Visual Studio Test Professional vs Zephyr Enterprise comparison

Microsoft and SmartBear are both solutions in the Test Management Tools category. Microsoft is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.5, while SmartBear is ranked #6 with an average rating of 7.8. Microsoft holds a 2.7% mindshare in TMT, compared to SmartBear’s 8.5% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of SmartBear users who would recommend it.

Visual Studio Test Professi...

Read 52 Visual Studio Test Professional reviews

382 Views
310 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Zephyr Enterprise

Read 9 Zephyr Enterprise reviews

1,498 Views
846 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Visual Studio Test Professi...

Zephyr Enterprise

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Visual Studio Test Professional and Zephyr Enterprise are two leading software testing tools. Visual Studio Test Professional has an advantage in ease of deployment and customer service, while Zephyr Enterprise is notable for its comprehensive features.

Features: Visual Studio Test Professional users highlight its seamless integration with other Microsoft tools, test management flexibility, and ease of use. Zephyr Enterprise is known for its detailed reporting capabilities, high scalability, and extensive feature set, making it a popular choice for large-scale projects.

Room for Improvement: Users of Visual Studio Test Professional suggest better reporting functionalities, improved support for non-Microsoft technologies, and enhancements in its UI. Zephyr Enterprise users seek better performance for handling large datasets, more intuitive integration options, and faster processing times. The focus for Zephyr Enterprise is on optimization rather than adding new functionalities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Visual Studio Test Professional is praised for its smooth deployment and strong customer support. Zephyr Enterprise, while having detailed documentation, faces criticism for a steeper learning curve in deployment but is noted for its helpful customer service. Visual Studio Test Professional is considered easier to deploy, giving it an edge in this category.

Pricing and ROI: Visual Studio Test Professional has lower setup costs and quicker ROI due to its integration with existing Microsoft environments. Zephyr Enterprise, despite higher initial costs, offers significant long-term ROI because of its advanced features. Users find the investment in Zephyr Enterprise justifiable due to its extensive capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Visual Studio Test Professional vs. Zephyr Enterprise Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Visual Studio Test Professional vs. Zephyr Enterprise

January 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 841,004 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

Visual Studio Test Professi...

Ranking in Test Management Tools

5th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Functional Testing Tools (5th)

Zephyr Enterprise

Ranking in Test Management Tools

6th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

5.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Test Management Tools category, the mindshare of Visual Studio Test Professional is 2.7%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zephyr Enterprise is 8.5%, down from 13.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Test Management Tools

Featured Reviews

ALFONSO LORENZO-RODRÍGUEZ

Chief Product Officer at Gradiant

Provides extensive extensions and plugins for seamless AI product development

Our primary use case for Visual Studio Test Professional is as a development tool. We develop software primarily in Python, specifically for applications related to artificial intelligence. We use frameworks like PyTorch for training models and developing applications using these models. This tool…

Read full review

Tin Bùi

Senior software engineer at Funding Societies Pte. Ltd.

Highly stable solution and meets users' needs

It's mostly used for sales and customer verification. We gather customer information and verify that it's a real person Security is always a top priority in the IT business. We would like to see improvements in the security measures to ensure that customer information is protected. I have been…

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 feature of Visual Studio Test Professional is its ease of use."

"What I like most about Visual Studio Test Professional is the way people publish templates and publish integration."

"Visual Studio Test Professional's most valuable feature is the rich IDE for doing code and test development."

"Easy to use and easily scalable."

"The tool has highly detailed debugging features."

"It is very easy to use. You can handle a lot of things together at once in one package, which is a good point for us."

"We are satisfied with technical support. Communicating with them is very simple. We also have a lot of online resources to check and to study and to train our team with. The documentation is very clear and readily available."

"The most valuable features of the solution are its ease of use and availability."

More Visual Studio Test Professional pros

"It has a very intuitive user experience."

"It has 90% of the basic features you need without having to pay a lot of extra money."

"It has integration with test automation tools."

"If anyone is looking for a good, lightweight, flexible and agile test management product, I think they would do very well with Zephyr Enterprise."

"We use the solution for test case management."

"It has many features, but the main things that we need are the test cycles and integration with automation because we have automation for the web and mobile applications. We use it for test case management to run the test cases and get the results. At this moment, it is fulfilling our requirements. We are able to get the test execution report and the test pass and fail report. This summary is delivered to our management."

"The solution does its job well."

"It has a very intuitive user experience."

More Zephyr Enterprise pros

Cons

"The data flow can be improved."

"It would be great to support other languages and applications, and that is one of the things we can improve."

"Its UI could be better."

"Sometimes Visual Studio is slow. It uses a lot of resources like memory and processing power. You should optimize the performance by only installing what you need on your machine. Don't install unnecessary things that will slow your machine."

"There are not any specific areas for improvement since there are so many libraries and frameworks already available."

"It could be available for multiple platforms and other operating systems like Mac with a native port."

"The database administration could be better; you should be able to choose new tools with the development environment in Visual Studio. It could be easier to use."

"The solution is quite expensive."

More Visual Studio Test Professional cons

"Creating better default varieties of reporting would make the product much better and more popular."

"The reporting, and the ability to reorganize the test repository, which are a little stifling. There is definitely room for improvement there."

"We have a lot of automation for our products, and we require a utility for its integration with automation. Currently, we have to write this utility ourselves. It would be great if they can provide such a utility."

"Zephyr Enterprise needs to redesign the reporting."

"It's difficult to export the test cases in Zephyr, especially with screenshots or attachments, making sharing test cases not very easy."

"Security needs improvement to protect customer information better."

"The reporting, and the ability to reorganize the test repository, which are a little stifling. There is definitely room for improvement there."

"The solution is not really stable. Sometimes in the past, some pages wouldn't load due to issues."

More Zephyr Enterprise cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Visual Studio Test Professional is a very expensive solution."

"I think that the pricing is quite good."

"Visual Studio Test Professional is not an expensive solution."

"The pricing is expensive."

"For the cloud services option, you buy a subscription per account or per user. This costs around $52 a month per person."

"It is a price-effective solution"

"We have licensing for Visual Studio Community edition."

"There are two versions of Visual Studio Test Professional: Community and Professional. We are currently using the Community version, but if we start working on a commercial product, we will consider upgrading to the Professional version. We need to identify how we will proceed with our projects, and based on that, we will decide on our licensing."

More Visual Studio Test Professional pricing and cost advice

"DFS is more expensive than Zephyr. DFS is around $32 per person, whereas Zephyr is $10 per person. There is a major difference in the price, which is the main reason why we are trying to shift to Zephyr."

"It costs a couple of thousand dollars for a little more than 125 users, per month."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Test Management Tools solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

841,004 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

Real Estate/Law Firm

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Visual Studio Test Professional?

The most valuable features of the solution are its ease of use and availability.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Visual Studio Test Professional?

The tool is free, resulting in no costs associated with its use. The absence of price makes it cost-effective.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Visual Studio Test Professional?

The product needs contextual help integrated within its interface. Currently, I need to search online to find out how to use certain functions. This feature would save time by providing direct assi...

See all answers

What do you like most about Zephyr Enterprise?

The solution does its job well.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Zephyr Enterprise?

Some areas for improvement, include its export capabilities. Exporting test cases, especially those with screenshots or attachments, can be cumbersome, hindering easy sharing and scalability.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Zephyr Enterprise?

I use it for test management within Jira.

See all answers

Comparisons

Apache JMeter vs Visual Studio Test Professional

Compared 36% of the time

SmartBear TestComplete vs Visual Studio Test Professional

Compared 24% of the time

Tricentis qTest vs Visual Studio Test Professional

Compared 21% of the time

TFS vs Visual Studio Test Professional

Compared 19% of the time

More Visual Studio Test Professional Competitors

Tricentis qTest vs Zephyr Enterprise

Compared 25% of the time

TestRail vs Zephyr Enterprise

Compared 25% of the time

OpenText ALM / Quality Center vs Zephyr Enterprise

Compared 19% of the time

Tricentis Tosca vs Zephyr Enterprise

Compared 14% of the time

Adaptavist Test Management for Jira vs Zephyr Enterprise

Compared 9% of the time

More Zephyr Enterprise Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Visual Studio Test Professional

February 2025

Download Visual Studio Test Professional product report

Buyer's Guide

Zephyr Enterprise

February 2025

Download Zephyr Enterprise product report

Also Known As

No data available

SmartBear Zephyr

Overview

Visual Studio Professional Edition provides an IDE for all supported development languages. As of Visual Studio 2010, the Standard edition was dropped. MSDN support is available as MSDN Essentials or the full MSDN library depending on licensing. It supports XML and XSLT editing, and can create deployment packages that only use ClickOnce and MSI. It includes tools like Server Explorer and integration with Microsoft SQL Server also. Windows Mobile development support was included in Visual Studio 2005 Standard, however, with Visual Studio 2008, it is only available in Professional and higher editions. Windows Phone 7 development support was added to all editions in Visual Studio 2010. Development for Windows Mobile is no longer supported in Visual Studio 2010; it is superseded by Windows Phone 7.

Microsoft

Zephyr Enterprise is a robust enterprise test management platform that manages all aspects of the testing lifecycle. The solution is provided as an on-premise installation as well as a SaaS-based installation. Zephyr Enterprise enables you to make a rigid process flow flexible enough to accommodate changes. In addition, it provides all the functionality QA teams and testers need in order to create and execute test cases with less effort, allowing more time to do actual testing by alleviating significant time-wasting steps.

Zephyr Enterprise Features

Zephyr Enterprise has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Visual dashboards
One-click integration
Multi Jira instance
Scalability
Third-Party Integrations
Reporting & Statistics
Data Import/Export
Data Visualization
User Management
Move & Copy
Software Testing Management
Requirements-Based Testing
Industry-strength scalability
Documented APIs
Regular maintenance and upgrades

Zephyr Enterprise Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Zephyr Enterprise. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Ready-to-use reports and customizable dashboards: With Zephyr Enterprise, reports and dashboards are updated in real time and you can share test results and link with your team in Jira to connect any known issues. In addition, the solution helps you increase workflow efficiency because it improves info sharing during standup meetings.

Supports bi-directional and multi-instance Jira integration: Not only does Zephyr Enterprise support bi-directional and multi-instance Jira integration, but it also gives you the ability to support multiple projects simultaneously – up to 200,000 test cases.

Global repository for test cases: Zephyr Enterprise helps you create, categorize, and store your test cases via a global repository that can be shared across your entire organization. You can also quickly reuse test cases using the structured folder management.

Test execution: Zephyr Enterprise makes it possible for you to execute tests step by step, manage pass/fail status, and launch automated execution, then file those defects into Jira. Zephyr Enterprise test executions allow teams to operate in a more efficient way.
Universal test automation: Zephyr Enterprise supports a wide range of automation frameworks, helping you decrease operational costs and increase test coverage.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the Zephyr Enterprise solution.

A Manager of Enterprise Applications at a retailer says what’s most valuable is that “It's very easy and simple to use, which is beneficial. It has 90% of the basic features you need without having to pay a lot of extra money.” He also adds, “Zephyr Enterprise is very stable and the initial setup is straightforward.”

Jawaad A., Test Automation Lead at Trapeze, explains, "It has many features, but the main things that we need are the test cycles and integration with automation because we have automation for the web and mobile applications. We use it for test case management to run the test cases and get the results. At this moment, it is fulfilling our requirements. We are able to get the test execution report and the test pass and fail report. This summary is delivered to our management."

SmartBear

Sample Customers

Transport for Greater Manchester, Ordina, Bluegarden A/S, CLEAResult, Jet.com, OSIsoft, Australian Taxation Office, BookedOut, Tracasa

Hyundai, Fujitsu, Google, David Jones, Burger King, Ingenico, Websense, Dow Jones, Harris, Saab

Buyer's Guide

Visual Studio Test Professional vs. Zephyr Enterprise

January 2025

Free Report: Visual Studio Test Professional vs. Zephyr Enterprise

Find out what your peers are saying about Visual Studio Test Professional vs. Zephyr Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

841,004 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Visual Studio Test Professional vs. Zephyr Enterprise report.

See our list of best Test Management Tools vendors.

We monitor all Test Management Tools reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.