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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 8.6, while SharePoint Designer is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.1. Microsoft Visual Studio holds a 18.8% mindshare in NDS, compared to SharePoint Designer’s 12.7% 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
  • 786 Views
  • 257 Comparison Views
95% willing to recommend
SharePoint Designer
Read 49 SharePoint Designer reviews
  • 574 Views
  • 203 Comparison Views
82% willing to recommend
 

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.

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To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Visual Studio vs. SharePoint Designer Report (Updated: January 2025).
Buyer's Guide
Microsoft Visual Studio vs. SharePoint Designer
January 2025
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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Visual Studio
Ranking in .NET Development Services
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
79
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
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the .NET Development Services category, the mindshare of Microsoft Visual Studio is 18.8%, down from 24.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SharePoint Designer is 12.7%, down from 20.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
.NET Development Services
 

Featured Reviews

LorenzoMoore - PeerSpot reviewer
Beneficial user interface, flexible, and good support
Microsoft Visual Studio is scalable. We have an assistant director and software development using Microsoft Visual Studio in my department. In the whole company, there could be hundreds using Microsoft Visual Studio. In my department, they do not like Microsoft Visual Studio, but across the departments, we will increase the usage of Microsoft Visual Studio.
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Vivek Vaibhav - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's a universal solution. I like that I can easily find software developers for it. I can easily find staff on Microsoft forums. Also, we have other components that are running on top of Visual Studio. I like that it is open to other platforms. Finally, there are many many resources for Microsoft Visual Studio and I can easily find support. There is a large knowledge base for it as well."
"You can use the solution to do coding and drag and drop. It is easy to install with web documentation."
"It's a useful integrated development environment."
"I like the product's connection with Azure analytics services and the ability to build the model on the cloud."
"We like Visual Studio because you can choose the different types of languages, like JavaScript. I think it's better than the other solutions I used."
"Notably, the Enterprise version facilitates seamless integration with Microsoft products, leveraging the ease of connectivity within the Microsoft ecosystem."
"I have found that it is scalable."
"It is a stable solution."
More Microsoft Visual Studio pros
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are the user-friendly interface and easy workflow."
"The most valuable feature is the capability to directly access the SharePoint data structure."
"The scalability is excellent, and I rate it ten out of ten."
"The product is very user-friendly."
"Other valuable features are the ability able to update the master file, and creating the workflow."
"The solution is scalable."
"The most valuable features of SharePoint Designer are integration and collaboration capabilities, such as allowing more than one person to edit a file."
More SharePoint Designer pros
 

Cons

"The interface could be more user friendly"
"The UI could be better, and development could be easier on Microsoft Visual Studio if there were more features like drag and drop and more frameworks, etc."
"I would not recommend it for complex tasks."
"Microsoft Visual Studio can improve integration with the Microsoft Office suite; this was only implemented in 2022."
"Despite its advantages, challenges in diverse cloud environments may prompt the uninstallation of the application or entire development environment for resolution."
"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."
"Technical support can be slow to respond at times."
"The stability of Microsoft Visual Studio could improve. There are times it hangs or stops working and I have to restart the program."
More Microsoft Visual Studio cons
"The pain point of SharePoint Designer is sometimes it gives you issues that can be resolved mostly by clearing the cache, but Microsoft should still work on it and make the product more stable. Another issue related to SharePoint Designer is that with the newer SharePoint versions, Microsoft hasn't released a newer version of SharePoint Designer. Instead, Microsoft is recommending that you use the same old SharePoint Designer 2013. If Microsoft updates SharePoint Designer, the product will be more beneficial."
"The search capabilities need to be improved."
"SharePoint Designer is not releasing a new version. Version 2013 was the latest version. Now in 2019, we are still using the biggest version. It doesn't work properly anymore. Sometimes we experience issues, but there is no new version."
"I would like to see SharePoint improve the integration with different systems. I also would like to see more customization."
"Exporting the whole SharePoint website is an issue."
"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."
"Microsoft could include more applications in this. And if more applications are included, then it can be scalable that way."
"I am not sure how stable the solution will be once Microsoft stops supporting it."
More SharePoint Designer cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have an enterprise-level license. The cost is expensive for small to medium-sized organizations."
"The solution is expensive."
"While the enterprise version can be relatively expensive due to its comprehensive features, I find the license I currently possess to be reasonable, considering it includes the full suite without additional activations or charges."
"I use the open-source version of Microsoft Visual Studio."
"You may have to purchase more hardware utilities like processors or RAM."
"Its price could be better."
"The price is good."
"The development license for Microsoft Visual Studio is free. I don't know if there's a licensing cost to it."
More Microsoft Visual Studio pricing and cost advice
"Priced per user per month with different plans to choose from."
"The cost of the license is based on the size of the user base."
"SharePoint Online has a subscription-based model for payments and the price is based on user usage."
"The entire package is expensive. There is no extra cost in addition to the standard license."
"SharePoint Designer's pricing is okay."
"It is a free solution that does not require a license."
"There is no licensing cost for Designer—it's free."
"The cost of the solution is based on multiple factors such as the number of users, and any customization that may be required."
More SharePoint Designer pricing and cost advice
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Educational Organization
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
19%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
University
8%
 

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

No data available
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ASP.NET vs SharePoint Designer
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More SharePoint Designer Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Microsoft Visual Studio
February 2025
Microsoft Visual Studio reportDownload Microsoft Visual Studio product report
Buyer's Guide
SharePoint Designer
January 2025
SharePoint Designer reportDownload SharePoint Designer product report
 

Also Known As

MS Visual Studio
No data available
 

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.
Microsoft
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.
Microsoft
 

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
January 2025
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: January 2025.
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