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 8.6, while Zend is ranked #8. Microsoft holds a 18.9% mindshare in NDS, compared to Zend’s 2.4% 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 79 Microsoft Visual Studio reviews

750 Views
219 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Zend Studio

Read 1 Zend Studio review

100 Views
26 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: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

.NET Development Services

February 2025

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Helped 842,388 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

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 March 2025, in the .NET Development Services category, the mindshare of Microsoft Visual Studio is 18.9%, down from 24.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zend Studio is 2.4%, up from 2.5% 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.

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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

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Visual Studio is the user interface."

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

"I have found that it is scalable."

"The most valuable features of Microsoft Visual Studio are debugging and IntelliSense."

"The initial setup was very easy."

"I like the product's connection with Azure analytics services and the ability to build the model on the cloud."

"It is pretty simple to set up."

"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

"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

"The best advice I can give to others is to take training because it's so easy to use out of the box. However, you might tend to install it and maybe configure it improperly. You need to have some training."

"It would be better if it didn't get stuck. Sometimes when we are writing code, we open too many tabs and modules, and it gets stuck."

"Microsoft Visual Studio could benefit from a more centralized education system."

"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."

"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."

"I have faced configuration issues with Microsoft Visual Studio."

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

"I would like to see Visual Studio improve reporting to give us more details on failures. When there are failures, it's difficult to debug. It would be helpful to have more error information to help us to identify the issue and resolve it. I want to know more about software failures and exceptions in the system."

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 have an enterprise-level license. The cost is expensive for small to medium-sized organizations."

"There's a community edition that is absolutely free to use. It's pretty good."

"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."

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

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

"Microsoft Visual Studio is a free product."

"The solution is expensive."

"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

"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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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

Educational Organization

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.

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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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Comparisons

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Visual Studio

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

.NET Development Services

February 2025

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Also Known As

MS Visual Studio

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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

February 2025

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

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