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, 96% 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 102 Microsoft Visual Studio reviews

2,700 Views
2,700 Comparison Views

96% 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, Harman, Apache and others in .NET Development Services.

To learn more, read our detailed .NET Development Services Report (Updated: April 2026).

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.NET Development Services

April 2026

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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

Microsoft Visual Studio

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

102

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

PrasannaRao

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.

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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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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is stable, and it has no issues."

"We see savings in terms of time and money; if I take the manual testing against automatic testing, we see about an 80% saving."

"Visual Studio makes it easier to compile the code and shows me the errors upfront when coding. For example, it will tell me when a reference is incorrect or if there's a mistake within the function calls. I like how it highlights with a red underline so that I know there's an error at that point."

"Microsoft Visual Studio is a must-have tool if you work in Windows environments."

"Microsoft Visual Studio is a very robust application where I can debug quickly and resolve issues efficiently with specific solutions designed for strong debugging."

"Using Microsoft Visual Studio has saved me considerable time and effort during development, with savings between twenty and fifty percent in terms of both time and money."

"Microsoft Visual Studio is a robust Microsoft product, very secure, with numerous extensions and plugins available, and it's a cross-platform development tool supporting development for any devices."

"If you are looking for a very complete IDE for developers that can support their job with a lot of functionalities and plugins, choose Microsoft Visual Studio."

More Microsoft Visual Studio pros

"The most valuable feature is the capability of creating HTML pages, with CSS code."

"In summary, this product allows our developers to do what they want to do."

"The product is very user-friendly."

"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!"

"We like that the interface is very user-friendly making it easy to use."

"If you're working in a communication channel team, SharePoint Designer is a great solution because it helps to have some customized solutions in terms of communication and to create web experiences for external teams."

"Other valuable features are the ability able to update the master file, and creating the workflow."

"The most valuable feature is the development."

More SharePoint Designer [EOL] pros

Cons

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

"The best advice I can give to others is to take training because it's so easy to use out of the box. However, you might tend to install it and maybe configure it improperly. You need to have some training."

"Despite its advantages, challenges in diverse cloud environments may prompt the uninstallation of the application or entire development environment for resolution."

"IntelliSense could be better."

"I'd like the product to become more secure. You could potentially, for example, download an extension that contains malware."

"The migration could improve in Microsoft Visual Studio. When I upgraded from 2017 and up to 2022 it was not smooth. There was a lot of manual hand-picking. Microsoft should put a higher budget for the database developers' section in Visual Studio."

"For Visual Studio, the only challenge I've faced is referencing any package or new concept I'm trying to debug or run."

"I would like to see Visual Studio improve reporting to give us more details on failures. When there are failures, it's difficult to debug. It would be helpful to have more error information to help us to identify the issue and resolve it. I want to know more about software failures and exceptions in the system."

More Microsoft Visual Studio cons

"SharePoint Designer doesn't support the features that are available in the latest version of SharePoint Online."

"There is zero technical support. I have to use Google to fix the issues myself."

"SharePoint Designer could be improved by being more user-friendly."

"There is zero technical support. I have to use Google to fix the issues myself."

"Exporting the whole SharePoint website is an issue."

"The new SharePoint Designer is very limited."

"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."

"It needs to align with PowerApps and Power Automate."

More SharePoint Designer [EOL] cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Visual Studio is not expensive. Its licensing costs are expensive."

"Our purchasing department pays a fair price for it."

"Licensing costs are reasonable."

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

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

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

"I am working with the open-source community version, which is free."

"The price of Microsoft Visual Studio is approximately $400 annually."

More Microsoft Visual Studio pricing and cost advice

"This solution is free of charge."

"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."

"I use Macintosh devices, and because this solution is not available in the Apple Ecosystem I use it because it is cost-effective."

"The price is reasonable."

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

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

"The pricing is fair."

"We are using an enterprise SharePoint Designer license."

More SharePoint Designer [EOL] pricing and cost advice

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893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Marketing Services Firm

15%

Performing Arts

10%

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

23%

Marketing Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	36
Midsize Enterprise	20
Large Enterprise	50

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

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Visual Studio?

I think Microsoft Visual Studio is good at the moment. When I think of additional improvements, I would like to have the ability to use Claude in my Microsoft Visual Studio account since I believe ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Microsoft Visual Studio?

My main use case for Microsoft Visual Studio is for writing code. Since I'm a data engineer, projects I work on using Microsoft Visual Studio are related to data engineering. We have GitHub or Bitb...

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Visual Studio

April 2026

Download Microsoft Visual Studio product report

Buyer's Guide

SharePoint Designer [EOL]

April 2026

Download SharePoint Designer [EOL] product report

Also Known As

MS Visual Studio

No data available

Overview

Microsoft Visual Studio is a comprehensive platform for coding and app development, integrating tools for multiple languages like .NET, C#, Python, and JavaScript. Known for its debugging, IntelliSense, and Azure/Git integration, it enhances both cloud and local project workflows.

Developers turn to Microsoft Visual Studio for its diverse capabilities in building web, mobile, and cloud solutions. Its robust tools offer rich debugging and code navigation, supported by a user-friendly interface and seamless Azure/Git connectivity. Despite a powerful feature set, users suggest areas for performance, usability, and third-party integration improvements. The platform is designed to support both large-scale and small team development through Live Share and a flexible plugin ecosystem.

What are the key features of Microsoft Visual Studio?

Debugger: Offers powerful error resolution tools for efficient coding.
IntelliSense: Provides smart autocomplete to enhance coding speed and accuracy.
Code Navigation: Facilitates easy exploration of large codebases.
Multi-language Support: Accommodates .NET, C#, Python, JavaScript, and more.
Azure/Git Integration: Simplifies cloud deployment and version control.
Live Share: Enables real-time collaboration among developers.

What benefits should users consider in Microsoft Visual Studio?

Versatility: Supports a wide range of project types and languages.
Performance: Designed for efficient operation in development tasks.
Collaboration: Live Share facilitates teamwork and project management.
Deployment: Offers streamlined processes for both cloud and local apps.
Development Efficiency: Tools improve coding, testing, and prototyping speeds.

Microsoft Visual Studio is widely implemented in industries needing diverse app development such as finance, healthcare, and technology. With tools that suit both cloud services and on-premises applications, it caters to web, mobile, and integrated service demands, enabling cohesive development and operations strategies.

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

April 2026

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