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SharePoint Designer vs Zend Studio comparison

Microsoft and Zend are both solutions in the .NET Development Services category. Microsoft is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.1, while Zend is ranked #8. Microsoft holds a 12.7% mindshare in NDS, compared to Zend’s 2.9% mindshare. Additionally, 82% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Zend users who would recommend it.
SharePoint Designer
Read 49 SharePoint Designer reviews
  • 574 Views
  • 203 Comparison Views
82% willing to recommend
Zend Studio
Read 1 Zend Studio review
  • 97 Views
  • 29 Comparison Views
100% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary
We performed a comparison between SharePoint Designer 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.

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Buyer's Guide
.NET Development Services
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

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
Zend Studio
Ranking in .NET Development Services
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the .NET Development Services category, the mindshare of SharePoint Designer is 12.7%, down from 20.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zend Studio is 2.9%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
.NET Development Services
 

Featured Reviews

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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marketacumen - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"What I like most about this solution, is that we can use it as a secondary customization platform."
"The product is very user-friendly."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"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 most valuable feature is the simplicity, standardization, and ability to create more than one portal."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are the user-friendly interface and easy workflow."
"When you have a group project and you want to share your document with your group members, the solution is very useful."
"The solution is scalable."
More SharePoint Designer pros
"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."
"It has higher quality code, faster debugging, and higher quality projects."
 

Cons

"If you compare the workflow with other engines like Olympus and K2, it is very complicated to create a workflow."
"SharePoint Designer's integration with Microsoft tools could be improved."
"The solution is not scalable at all."
"There is zero technical support. I have to use Google to fix the issues myself."
"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 function should improve in the solution."
"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."
"Exporting the whole SharePoint website is an issue."
More SharePoint Designer cons
"The debugger often has problems determining where to map files to local projects."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Priced per user per month with different plans to choose from."
"The price is reasonable."
"SharePoint Designer is less expensive than other solutions we have used. We purchased Office 365 which SharePoint comes with the package."
"I use Macintosh devices, and because this solution is not available in the Apple Ecosystem I use it because it is cost-effective."
"The entire package is expensive. There is no extra cost in addition to the standard license."
"We are using an enterprise SharePoint Designer license."
"It is a free solution that does not require a license."
"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."
More SharePoint Designer pricing and cost advice
"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."
"Licensing is reasonable for this type of tool. Although, you can cobble together a solution which is zero cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
19%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
University
8%
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 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!
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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.
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Comparisons

Microsoft Visual Studio vs SharePoint Designer Logo
Microsoft Visual Studio vs SharePoint Designer
Compared 57% of the time
ASP.NET vs SharePoint Designer Logo
ASP.NET vs SharePoint Designer
Compared 43% of the time
More SharePoint Designer Competitors
No data available
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
SharePoint Designer
January 2025
SharePoint Designer reportDownload SharePoint Designer product report
Buyer's Guide
.NET Development Services
January 2025
Zend Studio reportDownload Zend Studio product report
 

Overview

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
Zend Studio – 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

Pyrotek Inc., ICA, Deliver Australia, Secretary of Economy of Mexico, Aegon, ABB Switzerland, Ascent Yarns Private Limited, Bakewell Biscuits Pvt Ltd, Hitachi Consulting
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
January 2025
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