Microsoft Visual Studio vs SharePoint Designer comparison

Microsoft Visual Studio and SharePoint Designer are both solutions in the .NET Development Services category. Microsoft Visual Studio is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.7, while SharePoint Designer is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.0. Microsoft Visual Studio holds a 21.5% mindshare in NDS, compared to SharePoint Designer’s 13.4% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Microsoft Visual Studio users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 82% of SharePoint Designer users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Visual Studio

Read 79 Microsoft Visual Studio reviews

1,217 Views
344 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

SharePoint Designer

Read 49 SharePoint Designer reviews

737 Views
275 Comparison Views

82% willing to recommend

Microsoft Visual Studio

SharePoint Designer

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft Visual Studio and SharePoint Designer based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two .NET Development Services solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Visual Studio vs. SharePoint Designer Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Visual Studio vs. SharePoint Designer

October 2024

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Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Visual Studio

Ranking in .NET Development Services

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

SharePoint Designer

Ranking in .NET Development Services

2nd

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the .NET Development Services category, the mindshare of Microsoft Visual Studio is 21.5%, down from 24.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SharePoint Designer is 13.4%, down from 20.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

.NET Development Services

Featured Reviews

Paco Velasco Reina

CTO at Open HealthCare

Easy to use, works well in the Microsoft Windows ecosystem, and integrates well with Git

Efficiency is the main focus. Since Visual Studio's inception, it has been a race of constant improvements and attempts to improve the efficiency of the tool in every release. However, crashes and freezes are common when you work with the tool for a long time. The problems get worse when you have more than one project under development and then you need a very powerful computer to be able to perform complex developments. Even having a very powerful computer, as in my case, does not prevent you from having freezes from time to time. Long installation or upgrade times are sometimes a problem.

Read full review

Vivek Vaibhav

Manager at Bain & Company

Intuitive, customizable, and reliable

Exporting the whole SharePoint website is an issue. For example, let's say I want to deploy it in the client environment. Right now, this was based on our own company's environment and if I wanted to deploy that onto the client's environment. To do this, I will have to recreate everything from scratch, which takes a lot of time. There should be a way somewhere where I can download the custom designs I have made and upload them to the client servers so that we can configure them on their servers. Secondly, when you have uploaded data, for example, from an Excel spreadsheet, you download it in the form of a dot IQY file. This IQY file is a bit tough to work with as it's a server-side file. If there was any option where you could just download the flat files and work with them, that would have been great.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The feature I find most valuable is the fact that it's broad-spectrum, so it can be used for a wide variety of technologies."

"It is a stable solution."

"Microsoft Visual Studio helps my company improve efficiency in software development suites."

"I like the IDE or the integrated development environment. It's the best IDE."

"This solution can integrate with almost any functionality offered by Microsoft."

"What I like the most about Microsoft Visual Studio is that it's useful. It's also a very stable solution, and is scalable as well. It's quick to set up as it only took me a few seconds to do it."

"The most valuable features of Microsoft Visual Studio are the database connections."

"Visual Studio's best feature is debugging, which isn't available with any other Microsoft development tool."

More Microsoft Visual Studio pros

"We like the highly customizable websites that you can build."

"We mostly used this solution for file storage and basic functions, etcetera."

"The drag and drop feature is the most useful feature when using this solution."

"The workflow is the solution's most valuable feature."

"Designer is easy to manage."

"The management and monitoring features are good."

"The product is very user-friendly."

"We appreciate the fact that this solution can provide us with an on-premises version, as due to our geographical location, we are not able to use cloud-based tools."

More SharePoint Designer pros

Cons

"For Visual Studio, the only challenge I've faced is referencing any package or new concept I'm trying to debug or run."

"The initial setup could be more straightforward."

"I would like to see more on-premise tips and tools along with development time so that I don't need to go to a third-party site."

"The hot reload feature is good, but sometimes it doesn't work. It could be improved."

"Sometimes, the deprecation of packages can be a challenge."

"Since it is a heavy product, it is somewhat slow in building and executing the code in a localhost environment and it consumes a lot of resources."

"Additional components such as add-ons could be included in the installation packages."

"Microsoft Visual Studio can improve by bringing back designers. They used to have designers for architecture charts and diagrams. They were able to do things, such as database design. If they can bring them back, it would be great."

More Microsoft Visual Studio cons

"It would be helpful to have the SharePoint Designer capabilities built directly into SharePoint itself, into the management page, so as to create an online version of it directly in SharePoint."

"This solution could definitely be made easier to use."

"SharePoint Online should continue to integrate with other solutions."

"The pricing is a little bit high and can be reduced."

"I have heard of clients that have complained about the stability once a certain amount of data, over 200 gigs has been reached as well as the stability of SQL Databases."

"I believe Microsoft does not support Sharepoint on-premises. They only support Sharepoint on the Cloud. They should provide for both options and let the client choose their preference."

"If you compare the workflow with other engines like Olympus and K2, it is very complicated to create a workflow."

"It has a lot of bugs. It's also not very convenient. The UX/UI is not very user-friendly and not designed to be similar to other applications from Microsoft."

More SharePoint Designer cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing costs are reasonable."

"The license is taken care of by my company and the price could be less expensive."

"I am using the free version of Microsoft Visual Studio."

"The development license for Microsoft Visual Studio is free. I don't know if there's a licensing cost to it."

"We purchased an expensive enterprise version of Microsoft Visual Studio."

"You may have to purchase more hardware utilities like processors or RAM."

"The price is good."

"Visual Studio Team System is expensive, but it is worth the money."

More Microsoft Visual Studio pricing and cost advice

"The price is reasonable."

"The tool's pricing is cheap."

"The entire package is expensive. There is no extra cost in addition to the standard license."

"I've never paid for SharePoint Designer. What I paid for, is the SharePoint license, the cava, and then the client accesses the line fee."

"The cost of the license is based on the size of the user base."

"Priced per user per month with different plans to choose from."

"I use Macintosh devices, and because this solution is not available in the Apple Ecosystem I use it because it is cost-effective."

"SharePoint Designer's pricing is okay."

More SharePoint Designer pricing and cost advice

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816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Government

10%

Educational Organization

Government

19%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Visual Studio?

We can use different .NET features.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Visual Studio?

Microsoft Visual Studio is a free product.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Visual Studio?

We have different platforms available for web development. The solution must provide user-friendly features. We get updates frequently. Multiple versions are released within a short period. We need...

See all answers

What do you like most about SharePoint Designer?

It saved me big time once! My car got broken into and they took my laptop with all my files. But I didn't have to worry because everything was backed up on SharePoint. It was a lifesaver!

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SharePoint Designer?

I've leased Microsoft SharePoint Designer for the enterprise, not System Center. It's for private work, web development specifically.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SharePoint Designer?

For me, it's flexible enough for most things. But maybe they could improve the user interface to make it easier for everyone to navigate and use. That would be a big plus.

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Silverlight vs Microsoft Visual Studio

Compared 38% of the time

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ASP.NET vs SharePoint Designer

Compared 47% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Visual Studio

November 2024

Download Microsoft Visual Studio product report

Buyer's Guide

SharePoint Designer

October 2024

Download SharePoint Designer product report

Also Known As

MS Visual Studio

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Learn More

Microsoft

Overview

Visual Studio.NET is the umbrella that represents the key pieces of the .NET platform delivered from Microsoft, including the .NET Framework, the recently announced .NET Core, and a shared common layer of packages, compilers and runtime. Read this .NET blog post about the evolution of the platform and the different pieces that make .NET 2015.

SharePoint Designer is the tool of choice for the rapid development of SharePoint applications. Using SharePoint Designer, advanced users and developers alike can rapidly create SharePoint solutions in response to business needs. Advanced users can compose no-code solutions that encompass a variety of common scenarios, from collaborative sites and web publishing to Line-Of-Business data integration, business intelligence solutions, and human workflows, leveraging the building blocks available in SharePoint in an easy to use environment.

Sample Customers

Knab, Hamburg Port Authority, Kecioren Municipality, National Instruments, Hamburg Port Authority, Government of Odisha, Kongsberg Maritime AS

Pyrotek Inc., ICA, Deliver Australia, Secretary of Economy of Mexico, Aegon, ABB Switzerland, Ascent Yarns Private Limited, Bakewell Biscuits Pvt Ltd, Hitachi Consulting

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Visual Studio vs. SharePoint Designer

October 2024

Free Report: Microsoft Visual Studio vs. SharePoint Designer

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Visual Studio vs. SharePoint Designer and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.

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