Microsoft Visual Studio vs Zend Studio comparison

Microsoft and Zend are both solutions in the .NET Development Services category. Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.5, while Zend is ranked #8. Microsoft holds a 15.9% mindshare in NDS, compared to Zend’s 3.3% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Zend users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Visual Studio

Read 85 Microsoft Visual Studio reviews

663 Views
196 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Zend Studio

Read 1 Zend Studio review

112 Views
25 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Visual Studio

Zend Studio

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Executive Summary

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

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Adobe, FourJs and others in .NET Development Services.

To learn more, read our detailed .NET Development Services Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

.NET Development Services

March 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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Zend Studio

Ranking in .NET Development Services

8th

Average Rating

8.0

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 Zend Studio is 3.3%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

.NET Development Services

Featured Reviews

LorenzoMoore

IT Project Manager (Assistant Director, Technology Division) at a government with 10,001+ employees

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.

Read full review

marketacumen

President at Market Acumen, Inc.

It has higher quality code, faster debugging, and higher quality projects

* Stability is sometimes lacking in updates. * Search/replace across multiple files is not ideal. * The debugger often has problems determining where to map files to local projects, as well as setting breakpoints, which often are ignored depending on your configuration. * The product requires a subscription to Zend Server Developer, which used to be free and now has an annual fee, but it is still worth the money.

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

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

"The system can efficiently manage the databases."

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Visual Studio is its integration with Azure DevOps."

"We use TFS for our scrums, which links our tasks to actual code changes."

"Notably, the Enterprise version facilitates seamless integration with Microsoft products, leveraging the ease of connectivity within the Microsoft ecosystem."

"What we like about Microsoft Visual Studio is that it's a comprehensive tool. It has features that work for different plans and it has a wide variety of use cases. It's also a powerful tool and it's quite efficient."

"It's pretty prevalent."

"The product integrates well with Azure Cloud, and it supports a ton of languages."

More Microsoft Visual Studio pros

"It has higher quality code, faster debugging, and higher quality projects."

"It has the ability to jump to any file in your project with a few keystrokes, as well as the ability to command-click on any token in your code and have it jump to the token's definition."

Cons

"Despite its advantages, challenges in diverse cloud environments may prompt the uninstallation of the application or entire development environment for resolution."

"It would be great if they added some extra support for other languages that are available in the market and prepared it for the, let's say, crypto developers as we are going in the age of cryptocurrency."

"This solution could be integrated with other open-source languages, such as Python and not only C#, .NET or Microsoft development languages."

"Technical support can be slow to respond at times."

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

"There could be more coding languages in the solution."

"Microsoft Visual Studio could improve by being compatible with more operating systems. However, we understand the solution is proprietary to Microsoft."

"File installations are heavy."

More Microsoft Visual Studio cons

"Most recent set of patches (2018) on Mac OS X caused the app to crash when you would cut more than 10 lines of code. Apparently, this was due to a bug in Eclipse, but regardless, it took several months for Zend to post a patch."

"Stability is sometimes lacking in updates."

"The debugger often has problems determining where to map files to local projects."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

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

"The cost of using Microsoft Visual Studio monthly is approximately $300."

"You have to be a subscriber with a Visual Studio subscription to use the solution and the organization has to purchase a license that's linked to the account."

"The price of Microsoft Visual Studio is reasonable but could be better."

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

"The cost of using Microsoft Visual Studio is approximately $1,700 per user."

More Microsoft Visual Studio pricing and cost advice

"Licensing is reasonable for this type of tool. Although, you can cobble together a solution which is zero cost."

"The product requires a subscription to Zend Server Developer, which used to be free and now has an annual fee, but it is still worth the money."

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847,862 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

University

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Visual Studio?

We can use different .NET features.

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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...

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Microsoft Visual Studio

March 2025

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.NET Development Services

March 2025

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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

Zend Studio â the PHP IDE for smarter development. It codes faster with up to 3X performance improvements in indexing, validation, searching of PHP code. It has superior PHP 7.1 support, PHP 7.1 express migration assistant, and seamless integration with Zend Server 9. It provides robust debugging capabilities with Xdebug, Zend Debugger, and Z-Ray integration. Zend Studio has an extensive plugin capabilities provided by the large Eclipse eco-system and supports for best-in-class dev tools including Docker and Git Flow Intelligent code editor. Deploy PHP applications on any server including cloud support for Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure and support for HiDPi displays - scale graphics (ala 4K resolution).

Zend

Sample Customers

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

CDS Global, EnglishCentral, BNP Paribas, Carlo Gavazzi, Sunstate Equipment, Novadex GmbH, CONFTEC, Marilan, Mediaspike, Cisco WebEx, Corvette America, Value Drug Mart Associates Ltd., Allied Beverage Group

Buyer's Guide

.NET Development Services

March 2025

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Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Adobe, FourJs and others in .NET Development Services. Updated: March 2025.

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