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SharePoint Designer [EOL] vs Zend Studio comparison

 

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

SharePoint Designer [EOL]
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Zend Studio
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
.NET Development Services (4th)
 

Featured Reviews

Raphael Haroun  Ikyagh - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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

"The scalability is excellent, and I rate it ten out of ten."
"I recommend this product to any organization who wants to have a nice framework for building their apps."
"The most valuable feature of SharePoint Designer is document management."
"It stopped us from having to run around, manually exchanging documents."
"The most valuable feature is the development."
"SharePoint has very good features for collaboration."
"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."
"SharePoint Designer is the best solution we have."
"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."
"Generally, it has higher quality code, faster debugging, and higher quality projects."
 

Cons

"The web services aspect of the solution is very weak."
"Adding guest users is a bit difficult on SharePoint."
"The new SharePoint Designer is very limited."
"The scalability is a little bit complex. We do have a lot of issues with scalability."
"SharePoint Online should continue to integrate with other solutions."
"SharePoint is too complex to install and maintain."
"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."
"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."
"Stability is sometimes lacking in updates."
"The debugger often has problems determining where to map files to local projects."
"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

"The price is reasonable."
"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."
"We are using an enterprise SharePoint Designer license."
"I use Macintosh devices, and because this solution is not available in the Apple Ecosystem I use it because it is cost-effective."
"SharePoint Designer is a free product. It's SharePoint that needs a license, not SharePoint Designer."
"SharePoint Designer's pricing is okay."
"Priced per user per month with different plans to choose from."
"The tool is free of 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."
"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
22%
Construction Company
12%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
No data available
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Harman, Zend and others in .NET Development Services. Updated: May 2026.
900,228 professionals have used our research since 2012.