ComponentOne vs. Syncfusion® Essential Studio®

C1 is great for creating custom reports. We have client apps where we've created some fairly complicated reports such as invoices and real estate inspections. We also use the True DBGrid in many of our apps since it is so customizable. Its grouping and filtering features are very nice and can provide summary counts and totals at the bottom or right side of the grid that are very handy.

Incentivized

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.

• The True DBGrid control is nice for showing parent/child relationships and being able to drill down and show the child data. It also is nice for showing summary totals.
• The report engine is great for building custom reports for Win Forms or web apps. It can do everything that Crystal Reports can do.
• They have a good selection of controls that can do just about anything you can imagine.

Incentivized

• 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".

• Sometimes it is difficult to figure out where things are in the properties of controls since there are so many things you can drill down into.
• I find myself using Bing or Google a lot to look up how to do something. Some things are not very intuitive.
• Of course, I would always like the price to be cheaper. The high price has caused us to not keep current and have the latest version.

Incentivized

• 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.

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.

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.

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.

Feedback from the team has been very positive.

We have been in business since 1992, so we have used many different products over the years. The two other products we've primary used that are similar to ComponentOne, are Infragistics and Crystal Reports. Infragistics has a vast array of controls similar to ComponentOne. We use both to be honest and I'm not sure which one I would pick over the other. I guess that would depend on what you're trying to accomplish and if one had some control or capability that the other didn't. ComponentOne does have the reporting capabilities, where Infragistics does not.

Incentivized

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.

• ComponentOne allows us to add additional features to our apps that wouldn't be found in apps written with just Visual Studio itself. That allows our clients to get more creative in their requirements, which in turn, means more work and billable hours for us!
• Our apps appear more professional when using ComponentOne which helps us get projects for new clients.
• ComponentOne also helps us to save clients some money since we are not having to develop things that it can do from scratch.

Incentivized

• 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.