I primarily work in the routing and switching industry, and I haven’t used heatmaps much in the past. Recently, more and more clients are requesting coverage maps in their reports.
The last time I looked into this issue seriously, only Ekahau and AirMagnet were taken seriously.
What are the most popular tools now? Has anything changed in the software market?
“Free and not garbage” is tough for real walk-and-draw heatmaps. You can pair controller tools (UniFi/Omada) with free analyzers like WiFiman to eyeball coverage, but you won’t get proper survey workflows. If you’re doing even semi-regular Wi-Fi work, paying for something like NetSpot is worth it. It’s still way cheaper than a full Ekahau/Hamina setup, and it gives you real survey projects and exportable reports instead of screenshots from your phone.
Ekahau – still very strong, especially for capacity planning and spectrum stuff. Expensive, but if you’re doing large campuses, it earns its keep.
For day-to-day SMB stuff? NetSpot is honestly better than a lot of people expect. You can do actual Survey mode work, generate heatmaps, and it also has Planning mode so you can test rough AP placement before install. On Windows it supports predictive planning, building materials, router model selection, and customizable survey reports
Ekahau is a strong tool, no question, but it definitely isn’t cheap. And to get real value out of it, you need to actually know how to use it — otherwise you’re just paying a lot.
Since you’re coming from a routing background, you’ll probably appreciate something that doesn’t feel like a clunky Windows utility from 2005. If you’re on a Mac, NetSpot (https://www.netspotapp.com/) is pretty much the gold standard for native survey apps.
I’ve been using the macOS version for years, and what I love is how it handles the built-in Wi-Fi card. You don’t need any weird external dongles to get a professional site survey done. You just load your floor plan, walk the perimeter, and it generates these super clean, high-res heatmaps that look amazing in client PDFs.
It’s much more “Apple-like” in terms of UI compared to the enterprise tools, but it still gives you the deep technical data — like SNR, noise floors, and channel overlapping. If you just need to hand over a professional coverage report without spending $5k+ on a dedicated sidekick/adapter, the Mac version is a no-brainer.