Blog · · Vincent van Gemert · 6 min read
Alternatives to a campground map maker
Paper, a designer, isometric illustrations, marker maps or a done-for-you service - what each really costs and when it beats drawing your own map. Checked September 2026.
You have more options than you think
Before you pick a campground map maker - ours or anyone's - it is worth knowing the alternatives. Some are cheaper, some are prettier, and for some campsites they are genuinely the better choice. We make Campsite Builder, so read our conclusions with that in mind; every price below comes from the vendor's own site, checked on 1 September 2026.
A paper or PDF map
The baseline. If your site rarely changes and guests only meet the map printed at reception, a good PDF does the job for free. Its weakness is time: pitches move, prices change, and the original file has a way of living on one former employee's laptop. On a phone screen a scanned A4 also zooms poorly - and the phone is where guests look first.
Hiring a designer
A professional illustrator produces the prettiest result on this list, and for a flagship brochure that can be worth every euro. Two structural drawbacks: every future change costs another round with the designer, and the deliverable is a picture. Guests cannot tap a pitch for its size or price, and you cannot mark pitch 14 as under maintenance in July.
Icograms: a beautiful static illustration, made by you
Icograms Designer is a web editor for isometric (angled 3D-look) illustrations, with ready campground and holiday-park templates among its 1,192+ templates and 5,580+ icons. The free tier is limited - 8 designs, exports capped at 800 pixels with attribution required - and paid plans are $14 to $34 per month depending on billing, with commercial rights on exports that survive cancelling.
The result is a genuinely lovely image - but an image. No clickable pitches, no embedding of a live map, no per-pitch details; every layout change means re-exporting and re-uploading to your site. Best for a decorative overview map where charm matters more than information.
Make-a-Map: interactive markers on your own photo
Make-a-Map sells interactive web maps for campsites and holiday parks from $9.99 per month (a fuller price list is not published). You supply a base image - or they source aerial imagery - and pin clickable markers with text, photos, video and 360 tours; the map embeds on your own website, and a camping-specific module can show pitch availability through booking-engine integrations.
The distinction from a map maker: you annotate an existing picture rather than draw the site plan itself. If you already have a great illustrated map and just want to make it clickable, that is exactly the right tool. If the map itself needs to change with your site, the base image becomes the bottleneck again.
CampMap: pay someone to build and run it
CampMap delivers done-for-you interactive maps with the deepest guest features in this niche - direct bookings from the map, occupancy, GPS navigation to the pitch, 360 tours. You pay €7 to €15 per unit per year (capped between €2,800 and €6,000) plus an unpublished one-time onboarding fee, and changes go through CampMap: 6 to 12 hours on paid tiers, or €30 per hour. Zero effort, real budget, no self-editing.
Drawing it yourself in Campsite Builder
Campsite Builder is the draw-it-yourself option: trace an aerial photo in real meters in your browser, place pitches, paths, terrain and facilities, and publish a read-only interactive map guests open from your website - with a number, size, capacity and price on every pitch. When the site changes, you drag things around and save; no designer, no ticket, no waiting.
Paid plans will follow early access. There is no booking engine attached - if you want an all-in-one reservation platform, read our comparison of campground map software instead.
How to choose
Map never changes and lives on paper? Keep the PDF. Want maximum charm for a brochure? A designer or Icograms. Have a good map image already and want it clickable? Make-a-Map. Want premium guest features with zero effort? CampMap. Want to own and update the map yourself? That is the gap we built Campsite Builder for - open the demo and trace a few pitches; an afternoon is usually enough to know.
Read next
The best campground map software in 2026
Done-for-you maps, booking suites with a map inside, and self-serve editors - what five real options cost and where each fits. Prices checked September 2026.
From aerial photo to finished map in an afternoon
A step-by-step account of mapping a 4 hectare family campsite using nothing but an aerial photo and the editor - including where the time actually goes.