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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 7.9, while Zend is ranked #8. Microsoft holds a 13.0% mindshare in NDS, compared to Zend’s 3.3% 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
  • 544 Views
  • 162 Comparison Views
82% willing to recommend
Zend Studio
Read 1 Zend Studio review
  • 112 Views
  • 25 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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.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

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 April 2025, in the .NET Development Services category, the mindshare of SharePoint Designer is 13.0%, down from 18.8% 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

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.
Read full review
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

"The most valuable aspects of the solution are the user-friendly interface and easy workflow."
"You can give document access to people based on their email addresses. You will also get notifications whenever the document is ready for review."
"It helps centralize and store files."
"The workflow is the solution's most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature is the development."
"Retrieving documents and uploading them is easy."
"The most valuable feature of SharePoint Designer is the storing of files. In the Office 365 version, there is the capability to share files with others which is helpful. The files have cross versions capability. If the solution is shut down abruptly the file is stored on the system automatically."
"We like that the interface is very user-friendly making it easy to use."
More SharePoint Designer 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 record management and digital signature sides need improvement because we still need to rely on other third-party tools."
"The solution is not very flexible when trying to access the solution via a personal PC."
"SharePoint Designer could be improved by being more user-friendly. I think that they have a new release, but the focus is on Power Automate, not Designer. Designer's interface is somewhat classical, but it should be more user-friendly."
"The solution requires more web-based publishing. It would benefit from adding in more collaboration features as well."
"I am not sure how stable the solution will be once Microsoft stops supporting it."
"I believe Microsoft does not support Sharepoint on-premises. They only support Sharepoint on the Cloud. They should provide for both options and let the client choose their preference."
"The system can become slow which should be improved."
"The solution does not need any additional features."
More SharePoint Designer 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."
"The debugger often has problems determining where to map files to local projects."
"Stability is sometimes lacking in updates."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"SharePoint Online has a subscription-based model for payments and the price is based on user usage."
"The price is reasonable."
"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."
"There is no licensing cost for Designer—it's free."
"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."
"SharePoint Designer is less expensive than other solutions we have used. We purchased Office 365 which SharePoint comes with the package."
"The tool's pricing is cheap."
More SharePoint Designer 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
Government
18%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
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.
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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 100% of the time
More SharePoint Designer Competitors
No data available
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
SharePoint Designer
March 2025
SharePoint Designer reportDownload SharePoint Designer product report
Buyer's Guide
.NET Development Services
March 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
March 2025
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