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Syncfusion® Essential Studio® vs. Microsoft Visual Studio

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Syncfusion® Essential Studio®

    Score6.1 out of 10
    N/ASyncfusion Essential Studio is a suite of 1,900+ software components and frameworks for developing web, mobile, and desktop applications. Its UI controls are designed to be flexible and are optimized for high performance. Syncfusion enables users to speed the creation of modern user interfaces and read and write common file formats. Syncfusion states they have supplied components to 1 million+ developers across more than 30,000 organizations around the world, and the company offers…

    $395

    per month Team of up to 5 members.

    Visual Studio

    Score9.1 out of 10
    N/AVisual Studio (now in the 2022 edition) is a 64-bit IDE that makes it easier to work with bigger projects and complex workloads, boasting a fluid and responsive experience for users. The IDE features IntelliCode, its automatic code completion tools that understand code context and that can complete up to a whole line at once to drive accurate and confident coding.

    $45

    per month

    Pricing
    Syncfusion® Essential Studio®Visual Studio
    Editions & Modules
    Team License - Up to 5 developers
    $395
    per month
    Team License - Up to 10 developers
    $695
    per month
    More than a team of 10*
    Customized Quote
    Professional
    $45.00
    per month
    Enterprise
    $250.00
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Syncfusion® Essential Studio®Visual Studio
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Detailso A subscription license that covers a team of up to 5 members is available for $395 per month. Transferable annual license with unlimited deployment. Includes a license management portal. o A subscription license that covers a team of up to 10 members is available for $695 per month. Transferable annual license with unlimited deployment. Includes a license management portal. o For teams of more than 10, the Syncfusion sales team can prepare a custom quote. o Syncfusion offers subscription licenses that are suited to every organization's structure and needs. In addition to the Team Licenses described above, Project, Division, and Global subscription licenses are also available. Last updated: January 28, 2025 —
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Syncfusion® Essential Studio®Visual Studio
    Considered Both Products
    Syncfusion
    Chose Syncfusion® Essential Studio®
    Similar functionalities
    Incentivized
    Chose Syncfusion® Essential Studio®
    Radzen seemed like a quality product but we needed more control over the interface than they could allow. I don't recall the details about Telerik and Kendo. I think Telerik also rated high but was more expensive?
    Incentivized
    Chose Syncfusion® Essential Studio®
    Devexpress was late in developing Blazor controls so we refocused on Syncfusion. As I mentioned, Syncfusion has much better financial support for small businesses.
    Incentivized
    Chose Syncfusion® Essential Studio®
    Firstly, there is a free version for small businesses and it allows you to jump start without risk. I found one of the other products a bit short in the number of out-of-the-box supported events handlers for each control and, although you can manually add them, I feel more …
    Incentivized
    Chose Syncfusion® Essential Studio®
    Telerik is similar in content and functionality. I used it for 1 yr and switched to Syncfusion based on price. I have never considered going back to Telerik
    Incentivized
    Chose Syncfusion® Essential Studio®
    The free community license is a major element, but it also allowed a fast start with minimal learning curve compared to adopting alternative solutions.
    Incentivized
    Chose Syncfusion® Essential Studio®
    They are basically on par, but the docs and in general, including support, Telerik is a bit superior. I find it to be better in terms of user-friendliness and also better polished UI wise, I mean, overall they just look better and offer somewhat better themes/skins to all the …
    Incentivized
    Chose Syncfusion® Essential Studio®
    The products mentioned are not really in the same category as Syncfusion. As far similar type of products are concerned, we haven't used others. We have evaluated for sometime but did not use. The main reason was the support service.
    Incentivized
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    26 Answers
    96%
    Would buy again
    27 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    25 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    27 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    26 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    28 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    22 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    22 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    92%
    Implementation went as expected
    23 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    25 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    Syncfusion® Essential Studio®Visual Studio
    Small Businesses
    Progress Kendo UI
    Score8 out of 10
    IntelliJ IDEA
    Score9.4 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Progress Telerik
    Score10 out of 10
    PyCharm
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Progress Telerik
    Score10 out of 10
    WebStorm
    Score9.6 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Syncfusion® Essential Studio®Visual Studio
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.3
    (27 ratings)
    9.0
    (105 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.2
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    Usability
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.3
    (4 ratings)
    8.8
    (15 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Data Sharing and Collaboration
    4.9
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Data Sources
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Syncfusion® Essential Studio®Visual Studio
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Syncfusion
    The datagrid is probably their most popular control I would think. It is so flexible and configurable. Most of mine are plain views in ASP.NET Core, but I have a whole bunch that are dynamically created at runtime in my controller. That is so powerful.
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    It's useful for app development, debugging, and testing. I've been using it for two years and have seen it grow into a fantastic tool. All of the features, NuGet packages, and settings that enable different types of projects are fantastic. It also has a connection to Azure DevOps and Git. It's a fantastic product that's simple to use.
    Read full review
    Pros
    Syncfusion
    • Integrates well into Microsoft tech stack. i.e. ASP.NET, Blazor etc. So it acts as a plug-n-play, which is great!
    • Shrinks the development cycle without adding too much of its own ecosystem overhead.
    • Provides different UI skins so the controls don't appear as "stitched".
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Since Microsoft offers a free Community Edition of the IDE many of our new developers have used it at home or school and are very familiar with the user interface, requiring little training to move up to the paid, enterprise-friendly editions we use.
    • The online community support for Visual Studio is outstanding, as solid or better than any other commercial or open-source project software.
    • Microsoft continuously keeps the product up to date and has maintained a history of doing so. They use it internally for their own development so there is little chance it will ever fall out of favor and become unsupported.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Syncfusion
    • Sometimes links point to dead addresses in the documentation.
    • Some components have a difficult learning curve but that is usually due to the complexity of the control.
    • Minor version changes introduce breaking changes, for example updating from 20.1.x to 20.2.x gives us licensing errors, which in my opinion is a kind of breaking change as it requires all users to update their licenses.
    • Theming with CSS variables is not possible. Access to Theme Studio code is not possible. So a fully custom solution is needed to make Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise Edition components themeable with CSS variables.
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Certain settings and features can sometimes be challenging to locate. The interface isn't always intuitive.
    • Sometimes there are too many ways to do the same thing. For example, users can quickly add a new workspace in Source Control Explorer when a local path shows as "Not Mapped," but it doesn't indicate that the user might want to check the dropdown list of workspaces. The shortcut of creating a new workspace by clicking on the "Not Mapped" link can lead to developers creating too many workspaces and causing workspace management to become unwieldy. If the shortcut link were removed, the user would be forced to use the Workspace dropdown. While it can add an extra step to the process, workspaces would be managed more easily, and this would enforce consistency. At the very least, there should be a high-level administrative setting to hide the shortcut link.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Syncfusion
    It takes effort to include a new component library into existing software, especially in our case where we have 5 large applications that are written and maintained by about 100 developers. So changing such a core thing comes with a lot of effort. The other reason we will very likely renew our use of Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise Edition is that it works really well and has helped us to speed up the development process.
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    VS is the best and is required for building Microsoft applications. The quality and usefulness of the product far out-weight the licensing costs associated with it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Syncfusion
    I would rate Syncfusion® Essential Studio® a 10 out of 10 for overall usability. The components are intuitive to implement, with clear APIs and consistent design patterns across the suite. This makes it easy for developers to get started quickly and reduces the learning curve even when working with new controls.
    In addition, the documentation and sample projects provide practical guidance that helps accelerate development. The built-in customization options also allow us to adapt the components to fit our branding and business requirements without excessive effort. Overall, the usability is one of the key reasons why Syncfusion has become an essential part of our development toolset.
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    The thing I like the most is Visual Studio doesn't suffer from Microsoft's over eager marketing department who feel they need to redesign the UI (think Office and windows) which forces users to loose large amounts of productivity having to learn software that they had previously known.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Syncfusion
    Although I have decades of software development experience, I had never created a website from scratch before, and my html and css skills are not particularly strong. Between documentation and incredible dedication from the support team they helped me overcome all of my challenges. It's amazing that they typically create sample code for most of the issues that I submitted. On rare occasions where I uncovered a defect they kept me informed as to its status, and typically resolved it in a short-term release, and/or gave me a reasonable workaround. They hopped on zoom calls with me on multiple occasions when necessary.
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Between online forums like StackOverflow, online documentation, MSDN forums, and the customer support options, I find it very easy to get support for Visual Studio IDE when I need it. If desired, one can also download the MSDN documentation about the IDE and have it readily available for any support needs.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Syncfusion
    Feedback from the team has been very positive.
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Syncfusion
    Firstly, there is a free version for small businesses and it allows you to jump start without risk. I found one of the other products a bit short in the number of out-of-the-box supported events handlers for each control and, although you can manually add them, I feel more comfortable to just have them ready. After using the free version I just felt in love with Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise Edition controls and decided to stay with them; they have all I need and more. The usage of Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise Edition controls is straightforward and intuitive. Support is world-class even for the free version; you get answers in 24 hours at most. Also, the support team is ready to remotely connect to your project in case it is needed; we have had one situation like this, and the issue was solved.
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    I personally feel Visual Studio IDE has [a] better interface and [is more] user friendly than other IDEs. It has better code maintainability and intellisense. Its inbuilt team foundation server help coders to check on their code then and go. Better nugget package management, quality testing and gives features to extract TRX file as result of testing which includes all the summary of each test case.
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Syncfusion
    • First of all, I think the best positive impact is the reduce of time development. I do not know exactly how much time, but certainly, using the framework we save a lot of effort and time.
    • About negative impact, sometimes using the controls of the framewrok have a signifcant impact in the execution time and page load.
    • And of course, the use of Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise Edition has a significant impact of the learning of javascript and JQUERY.
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • We've had hundreds of hours saved by the rapid development that Visual Studio provides.
    • We've lost some time in the Xamarin updates. However, being cross platform, we ultimately saved tons of time not having to create separate apps for iOS and Android.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots