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 8.7, while Zend is ranked #8. Microsoft holds a 8.6% mindshare in NDS, compared to Zend’s 3.4% 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

477 Views
477 Comparison Views

82% willing to recommend

Zend Studio

Read 1 Zend Studio review

117 Views
117 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

SharePoint Designer

Zend Studio

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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.

To learn more, read our detailed .NET Development Services Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

.NET Development Services

July 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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Zend Studio

Ranking in .NET Development Services

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the .NET Development Services category, the mindshare of SharePoint Designer is 8.6%, down from 19.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zend Studio is 3.4%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

.NET Development Services

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.

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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

"I am a developer, and whatever is not possible with the SharePoint default feature, we make custom features available for our clients. Anything which is not possible using all the methods within the solution we can customize."

"The initial setup is very straightforward."

"Retrieving documents and uploading them is easy."

"The most valuable feature of SharePoint Designer is document management."

"SharePoint has very good features for collaboration."

"The most valuable part of the solution is its ability to allow for a high degree of customization."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"Designer is easy to manage."

"The search capabilities need to be improved."

"The interface of SharePoint Designer could be improved, such as in SAP."

"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."

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

"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."

"It would be helpful to have the SharePoint Designer capabilities built directly into SharePoint itself, into the management page, so as to create an online version of it directly in SharePoint."

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."

"Stability is sometimes lacking in updates."

"The debugger often has problems determining where to map files to local projects."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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 license is based on the size of the user base."

"The tool's pricing is cheap."

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

"This solution is free of charge."

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

Financial Services Firm

13%

Government

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

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

Compared 100% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SharePoint Designer

June 2025

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Buyer's Guide

.NET Development Services

July 2025

Download 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 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

July 2025

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