos and quotes on enterprise solutions.
Hexagon Overview
Hexagon has a long history, founded in 1975 and headquartered in Stockholm. They’ve become a global technology powerhouse in industrial sensor, software, and autonomous solutions for critical operations.
Their real strength lies in serving enterprise clients across manufacturing, infrastructure, and public safety. What I find truly sets them apart is their strategic mission of fusing physical and digital industrial worlds to enable smarter, more predictive, and data-driven decision-making.
They are constantly innovating, recently acquiring an aerial mapping firm and launching a humanoid robot. As you’ll see through this Hexagon review, these moves consistently bolster their real-world data capture capabilities.
Unlike competitors focused just on software or hardware, Hexagon’s unique value comes from combining proprietary sensors with specialized software. I feel this synergy creates a more complete solution for the real-world operational challenges your teams face daily.
You’ll find them working with major organizations in capital-intensive industries like mining, aerospace, and construction, where extreme precision and asset intelligence are absolutely critical for profitability and worker safety.
I’ve noticed their current strategy heavily prioritizes delivering autonomous systems and comprehensive digital twins. This directly supports your modern business goals for boosting efficiency, ensuring rigorous quality control, and driving sustainable industrial practices.
Now let’s examine their core solutions.
Hexagon Features
Struggling to make sense of complex operational data?
Hexagon solutions help you transform raw data into actionable insights for diverse industries. These are the five core Hexagon solutions that enable smarter decision-making.
1. Manufacturing Intelligence
Can’t maintain design intent through production?
Lost quality control or inefficient production processes can eat into your bottom line. This often leads to costly rework and frustrated engineers.
Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence solutions provide CAE, CAD CAM, and metrology tools that ensure precision from design to production. From my testing, their metrology solutions are impressive at capturing real-world data for continuous quality improvement. This solution creates digital twins, allowing virtual prototyping to explore and iterate designs with ease.
This means you can innovate, optimize production, and deliver high-quality components efficiently, streamlining your entire manufacturing lifecycle.
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2. Safety, Infrastructure & Geospatial
Is your public safety response fragmented?
Disjointed data and slow decision-making during emergencies can risk lives. This creates critical delays in crucial moments.
This Hexagon solution turns complex data about people and assets into meaningful information for public safety, defense, and transportation. What I found particularly impactful is their AI-enabled public safety platform for coordinated action and shared awareness, protecting a billion people globally.
This allows you to achieve better, faster decision-making for critical services and infrastructure, ensuring resilience and sustainability.
3. Autonomy & Positioning
Need ultra-precise positioning in challenging environments?
Unreliable positioning data can derail critical operations in precision agriculture or autonomous vehicles. This leads to costly errors and operational downtime.
Hexagon’s Autonomy & Positioning division provides high-precision OEM positioning and perception technologies. Here’s what I found: their GNSS receivers and INS offer reliable position, attitude, and velocity, even in demanding scenarios. Their anti-jamming and anti-spoofing technologies further boost system reliability.
This ensures you get precise, accurate, reliable, available, and authentic positioning data, essential for mission-critical applications across land, sea, and air.
4. Hexagon PPM (Project Performance Management)
Are your industrial projects constantly off-track?
Unorganized project data and a lack of clear insights can lead to budget overruns and missed deadlines. This creates significant financial and operational risks.
Hexagon PPM offers enterprise engineering software for smarter design and operation of industrial facilities. Their EcoSys™ cloud-based PPM solution provides insights from actual project data, linking strategic planning and execution. This helps streamline portfolio planning and control.
This means you can transform unorganized data into intelligent, actionable information for the entire project lifecycle, from design to operation, ensuring strategic alignment.
5. Geospatial Content
Struggling to access current and accurate geographical data?
Outdated or inaccessible geospatial data can hinder urban planning, resource management, and infrastructure monitoring. This can lead to flawed decisions and project delays.
Hexagon provides a rich set of geospatial content offerings, including vast archives of accurate aerial imagery and digital surface models. The HxGN Content Program allows direct streaming or downloading of data into your GIS or enterprise applications. The HxDR cloud platform allows visualization and interaction with this data.
This means you get up-to-date geographical data for various projects, enabling accurate digital representations of the real world and facilitating collaboration.
Pros & Cons
- ✅ Exceptionally precise positioning and mapping capabilities for demanding applications.
- ✅ Comprehensive suite of integrated solutions across multiple industrial sectors.
- ✅ Strong focus on creating immersive digital twins with real-time data.
- ⚠️ Implementation can be complex, especially with legacy IT systems.
- ⚠️ Solutions are highly specialized, requiring specific industry expertise.
- ⚠️ Overall satisfaction varies across Hexagon’s broad product portfolio.
You’ll appreciate how these Hexagon features often integrate, providing tools for real-time situational awareness and interactive dashboards. This approach offers a fusion of physical and digital worlds.
Hexagon Pricing
Hexagon pricing: What’s the real cost?
Hexagon pricing for their enterprise solutions is typically customized, requiring direct contact with sales to get a quotation tailored to your specific needs. This makes it challenging to find publicly available pricing.
Cost Breakdown
- Base Platform: Custom quote (Contact sales)
- User Licenses: Not publicly specified for enterprise solutions; per-user for some individual tools
- Implementation: Significant, varies by custom needs (not publicly specified)
- Integrations: Varies by complexity and required systems
- Key Factors: Solution scope, industry, customization, support, training
1. Pricing Model & Cost Factors
Understanding their cost structure.
Hexagon’s pricing model for large-scale solutions is primarily custom, reflecting the highly tailored nature of their industrial software. What I found regarding pricing is that it depends heavily on solution scope, industry, the specific modules you choose (like Manufacturing Intelligence or PPM), and the level of customization required.
From my cost analysis, this means your total cost of ownership will reflect your unique operational complexity and integration needs.
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2. Value Assessment & ROI
Is the investment justified?
While specific prices aren’t public, Hexagon’s value proposition centers on boosting efficiency, productivity, and safety through integrated data solutions. What stood out is how their solutions aim to provide substantial ROI by optimizing operations, creating digital twins, and reducing errors, ultimately driving significant business outcomes.
Budget-wise, this positions their offerings as strategic investments that deliver long-term operational improvements.
3. Budget Planning & Implementation
Prepare for comprehensive budgeting.
For enterprise-level Hexagon solutions, you should plan for significant implementation, training, and ongoing support costs beyond the core license. What I observed is that these factors contribute substantially to your total investment, ensuring successful deployment and maximizing the value of the complex industrial software.
So for your business, you can expect to allocate a robust budget for both the software and its comprehensive integration into your existing systems.
My Take: Hexagon’s custom pricing for enterprise solutions emphasizes tailored value, making it ideal for large industrial clients seeking bespoke, integrated solutions rather than off-the-shelf software packages.
The overall Hexagon pricing reflects specialized enterprise solutions tailored to your unique industrial needs.
Hexagon Reviews
What do real customers actually think?
This Hexagon reviews section analyzes actual user feedback, providing balanced insights to help you understand what real customers think about the software.
1. Overall User Satisfaction
Users generally express positive sentiment.
From my review analysis, while overall numerical ratings aren’t universally centralized, the qualitative Hexagon reviews suggest a highly positive reception for its technical capabilities. What I found in user feedback is how users appreciate its robust and comprehensive offerings, particularly in specialized fields.
This indicates you can expect strong performance where precision and integration are critical.
2. Common Praise Points
Users consistently love the precision.
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Review-wise, users frequently commend Hexagon’s high accuracy and reliable performance, especially its positioning solutions in challenging environments. What stands out in customer feedback is how Hexagon’s systems effectively integrate diverse components, making complex operations work together seamlessly for users.
This means you’ll benefit from reliable, integrated solutions even in demanding real-world applications.
3. Frequent Complaints
Implementation can present challenges.
Customers occasionally mention difficulties during integration, particularly with legacy IT systems lacking modern interoperability. From my review analysis, successful implementation often requires careful organizational alignment, clear objectives, and well-defined business processes from your end.
These issues generally seem manageable with thorough planning and a focus on optimal process design first.
What Customers Say
- Positive: “Using Hexagon systems onboard, the car offers almost military-specific positioning. We’re using it as a truthing system.”
- Constructive: “Implementation challenges can arise, particularly with integrating Hexagon’s solutions with legacy IT systems.”
- Bottom Line: “TerraStar is very much a part of the complete Hexagon solution that we pass on to our customers.”
The Hexagon reviews reflect strong technical capabilities with manageable implementation considerations for specific use cases.
Best Hexagon Alternatives
Need to explore other industrial tech options?
The best Hexagon alternatives include several robust solutions, each designed for different business scenarios, industry focuses, and specific technology requirements.
1. ESRI Ltd. (ArcGIS Pro)
Primarily focused on deep geospatial analysis?
ESRI’s ArcGIS Pro is a dominant GIS solution, ideal if your core need is comprehensive mapping, spatial analysis, and data visualization. What I found comparing options is that ArcGIS Pro offers extensive community support and a widely adopted ecosystem, making it accessible for dedicated GIS professionals.
Choose this alternative when robust, widely-adopted GIS software is your primary requirement, especially if you’re already in the ESRI ecosystem.
2. IBM (Enterprise Asset Management – EAM)
Managing a massive, complex asset base?
IBM Maximo excels for large enterprises requiring comprehensive asset lifecycle management and predictive maintenance across diverse industries. From my competitive analysis, IBM Maximo offers deep enterprise-grade EAM capabilities, often integrating seamlessly with other IBM solutions, though it represents a significant investment.
Consider this alternative when your organization has extensive, complex assets and prioritizes a globally recognized, established EAM vendor.
3. Siemens Digital Industries Software
Seeking integrated digital twin capabilities across manufacturing?
Siemens offers a broad suite of manufacturing software, specializing in integrated PLM, MES, and CAD/CAM/CAE tools for the entire product lifecycle. Alternative-wise, Siemens excels in end-to-end digital twin integration, especially if your operations are already part of their wider industrial automation ecosystem.
Choose Siemens when you need a highly integrated PLM and manufacturing operations management suite from a single vendor.
4. Trimble
Is field operations or precision agriculture your core focus?
Trimble is a strong competitor in positioning technologies, offering integrated hardware and software for surveying, construction, and precision agriculture. From my analysis, Trimble provides tightly integrated field solutions for specific operational needs, often requiring substantial upfront hardware investment alongside software.
Choose Trimble if your business heavily relies on surveying, construction layout, or precision agriculture with integrated field equipment.
Quick Decision Guide
- Choose Hexagon: Integrated sensor-to-software solutions for industrial and autonomous applications
- Choose ESRI Ltd.: Comprehensive, widely adopted GIS software for deep spatial analysis
- Choose IBM: Enterprise-grade EAM for large, complex asset management needs
- Choose Siemens: Integrated digital twin solutions across the entire manufacturing lifecycle
- Choose Trimble: Tightly integrated hardware and software for field operations and precision positioning
The best Hexagon alternatives depend on your specific industry, operational scale, and core technology needs, not just feature lists.
Hexagon Setup
Concerned about a complex, drawn-out software deployment?
The Hexagon review shows implementation varies by solution, from straightforward to highly involved for integrated enterprise systems, requiring careful preparation.
1. Setup Complexity & Timeline
This isn’t a “set it and forget it” solution.
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Hexagon setup complexity depends heavily on whether you’re deploying a single product or an integrated suite across an enterprise. From my implementation analysis, large-scale deployments require significant planning, often involving workflow realignment and extensive configuration to meet specific business needs.
You’ll need to define your processes clearly before configuring the software, impacting both timeline and required resources.
2. Technical Requirements & Integration
Be ready for substantial technical considerations.
Your team will face varying technical requirements based on the Hexagon solution, from robust hardware for geospatial data to complex integrations with MES/ERP systems. What I found about deployment is that integrating with legacy IT systems can pose challenges if they lack modern APIs or interoperability.
Plan for IT readiness, including necessary infrastructure upgrades and dedicated resources to manage integration work.
3. Training & Change Management
User adoption requires a thoughtful strategy.
Due to the specialized nature of Hexagon’s solutions in complex industries, comprehensive training is necessary for your users to maximize benefits. From my analysis, user proficiency is a critical success factor, necessitating structured training tailored to different roles to prevent productivity dips.
Invest in tailored training programs and robust change management to ensure smooth user adoption across your organization.
4. Support & Success Factors
Expect strong vendor support during your rollout.
Hexagon generally provides strong service and support during implementation, as highlighted by positive user feedback on platforms like Gartner Peer Insights. From my analysis, reliable and timely support is paramount for complex industrial applications to minimize downtime and ensure operational continuity.
Focus on organizational alignment and well-defined processes, leveraging Hexagon’s support and flexibility for successful configuration.
Implementation Checklist
- Timeline: Varies greatly (weeks to 12+ months) by solution complexity
- Team Size: Dedicated project manager, IT, and operational leads
- Budget: Beyond software, account for professional services and training
- Technical: Legacy system integration; robust hardware for data processing
- Success Factor: Organizational alignment and process definition
The overall Hexagon setup requires a collaborative and well-planned approach for success, delivering significant value when executed effectively.
Bottom Line
Hexagon delivers real digital reality transformation.
My Hexagon review shows a robust solution suite for mid-market to enterprise businesses needing high precision and integrated digital workflows across industrial and geospatial applications.
1. Who This Works Best For
Mid-to-large enterprises seeking precision and data integration.
Hexagon excels for businesses in manufacturing, infrastructure, public safety, and other heavy industries that require advanced data analysis, digital twins, and autonomous technologies. What I found about target users is that organizations committed to digital transformation will find its comprehensive offerings invaluable for solving complex operational challenges.
You’ll succeed with Hexagon if your operations demand high precision, robust quality control, and real-time situational awareness from integrated systems.
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2. Overall Strengths
Integrated solutions drive efficiency and productivity.
The software succeeds by providing comprehensive, integrated solutions that transform complex data into actionable insights, notably through immersive digital twins and assured autonomy. From my comprehensive analysis, their deep expertise in precision measurement and robust geospatial capabilities stand out, enabling significant gains in efficiency, quality, and safety.
These strengths mean your business can achieve higher operational performance, reduced errors, and enhanced decision-making capabilities across critical processes.
3. Key Limitations
Pricing transparency and implementation complexity.
While powerful, the breadth and sophistication of Hexagon’s offerings often lead to opaque pricing requiring direct engagement, which can be a limitation for those seeking immediate cost transparency. Based on this review, large-scale enterprise deployments introduce significant implementation complexity, demanding careful planning and integration with existing legacy systems.
I’d say these limitations are important considerations, suggesting that successful adoption requires both a clear budget commitment and dedicated internal resources.
4. Final Recommendation
Hexagon is highly recommended for strategic digital transformation.
You should choose this software if your business handles complex industrial or geospatial challenges and prioritizes precision, quality, and operational efficiency through integrated data. From my analysis, your decision should align with a long-term vision for leveraging digital reality and assured autonomy across your enterprise.
My confidence level is high for organizations ready to invest in transformative, specialized, and highly precise industrial and geospatial solutions.
Bottom Line
- Verdict: Recommended for strategic digital transformation initiatives
- Best For: Mid-to-large enterprises in heavy industry and geospatial sectors
- Business Size: Organizations requiring robust, scalable, and highly precise systems
- Biggest Strength: Integrated digital reality solutions with precision and autonomy
- Main Concern: Opaque pricing and complex enterprise-level implementation
- Next Step: Contact sales for a tailored demo and detailed pricing discussion
This Hexagon review demonstrates significant value for complex industrial challenges, while also highlighting the necessary commitment to its comprehensive and specialized nature.