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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

"Microsoft Visual Studio is the best development environment out there, but it's also the slowest."
"You can use the solution to do coding and drag and drop. It is easy to install with web documentation."
"One of the most valuable features is its support. It's easy for me to get support even though I never use it. If there's a bug or a performance issue, Microsoft also provides quick updates, and this is another valuable feature of the program."
"My advice for anybody who is considering using Visual Studio is that it is a complete package that contains everything you need for .NET code development."
"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."
"It is a straightforward solution to set up."
"It's a very easy-to-use product."
"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."
"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

"Needs skills, and some versions have less features."
"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."
"Microsoft Visual Studio can be improved by integrating an agent that can support developers in the development process."
"Maybe sometimes Microsoft Visual Studio hangs if your computer resources are limited."
"It is simple to use for most developers and nearly impossible to use for non-developers."
"Sometimes crashes happen and occasionally there might be hanging issues."
"I would like to see support for rapid application development. For example, if I am developing a new project, I am repeating many similar steps again and again and again. But the platform could do this easily, instead of me. It would save me time. This is something I would like to have in Microsoft Visual Studio, to have it take over repetitive tasks from me."
"There have been some issues but not very often."
"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."
"Stability is sometimes lacking in updates."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The development license for Microsoft Visual Studio is free. I don't know if there's a licensing cost to it."
"The introduction of the Community Version allows some people to use it free of charge."
"Licensing costs are reasonable."
"I am using the free version of Microsoft Visual Studio."
"You may have to purchase more hardware utilities like processors or RAM."
"Microsoft Visual Studio is a free product."
"I use Microsoft Visual Studio's free version."
"We have an enterprise-level license. The cost is expensive for small to medium-sized organizations."
"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.