A fair comparison

Custodia vs Landscape vs LOCATE.

The incumbents have served the field well. We built Custodia for what comes next — narrative intelligence, modern GIS, and a migration path that's easier than staying.

Comparison reflects publicly documented capabilities as of 2026. We update this page when competitors ship parity.

Mapping & GIS

FeatureCustodiaLandscapeLOCATE
Native interactive map (draw + import) partial
GeoJSON / Shapefile / KML import partial
PostGIS-powered acreage & geometry partial
Auto-fetch USDA SSURGO soils
Habitat features as point geometry partial

Monitoring & Stewardship

FeatureCustodiaLandscapeLOCATE
Recurring monitoring protocols
Offline-friendly visit capture partial
Per-site health score
Overdue badges that nudge, not nag partial partial
Photo-rich field notes timeline partial

People & CRM

FeatureCustodiaLandscapeLOCATE
Landowner / contact CRM partial
Volunteer hours & skills partial
Certification expiry alerts
Public stewardship event sign-ups

Intelligence & Storytelling

FeatureCustodiaLandscapeLOCATE
Narrative Relational Intelligence (NRI)
AI weekly hero summary
Wonder Letters (seasonal long-form letters)
Listening Room (cross-source signal feed)
Resonance scoring per site
Watchtower thresholds (FIRMS, USGS, GBIF)
Wilderness Pulse dark-sky view
Auto-cited grant report exports partial partial
iNaturalist / GBIF / USGS / NOAA signals

Fundraising & Engagement

FeatureCustodiaLandscapeLOCATE
Sponsor-a-Preserve recurring memberships
Threshold campaigns tied to ecological signals
Annual print Almanac (Lulu fulfillment)
Stripe Connect — funds direct to your bank
5% platform fee, $0 setup

Integrations

FeatureCustodiaLandscapeLOCATE
Google Drive (live link + snapshot) partial
Dropbox (live link + snapshot)
NRI document sniffing (auto-classify)
Open API / webhooks partial
Stripe-native billing & self-serve plans

Migration & Onboarding

FeatureCustodiaLandscapeLOCATE
Self-serve CSV import wizard partial
Landscape preset (one-click column map)
LOCATE preset (one-click column map)
ConservationTrack preset
Per-row import provenance & rollback
White-glove concierge migration partial partial

Pricing & Access

FeatureCustodiaLandscapeLOCATE
Free tier for solo stewards
Transparent published pricing
Modern web stack (no installs) partial
Open data export anytime partial partial

Where Custodia wins

  • Narrative Relational Intelligence — no one else writes the story
  • Wonder Letters & Listening Room — the watershed has a voice
  • Fundraising rails included — Sponsor-a-Preserve, threshold campaigns, Almanac
  • Modern GIS with PostGIS, SSURGO, and habitat polygons baked in
  • Self-serve migration with Landscape & LOCATE column presets
  • Live Google Drive & Dropbox links with snapshot fallback
  • Transparent pricing with a free tier for solo stewards

Where the incumbents still shine

  • Decades of accreditation-aligned templates (Landscape)
  • Established CE-monitoring workflows for very large portfolios
  • Trusted brand inside the Land Trust Alliance ecosystem

Switching is easier than staying.

Drop in your Landscape or LOCATE export — our import wizard maps the columns for you, with full provenance on every row. Concierge migration included on Steward and above.