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 8.5, while SharePoint Designer is ranked #2 with an average rating of 7.9. Microsoft Visual Studio holds a 15.9% mindshare in NDS, compared to SharePoint Designer’s 13.0% 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 88 Microsoft Visual Studio reviews

663 Views
196 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

SharePoint Designer

Read 49 SharePoint Designer reviews

544 Views
162 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: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Visual Studio vs. SharePoint Designer

April 2025

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Helped 849,190 peers since 2012

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

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 April 2025, in the .NET Development Services category, the mindshare of Microsoft Visual Studio is 15.9%, down from 23.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SharePoint Designer is 13.0%, down from 18.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

.NET Development Services

Featured Reviews

Eitan Gold

SQA Manager at Elmo Motion Control Ltd.

Test code efficiency improves with integrated debugger and automation

The test explorer is really important for us as it aids in testing, along with the regular debugger. Even though I forgot the term for it at the moment, there is an overall debugger tool within the IDE ( /categories/ide ) that is very effective. This comprehensive debugger tool does the job efficiently, making our work easier.

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

"My company works with outsourced programmers. The solution helps us to test, integrate and foresee the code quality. We can trace the development stages."

"The initial setup was very easy."

"The most valuable features of Microsoft Visual Studio are the way we are able to design code, deploy, and test our application. It is easy to move an artifact from the start to the deployment stage. It has well-defined processes that you can integrate with any team. Additionally, the solution is always improving."

"The most valuable feature is the integration with different databases."

"The most valuable features are the extensions."

"You can use the solution to do coding and drag and drop. It is easy to install with web documentation."

"The scalability of Microsoft Visual Studio is good."

"Microsoft Visual Studio is stable and the performance was good. However, if you do not have decent hardware you will not have the same experience."

More Microsoft Visual Studio pros

"The solution tightly integrates with all other collaboration tools."

"The most valuable feature is the capability to directly access the SharePoint data structure."

"We used SharePoint Designer 2013 widely for data mining, exploring the content, and editing. Those are the main features that you would need to use SharePoint Designer for."

"The basic functionality the solution makes it easy to share documents or information with the team."

"The initial setup is very straightforward."

"It's been stable for me. I haven't encountered any issues with the sites I've developed locally within the organization as long as the license remains valid."

"I am a developer, and whatever is not possible with the SharePoint default feature, we make custom features available for our clients. Anything which is not possible using all the methods within the solution we can customize."

"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

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

"There are some features that I have yet to explore and it would be helpful to have more information about what is available and how it works."

"There's not much help to deal with issues on Microsoft's official websites."

"You do need to do some training in order to really take advantage of the solution."

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

"The migration could improve in Microsoft Visual Studio. When I upgraded from 2017 and up to 2022 it was not smooth. There was a lot of manual hand-picking. Microsoft should put a higher budget for the database developers' section in Visual Studio."

"Microsoft should add more visualization for analytical studies or research."

"The solution’s technical support could be improved."

More Microsoft Visual Studio cons

"SharePoint Designer could improve by making the searching feature better. It is not accurate in some cases, and there are some descriptions that are not clear."

"The search capabilities need to be improved."

"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."

"I am not sure how stable the solution will be once Microsoft stops supporting it."

"The downside is the different versions of SharePoint which means we need to have different designers as not all versions are compatible."

"SharePoint Designer's integration with Microsoft tools could be improved."

"SharePoint Designer needs filter options for lists and libraries."

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

More SharePoint Designer cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Visual Studio is not expensive. Its licensing costs are expensive."

"Our purchasing department pays a fair price for it."

"I use Microsoft Visual Studio's free version."

"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."

"We are using the solution's free version."

"The solution is a free tool."

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

"We use the free version, and you don't need a license."

More Microsoft Visual Studio pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

"This solution is free of charge."

"Most of the time, our customer's license from Microsoft includes the cost of SharePoint. However, if you have to buy it then SharePoint is quite expensive."

"We are using an enterprise SharePoint Designer license."

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

"SharePoint Designer is less expensive than other solutions we have used. We purchased Office 365 which SharePoint comes with the package."

"The pricing is fair."

More SharePoint Designer pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

21%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

University

Government

17%

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

No data available

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Visual Studio

April 2025

Download Microsoft Visual Studio product report

Buyer's Guide

SharePoint Designer

March 2025

Download 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

April 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: April 2025.

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