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SharePoint Designer vs Zend Studio comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 January 2025, in the .NET Development Services category, the mindshare of SharePoint Designer is 13.1%, down from 19.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zend Studio is 2.9%, up from 2.5% 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.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The scalability is excellent, and I rate it ten out of ten."
"The product is very user-friendly."
"The initial setup is not too complex."
"Retrieving documents and uploading them is easy."
"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."
"Other valuable features are the ability able to update the master file, and creating the workflow."
"The most valuable feature is the simplicity, standardization, and ability to create more than one portal."
"We like that the interface is very user-friendly making it easy to use."
"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

"SharePoint Online should continue to integrate with other solutions."
"Exporting the whole SharePoint website is an issue."
"The downside is the different versions of SharePoint which means we need to have different designers as not all versions are compatible."
"The designer itself could be improved, as it isn't particularly intuitive."
"It needs to align with PowerApps and Power Automate."
"Sharepoint could improve the user interface to make it easier for everyone to navigate and use. That would be a big plus."
"I have heard of clients that have complained about the stability once a certain amount of data, over 200 gigs has been reached as well as the stability of SQL Databases."
"The solution does not need any additional features."
"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."
"The debugger often has problems determining where to map files to local projects."
"Stability is sometimes lacking in updates."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Priced per user per month with different plans to choose from."
"SharePoint Designer is a free product. It's SharePoint that needs a license, not SharePoint Designer."
"The pricing is fair."
"The tool's pricing is cheap."
"We are using an enterprise SharePoint Designer license."
"It is a free solution that does not require a license."
"SharePoint Online has a subscription-based model for payments and the price is based on user usage."
"The cost of the license is based on the size of the user base."
"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
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!
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.
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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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
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Adobe, FourJs and others in .NET Development Services. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.