Visual Studio Community vs. Professional vs. Enterprise
Visual Studio is available in various versions, such as Visual Studio Community, Visual Studio Professional, and Visual Studio Enterprise. This article gives detailed information about the distinction between the versions of the Visual Studio like Community Vs. Professional, Professional Vs. Enterprise and Community Vs. Enterprise, etc.
Visual Studio Community
Visual Studio Community is an extensible free IDE, completely loaded, designed to build mobile software for Android, iOS, Windows, web, and cloud applications.
Visual Studio Community is the best option if you want to use Visual Studio without spending a lot of money.
Visual Studio Professional
Visual Studio Professional is a Microsoft Collaborative Development Area. It is used to build software, blogs, desktop browsers, online services, and smartphone applications.
Visual Studio Enterprise
Visual Studio Enterprise contains a Mac Digital design. You can recognize and enjoy the same visual studio interface, which has been beautifully built and optimized for Mac. It is counted as the most dynamic and is filled with rich and new features. Software architects can use this medium in the best possible way and make the most out of it effortlessly.
Develop new, quicker, and simpler than ever before, windows, or Mac-based mobile applications with enterprise-grade software. It has been specifically designed to help you experience the best services and state-of-the-art features.
Visual Studio Community vs. Professional
The Visual Studio Community is open, whereas the professional edition is not accessible. The community can be used by developers or a smaller team of at least five individuals. But there are few limitations to the professional edition.
It can also be used by a group of 5 to 25 developers. Another important distinction is that the professional version supports the business, while the visual studio community does not. The predominant distinction between community edition and professional edition is a widely renowned feature known as CodeLens. There are a plethora of significant benefits that are offered by CodeLens, such as the users can easily determine code changes along with other pertinent histories.
One more important point that has to be addressed here is that the difference between them shrinks considerably. However, when you are supposed to be working in a large team, only then is the difference relevant. These could be automated unit tests or collaboration tools. Individual developers or even small teams incorporate the community edition for the purpose of commercial development. Now, this small group might involve five.
Visual Studio Community vs. Enterprise
Visual Studio Enterprise is for major corporations that get more sales and earnings per year. At the same time, the community edition is a free version, which can either be used for open source projects, for research purposes or as a team of five or fewer developers, under a variety of conditions.
Visual Studio Professional vs. Enterprise
The Enterprise version is filled with many features compared to the Visual Studio Professional edition. This is the list of features in the Enterprise version only.
Integrated Development Environment
Visual Studio Enterprise concentrates on Software Interfaces, so this release certainly includes many software architecture-related features.
- Live Dependency Validation
- Diagrams of Architectural Framework
- Architectural Model
- Code Clone
Advanced Debugging and Diagnostics
Developers waste a lot of time on debuggers. Let’s look at the special features of Enterprise for this domain:
- IntelliTrace
- .NET Memory Dump Analysis which is highly convenient
- Efficient Code Map Debugger Integration
IntelliTrace helps you to monitor the prior execution of your program rather than the conventional, existing debugging.
Integration of the Map Function debugger. This feature helps you to view the current solution, and also the so-called methodologies previously used, as charts that interact with the debugger and update your code in real-time.
Finally, we get to the .NET Research Memory Dump. You can review database dumping files to detect and address performance issues such as database leakage or unwanted assignments.
Testing Tools
At last, testing tools. This is the area where visual studio enterprise details the other IDE versions.
- Automated Tests
- Live Unit Testing
- Coded UI Testing
- Manual Tests
- IntelliTest
Hence, if you like to use Visual Studio Version for your own benefit, the community edition suits the best; there is no advantage of using Enterprise rather than Community Edition. Always remember, community edition is the professional edition for personal applications.
Development Across Cross-Platform
- Xamarin Inspector
- Xamarin Profiler
- Embedded Assemblies
All three editions i.e., Community edition, Professional edition, Enterprise edition offer their respective benefits and services that can be highly leveraged. Some of the parameters have been mentioned below that are compatible with all three editions. These are:
- Individual developers
- Classroom learning
- Academic research
- Contributing to Open Source Projects
- Development Platform Support
In addition to this, when it comes to Integrated Development Environment, below mentioned scenarios are featured in all these editions.
- Peek definition
- Refactoring
- One-click web deployment
- Model resource viewer
- Multi-Targeting
The scenario of Cross-platform Development also features all three editions mentioned below:
- Remoted iOS Simulator for Windows
- Xamarin.Forms
- Native iOS and Android UI Designers
- Share code between Android and iOS with Xamarin
2019 Visual Studio community edition is offered free under the conditions mentioned below:
- If you tend to be an individual developer then you will get it the versions for free. You can successfully use it to develop or create commercial applications and then sell them.
- The version is free for those organizations that have less than 250 PC and their annual revenue is not more than $1 million.
However, in both the circumstances mentioned above, you are supposed to register your respective copy only through a Microsoft Account.
These are some of the predominant information that you are supposed to be acquainted with.
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Visual Studio: Community, Professional, or Enterprise?
Visual Studio is hands down one of the best integrated development environments (IDE) out there, supporting 36+ programming languages and allowing developers to write, edit, debug their code, and craft websites, computer programs, mobile, and desktop applications, and even games. It has everything developers need (mostly web, JavaScript, and .Net) to build and release a complete application from scratch.
However, Visual Studio offers three different plans: Community, Professional, and Enterprise. Which one should you choose to make the most out of Visual Studio? If that's the question putting you in a dilemma, this blog can help. Here we'll list the features each plan offers in detail, along with a tabular differentiation for better understanding in the end. Read through the information to choose the one that meets your needs the best!
What is Visual Studio?
Crafted by Microsoft itself, Visual Studio is an IDE or integrated development environment that works on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It’s open source, lightweight, and comes with a code debugger, editor, database schema designer, and GUI design tools and supports several major programming languages such as Python, JavaScript, C, C++, C#, Visual Basics, and more.
Visual Studio: Community Vs. Professional Vs. Enterprise, Compared
Visual Studio Community
The Visual Studio Community version is a free IDE that comes with numerous features required for creating applications for iOS, Android, Windows, and even the web & cloud. Here are some features it offers:
Powerful Coding Tools: The Visual Studio Community plan allows your developers to write code in whatever programming language they're comfortable with. Also, they can fix code issues and refactor the code conveniently. With this plan, your team can write code, navigate, rectify or fix the issues.
Cloud-Connected: The tool itself is cloud-connected. It means developers can communicate, collaborate, and stay updated without having to leave the editor. Also, developers can use built-in and downloaded features to code more efficiently.
Debugging: Even the most basic version of Visual Studio comes with advanced debugging. Your developers can quickly spot and fix bugs. Also, the profiling tools help find performance issues and diagnose the same, making the jobs of developers easy.
Cross-Platform App Development: Visual Studio Community comes with several tools for Unity and Xamarin using which developers can write code, debug, test, and reuse the same for different platforms. This means the community version allows you to develop cross-platform applications.
Web Tools: Using Visual Studio Community, developers (JavaScript, Python, Node.js, ASP.NET, etc) can create and deploy the latest web applications. Also, frameworks such as Backbone.js, Django, Bootstrap, jQuery, and Angular JS make web development even easier.
Version Control Integration: The Community plan allows developers to use Git for code collaboration from within the IDE. With the Git menu, your team can find new repositories from either Azure DevOps or GitHub. Also, committing the code, pushing changes, syncing the code with your repositories, and resolving merge conflicts becomes easy.
Free Tools and Resources: With the Visual Studio Community plan, you'll get access to a range of developer tools, Azure credits, Pluralsight training, and Xamarin University courses, along with several other perks that'll make your developers' lives easy.
Visual Studio Professional
Visual Studio Professional is a paid plan that costs around $45 a month and comes with a basic Azure DevOps plan. It's best for professionals for both individual developers and small teams who seek professional developer services and tools:
Understand the Code Better: With Visual Studio Professional, your developers can understand the code easily, which results in better productivity. It comes with CodeLens, a tool that helps your team say focused while showing changes to the code, code references, whether the tests are passing, who tweaked the methods, etc., right from the code editor.
Boosts your Mobile App Development Team: Visual Studio Professional allows you to boost your mobile app development team with unrestricted code sharing and debugging. Your team can create native iOS, Windows, and Android apps using native UI, Native APIs, etc.
Cross-Platform App Development: Similar to the Community version, Visual Studio Professional allows you to develop cross-platform apps for PC, mobile, web, and cloud on a single platform.
Cloud-Connected and Collaboration: Visual Studio Professional plan allows your developers to collaborate using built-in features. It comes with an Azure DevOps subscription that helps plan, create and deliver applications faster.
Tools and Resources: The Professional plan offers you access to core Microsoft tools for testing and development, educational courses, professional support, collaboration tools, and Monthly Azure credits.
Visual Studio Enterprise
Visual Studio Enterprise is by far the most feature-rich and expensive plan that costs $250 a month and comes with Azure DevOps basic and test plan. It's great for teams of any size who wish to develop complex applications for any platform.
With Visual Studio Enterprise, you can do everything previous plans can, along with several things that are specific to this version, such as:
Boost Productivity with Advanced Level Testing: Visual Studio Enterprise enables development teams to craft modern applications by allowing them to focus more on writing code and not debugging. Here are some tools it comes with:
-
: This feature helps generate smart test data along with unit tests using which developers can test their code.
- Live Dependency Validation: Developers can check in real time if the code complies with the architectural dependency rules.
- Live Unit Testing: As your developers write new code, live unit testing helps automatically launch unit tests and display the results along with code coverage.
Advanced Debugging and Diagnostics: The Enterprise version comes with advanced debugging tools that make finding and resolving bugs a piece of the cake. Here are some helpful tools, for instance:
-
: helps debug issues that are difficult to reproduce, saving time.
- Code Map: helps visually debug apps to understand dependencies better.
- Snapshot Debugger: helps make debugging easier for cloud apps.
- Xamarin Inspector: helps test and debug mobile app designs in real time.
- Xamarin Profiler: helps leverage profiling data to improve mobile app performance.
Enterprise DevOps: The Enterprise version comes with an Azure DevOps subscription, that helps easily maintain your toolset. You'll get a complete toolchain from source code control and agile planning to test automation and automated CI/CD pipelines.
Extend your Tool Chain: The Azure DevOps also allows you to extend or tweak your toolchain as you like. Some tools you can add to your toolchain can be:
- Cloud Pilot: It helps identify the changes in the code for a successful migration to SQL Azure, VM, or app services.
- Parasoft: It helps automate API testing.
- WhiteSource Bolt: it helps manage the usage of open-source libraries within the project.
So, Which One Should You Choose?
As you may notice in the table above, the Visual Studio Community and Professional plan share a lot of features. And to your surprise, there isn't a significant difference between these two plans apart from the pricing and usage.
The Community plan is free, while the Professional costs $45 a month. Individual developers, any number of users in a classroom learning environment, and up to 5 users in an enterprise organization can use the Community plan. Enterprise organizations with over 250 PCs or revenue of more than $1 million a year cannot use the free version. On the other hand, anyone from an individual to a large development team can use Visual Studio Professional. Apart from this, both Visual Studio Community and Professional are identical.
However, the Enterprise version offers numerous unique features that other plans lack. For instance, you'll get advanced debugging and diagnostic tools, better testing tools, the ability to extend your toolchain, test automation, automated CI/CD pipelines, universal deployment, cloud collaboration, and whatnot.
So, if you're an individual developer, you can go for Visual Studio Community. And if you're an organization with over 250 PCs or revenue of more than USD 1 million per year, you must opt for the professional version to meet your development needs.
However, if you need advanced and more comprehensive tools for designing, building, and deploying complex applications, Visual Studio Enterprise is what you need. It costs $250 a month, though.
Q1. Is MSDN worth the subscription?
Visual Studio (formerly MSDN) is worth a subscription if you're a developer or lead an app or web development team. This subscription, regardless of the plan you choose, comes with a suite of tools and services that enable developers to craft complex applications for any platform. However, to make the most of Visual Studio Subscriptions, you need to choose the right plan based on what your requirements are.
Q2. Is a Visual Studio subscription free?
Yes, and no; there are both free and paid versions available. Visual Studio Community plan is free to access. An individual developer, any number of individuals within a learning institution or non-enterprise organizations with revenue of less than $1 million and PCs less than 250 can use it for free. Visual Studio also has paid subscriptions; Visual Studio Professional and Visual Studio Enterprise. The Professional subscription costs $45 a month, and the Enterprise subscription costs $250 a month. Latter comes with numerous advanced features and benefits that the former lacks.
Q3. What is the difference between MSDN and Visual Studio?
MSDN stands for Microsoft Developer Network, which offered developers access to cloud services, support teams, developer tools, software, and training material to help them build complete and fully functional applications.
However, Microsoft has renamed MSDN to Visual Studio Subscriptions. It contains all the features that used to come with MSDN enabling developers to develop applications for any platform with the help of Visual Studio, which is an interactive development environment.
Сравнение выпусков Visual Studio 2022
Дополнительные сведения о Visual Studio для Mac см. на странице Новые возможности.
Сведения о преимуществах для подписчиков можно найти на странице подписок.
Хотите сравнить подписки Visual Studio? Перейдите на страницу Расценки на Visual Studio.
Дополнительные сведения о поддержке проектов Visual Studio 2022 см. в нашей документации.
Дополнительные сведения о Visual Studio для Mac см. на странице Новые возможности.
Сведения о преимуществах для подписчиков можно найти на странице Подписки.
Хотите сравнить подписки Visual Studio? Перейдите на страницу Расценки на Visual Studio.
Сноски:
- Корпоративными считаются организации с более чем 250 ПК или годовым доходом свыше 1 млн долларов США.
- Windows Desktop, универсальные приложения для Windows, веб-приложения (ASP.NET), Office 365, Business Applications, Azure Stack, разработка кроссплатформенных библиотек на C++, Python, Node.js, .NET Core, инструменты Docker.
- Можно открывать диаграммы, созданные в других выпусках Visual Studio, в режиме “только для чтения”.
- Включает профилирование уровневого взаимодействия.
Visual Studio Community 2022
Бесплатная полнофункциональная интегрированная среда разработки для учащихся, разработчиков открытого ПО и отдельных разработчиков
Visual Studio Professional 2022
Профессиональные инструменты и службы для разработки, выгодные подписки для небольших команд разработчиков
Visual Studio Enterprise 2022
Всеобъемлющее решение, которое удовлетворяет требованиям к качеству и масштабированию команд разработчиков любых размеров
Visual Studio Community vs Professional Vs Enterprise
In this article, we will highlight the difference between Various versions of Visual Studio like Community Vs Professional, Professional Vs Enterprise & Community Vs Enterprise etc.
Table of Contents
Editions of Visual Studio
Visual Studio is available in three different editions
- Community Edition
- Professional Edition
- Enterprise Edition
Community edition
Visual Studio Community edition is free under the following conditions. This is applicable to both Visual Studio 2019 & 2022.
- It is free if you are an individual developer. You can use it to develop commercial applications and sell them.
- It is free, if you are an organization and satisfies all of the following conditions
- you should have less than 250 PC in the entire organization.
- Your annual revenue is less then one million U.S. dollars.
- You are allowed to install it in the maximum of 5 PCs.
In both, the above cases the You must register your copy using a Microsoft Account.
Community Vs Professional Edition
The Professional Edition Vs Enterprise Edition are both paid editions.
Visual Studio 2022: Professional Edition & Community Edition have the same features.
Visual Studio 2019: The CodeLens feature the only feature available in Professional edition, but not in community edition.
The Enterprise Edition is packed with many features compared to the Professional edition. The List of features depends on the Version of Visual Edition that you are using.
Visual Studio 2022
Community & Professional Editions have the same features. Enterprise Edition has lot of features compared to the professional edition. You can refer to the table below for more information
Visual Studio 2022: Community Vs Professional Vs Enterprise
Here is the comparison chart of Community Vs Professional Vs Enterprise. The table lists all features of the Visual Studio 2022
Visual Studio 2019
The Only difference between Professional Edition and Community Edition is the CodeLens feature. Using the CodeLens you can Find code changes and other histories. It tells what last changes were made to the file with reference history and who changed it.
The Enterprise Edition is packed with many features compared to the Professional edition. Here is the list of features available only in Enterprise Edition.
Integrated Development Environment
- Live Dependency Validation
- Architectural Layer Diagrams
- Architecture Validation
- Code Clone
Advanced Debugging and Diagnostics
- IntelliTrace
- Code Map Debugger Integration
- .NET Memory Dump Analysis
Testing Tools
- Live Unit Testing
- IntelliTest
- Microsoft Fakes (Unit Test Isolation)
- Code Coverage
Cross-platform Development
- Embedded Assemblies
- Xamarin Inspector
- Xamarin Profiler
Visual Studio 2019: Community Vs Professional Vs Enterprise
Here is the comparison chart of Community Vs Professional Vs Enterprise. The table lists all features of the Visual Studio 2019