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SharePoint Designer vs Zend Studio comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

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 December 2024, in the .NET Development Services category, the mindshare of SharePoint Designer is 12.5%, down from 20.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zend Studio is 2.7%, 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

"You can give document access to people based on their email addresses. You will also get notifications whenever the document is ready for review."
"The management and monitoring features are good."
"If you're working in a communication channel team, SharePoint Designer is a great solution because it helps to have some customized solutions in terms of communication and to create web experiences for external teams."
"We like the highly customizable websites that you can build."
"The Power App is the most valuable feature."
"The support on offer is helpful."
"SharePoint Designer is easy to deploy and it is one of the most valuable features. The whole process took a couple of days and it is easy to work on."
"It helps centralize and store files."
"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

"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."
"SharePoint does not have enough resources to cover the security part."
"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."
"SharePoint Designer's integration with Microsoft tools could be improved."
"The record management and digital signature sides need improvement because we still need to rely on other third-party tools."
"The initial setup depends on company specifics. So, it's a bit complex."
"We'd like it if we got less frequent updates."
"SharePoint Designer could improve most in analytics and reporting."
"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

"SharePoint Designer's pricing is okay."
"SharePoint Designer is a free product. It's SharePoint that needs a license, not SharePoint Designer."
"The entire package is expensive. There is no extra cost in addition to the standard license."
"Priced per user per month with different plans to choose from."
"SharePoint Online has a subscription-based model for payments and the price is based on user usage."
"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 cost of the solution is based on multiple factors such as the number of users, and any customization that may be required."
"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
20%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
University
7%
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: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.