Microsoft Visual Studio vs SharePoint Designer [EOL] comparison

Microsoft Visual Studio and SharePoint Designer [EOL] are both solutions in the .NET Development Services category. Additionally, 95% of Microsoft Visual Studio users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 82% of SharePoint Designer [EOL] users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Visual Studio

Read 92 Microsoft Visual Studio reviews

823 Views
823 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

SharePoint Designer [EOL]

Read 49 SharePoint Designer [EOL] reviews

82% willing to recommend

Microsoft Visual Studio

SharePoint Designer [EOL]

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft Visual Studio and SharePoint Designer [EOL] 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.

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

Buyer's Guide

.NET Development Services

September 2025

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Helped 870,623 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

Microsoft Visual Studio

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

.NET Development Services (1st)

SharePoint Designer [EOL]

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Featured Reviews

Eitan Gold

SQA Manager at Elmo Motion Control Ltd.

Test code efficiency improves with integrated debugger and automation

The test explorer is really important for us as it aids in testing, along with the regular debugger. Even though I forgot the term for it at the moment, there is an overall debugger tool within the IDE that is very effective. This comprehensive debugger tool does the job efficiently, making our work easier.

Read full review

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

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"I like the performance, stability and ease of use."

"The tool is good for interactive testing. It has good integrations and works well for remote services. The product also has features for collaborative work where it allows others to control my screen. It has a good community for every language."

"The solution can scale."

"The most valuable features of Microsoft Visual Studio are the way we are able to design code, deploy, and test our application. It is easy to move an artifact from the start to the deployment stage. It has well-defined processes that you can integrate with any team. Additionally, the solution is always improving."

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Visual Studio is its integration with Azure DevOps."

"This solution can integrate with almost any functionality offered by Microsoft."

"It is also flexible enough to let me use Git as well as its own version control mechanism."

"You can use the solution to do coding and drag and drop. It is easy to install with web documentation."

More Microsoft Visual Studio pros

"One of the most valuable features is that it's free. If you have SharePoint and you want to do some branding, then the only tool available is SharePoint Designer. Microsoft gives the portal, the content management system, and, on top of that, it gives you Designer. So we don't have a choice, but Designer is good."

"The solution tightly integrates with all other collaboration tools."

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

"When you have a group project and you want to share your document with your group members, the solution is very useful."

"The support on offer is helpful."

"We appreciate the fact that this solution can provide us with an on-premises version, as due to our geographical location, we are not able to use cloud-based tools."

"The drag and drop feature is the most useful feature when using this solution."

"The solution is scalable."

More SharePoint Designer [EOL] pros

Cons

"The solution is not really good at debugging JavaScript, jQuery, or SQL"

"Microsoft Visual Studio can improve by adding more features to the Mac version. There are a lot of features lacking in the Mac version, there are limitations. I can install Microsoft Visual Studio on the Mac operating system, but it is not the same as if I installed it on a Microsoft Windows system. The Microsoft Windows version has a lot of features available in Microsoft Visual Studio."

"The GUI of Microsoft Visual Studio could improve."

"The UI could be better, and development could be easier on Microsoft Visual Studio if there were more features like drag and drop and more frameworks, etc."

"The tool's interface should be more user-friendly."

"The interface could be more user friendly"

"With the free version, we don't have that much support for Visual Studio. Its support is a little bit less and can be better."

"The hot reload feature is good, but sometimes it doesn't work. It could be improved."

More Microsoft Visual Studio cons

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

"The system can become slow which should be improved."

"Designer is easy to manage."

"It has a lot of bugs. It's also not very convenient. The UX/UI is not very user-friendly and not designed to be similar to other applications from Microsoft."

"The initial setup depends on company specifics. So, it's a bit complex."

"The search function should improve in the solution."

"SharePoint Online should continue to integrate with other solutions."

"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."

More SharePoint Designer [EOL] cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The license is taken care of by my company and the price could be less expensive."

"I'm using the platform's open-source version."

"The introduction of the Community Version allows some people to use it free of charge."

"While the enterprise version can be relatively expensive due to its comprehensive features, I find the license I currently possess to be reasonable, considering it includes the full suite without additional activations or charges."

"I use the open-source version of Microsoft Visual Studio."

"We purchased an expensive enterprise version of Microsoft Visual Studio."

"The price of Microsoft Visual Studio could be lowered. For a single developer, it is approximately $1,000."

"Visual Studio Team System is expensive, but it is worth the money."

More Microsoft Visual Studio pricing and cost advice

"Priced per user per month with different plans to choose from."

"The tool is free of cost."

"This solution is free of charge."

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

"We are using an enterprise SharePoint Designer license."

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

"The price is reasonable."

"SharePoint Online has a subscription-based model for payments and the price is based on user usage."

More SharePoint Designer [EOL] pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Performing Arts

17%

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	33
Midsize Enterprise	17
Large Enterprise	43

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

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Visual Studio?

We can use different .NET features.

See all answers

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

The pricing for Microsoft Visual Studio is favorable. While many open-source solutions are available, none offer the robustness of Visual Studio, which includes a Marketplace for creating different...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Visual Studio?

Based on my experience and my colleagues' feedback, I believe a potential area of improvement for Microsoft Visual Studio could be incorporating more AI, as it makes things easier for us, and havin...

See all answers

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!

See all answers

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.

See all answers

Comparisons

No data available

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Visual Studio

September 2025

Download Microsoft Visual Studio product report

Buyer's Guide

SharePoint Designer [EOL]

September 2025

Download SharePoint Designer [EOL] product report

Also Known As

MS Visual Studio

No data available

Overview

Visual Studio.NET is the umbrella that represents the key pieces of the .NET platform delivered from Microsoft, including the .NET Framework, the recently announced .NET Core, and a shared common layer of packages, compilers and runtime. Read this .NET blog post about the evolution of the platform and the different pieces that make .NET 2015.

Microsoft

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

Sample Customers

Knab, Hamburg Port Authority, Kecioren Municipality, National Instruments, Hamburg Port Authority, Government of Odisha, Kongsberg Maritime AS

Pyrotek Inc., ICA, Deliver Australia, Secretary of Economy of Mexico, Aegon, ABB Switzerland, Ascent Yarns Private Limited, Bakewell Biscuits Pvt Ltd, Hitachi Consulting

Buyer's Guide

.NET Development Services

September 2025

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