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Microsoft Visual Studio 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

Microsoft Visual Studio
Ranking in .NET Development Services
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
102
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 June 2026, in the .NET Development Services category, the mindshare of Microsoft Visual Studio is 16.5%, up from 14.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zend Studio is 6.7%, 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 Studio16.5%
Zend Studio6.7%
Other76.8%
.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

"The product integrates well with Azure Cloud, and it supports a ton of languages."
"Visual Studios is a business solution developed by Microsoft, and in general, I like it because it integrates many tools into one interface to provide a total solution."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is the integrated development environment, and it also offers a very good integration with Microsoft Cloud."
"Being an educator and a programmer for 8 years, I can say that Visual Studio .Net is the best development tool for desktop and web applications."
"I like the IDE or the integrated development environment. It's the best IDE."
"It is great for integration with Excel."
"There are a lot of features that are very, very nice in Visual Studio, and we can publish directly to the premise's servers, and I was testing how to publish in a cloud using Azure and it was very easy."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Visual Studio is the user interface."
"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

"You need a lot of RAM to run the applications with Visual Studio and Unity."
"Visual Studio.Net is only used for Microsoft Windows operating system."
"It would be nice if Visual Studio's extensions and updates could self-correct, if they are not working or disabled, and also inform the user."
"For small to medium-sized organizations, the licensing for Visual Studio may be too expensive."
"Microsoft Visual Studio needs to improve integration."
"Their help answers to random user questions are terrible, however."
"I would rate Microsoft Visual Studio a seven out of ten. I rate it a seven because you can't use it on all platforms."
"Microsoft Visual Studio could benefit from a more centralized education system."
"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."
"Stability is sometimes lacking in updates."
"The debugger often has problems determining where to map files to local projects."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of using Microsoft Visual Studio monthly is approximately $300."
"Microsoft Visual Studio is free. It's freeware, so you don't have to pay for its license."
"I use Microsoft Visual Studio's free version."
"The solution is a free tool."
"Our purchasing department pays a fair price for it."
"Microsoft Visual Studio is a free product."
"The introduction of the Community Version allows some people to use it free of charge."
"We use the free version, and you don't need a license."
"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
Marketing Services Firm
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
9%
Performing Arts
9%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise52
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?
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 ...
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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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: May 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.