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Microsoft Visual Studio vs Zend Studio comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Ranking in .NET Development Services
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
103
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Zend Studio
Ranking in .NET Development Services
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the .NET Development Services category, the mindshare of Microsoft Visual Studio is 16.6%, up from 14.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zend Studio is 7.7%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
.NET Development Services Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Visual Studio16.6%
Zend Studio7.7%
Other75.7%
.NET Development Services
 

Featured Reviews

PR
Senior Manager, Application Development at PSKW, LLC
Code reviews have become clearer and debugging now improves multi-language API development
I appreciate the debugging capability of Microsoft Visual Studio the most. The tracing of the debugging is what I value. I can use any editor to write the code, but Microsoft Visual Studio has strong capability. Microsoft Visual Studio has good integration with the plugins I want to use, the different types of plugins available for different languages and even JSON. Microsoft Visual Studio has improved significantly. Before, people used to use Notepad and other basic editors. Using the studio gave them the capability to properly debug and find issues. Additionally, it provides good code organization and indentation, as well as color coding for comments. It is very useful, as it gives function descriptions and class descriptions. It is very easy for someone who is not writing the code to understand it when they look at it, as it is very descriptive with proper commenting. I cannot give exact statistics on time saved, but I can provide statistics on quality improvement. The coding standard has been enforced. It has tremendously improved with Microsoft Visual Studio. I would say anywhere between 20 to 50% improvement, depending on which team we are discussing.
marketacumen - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's pretty prevalent."
"It is easy to integrate with GitHub; Visual Studio is very much UI-based and simple, so it's very easy to integrate GitHub with Visual Studio and it is much easier than Eclipse."
"The most valuable features are the extensions."
"If you are student or new to programming, then I will recommend you use Visual Studio for development, because it is a complete IDE and easy to use."
"The best feature of Microsoft Visual Studio for debugging applications is IntelliSense, which I refer to as autocomplete, and the integration capabilities with Microsoft DevOps Server streamline my development process efficiently, making it perfectly integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio."
"Visual Studio's collaborative features with Azure DevOps are valuable to us, as they allow various team members to collaborate on the same project, maintain consistency, and deliver products that fulfill client promises."
"Microsoft Visual Studio is highly stable."
"My advice to others is Microsoft Visual Studio is a good tool for development."
"Generally, 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

"They could add new modules to the platform for enhanced functioning."
"Support for spell checking comments should be inbuilt and automatically installed."
"I would like to have more integration with other platforms and technologies."
"There could be more coding languages in the solution."
"Technical support needs to be improved. Right now, it's not great."
"Sometimes crashes happen and occasionally there might be hanging issues."
"There is room for improvement in the price of the solution overall."
"The support from Microsoft is not the best, but it is above average."
"The debugger often has problems determining where to map files to local projects."
"Stability is sometimes lacking in updates."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I use Microsoft Visual Studio's free version."
"Its price could be better."
"The price is good."
"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."
"You have to be a subscriber with a Visual Studio subscription to use the solution and the organization has to purchase a license that's linked to the account."
"The price of Microsoft Visual Studio could be lowered. For a single developer, it is approximately $1,000."
"The solution is a free tool."
"Licensing is reasonable for this type of tool. Although, you can cobble together a solution which is zero cost."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
24%
Construction Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise53
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Visual Studio?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that since we install it directly from downloads, the cost is minimal. If we have a Microsoft Visual Studio enterprise license, I'm not sure...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Visual Studio?
Microsoft Visual Studio has done enough from my perspective. I am not a core developer, so I just use the basic tools that I need for basic things. A core developer would easily see additional thin...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Visual Studio?
I use Microsoft Visual Studio to automate some processes within the establishment.
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Also Known As

MS Visual Studio
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Knab, Hamburg Port Authority, Kecioren Municipality, National Instruments, Hamburg Port Authority, Government of Odisha, Kongsberg Maritime AS
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, Harman, Zend and others in .NET Development Services. Updated: September 2026.
914,109 professionals have used our research since 2012.