SharePoint Designer [EOL] vs Zend Studio comparison

Microsoft and Zend are both solutions in the .NET Development Services category. Additionally, 82% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Zend users who would recommend it.

SharePoint Designer [EOL]

Read 49 SharePoint Designer [EOL] reviews

82% willing to recommend

Zend Studio

Read 1 Zend Studio review

132 Views
132 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

SharePoint Designer [EOL]

Zend Studio

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between SharePoint Designer [EOL] and Zend Studio based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, FourJs, Cognosys Inc Hardened Images and others in .NET Development Services.

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Buyer's Guide

.NET Development Services

September 2025

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Helped 871,688 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

SharePoint Designer [EOL]

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Zend Studio

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

.NET Development Services (5th)

Featured Reviews

Raphael Haroun Ikyagh

Network Administrator at Letshego

Offers ability to directly share documents and highly stable

It's been stable for me. I haven't encountered any issues with the sites I've developed locally within the organization as long as the license remains valid. It's very stable. I haven't had any issues with outages or needing to republish content. It's always accessible to authorized users, so it's stable. The stability is almost a ten out of ten for me.

Read full review

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

"What I like most about this solution, is that we can use it as a secondary customization platform."

"The basic functionality the solution makes it easy to share documents or information with the team."

"The support on offer is helpful."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"The most valuable features of SharePoint Designer are integration and collaboration capabilities, such as allowing more than one person to edit a file."

"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 workflow is the solution's most valuable feature."

"SharePoint has very good features for collaboration."

More SharePoint Designer [EOL] 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

"SharePoint Designer needs filter options for lists and libraries."

"The designer itself could be improved, as it isn't particularly intuitive."

"The solution is not scalable at all."

"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."

"SharePoint Designer could improve by making the searching feature better. It is not accurate in some cases, and there are some descriptions that are not clear."

"We'd like it if we got less frequent updates."

"This solution could definitely be made easier to use."

"The pricing is a little bit high and can be reduced."

More SharePoint Designer [EOL] 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

"The cost of the solution is based on multiple factors such as the number of users, and any customization that may be required."

"It is a free solution that does not require a license."

"The tool is free of cost."

"The entire package is expensive. There is no extra cost in addition to the standard license."

"We are using an enterprise SharePoint Designer license."

"The pricing is fair."

"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."

"SharePoint Designer is less expensive than other solutions we have used. We purchased Office 365 which SharePoint comes with the package."

More SharePoint Designer [EOL] 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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Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	19
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	21

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 [EOL]

Compared 100% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SharePoint Designer [EOL]

September 2025

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Buyer's Guide

.NET Development Services

September 2025

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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 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

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

September 2025

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