Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
GNU Emacs
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
GNU Emacs is described as a free extensible and customizable text editor for the Lisp programming language.N/A
OutSystems
Score 6.4 out of 10
N/A
The OutSystems Platform is a Platform-as-a-Service solution for rapid delivery of responsive web and mobile applications. It includes functionalities required to develop, deploy, manage and change web and mobile applications. It is targeted at the delivery of enterprise applications that require integration with backend systems, complex business rules and logic, usable interfaces and flexibility to change. It can be deployed in the cloud, on-premises or in hybrid environments.
$4,000
per month
Visual Studio
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Visual 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
GNU EmacsOutSystemsMicrosoft Visual Studio
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Basic
$4,000.00
per month
Pro
$10,000.00
per month
Professional
$45.00
per month
Enterprise
$250.00
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
GNU EmacsOutSystemsVisual Studio
Free Trial
NoYesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
GNU EmacsOutSystemsMicrosoft Visual Studio
Considered Multiple Products
GNU Emacs
Chose GNU Emacs
I have used several different IDEs and editors, but I keep coming back to Emacs. I guess my fingers are wired for Emacs and I find that I can do pretty much anything in the tool that I can with other tools. Some other tools are more polished, but are specific to certain …
OutSystems
Chose OutSystems
I was not involved in the decision to choose the product used. I've been in the company for less than one year, and they have used OutSystems for five years more or less. From what I am told by the department, they chose it for ease of use and quickness to learn.
Chose OutSystems
We spent a year on our due diligence to make sure Outsystems would be able to satisfy current replacement application needs as well as deliver on new experiences. We looked at competitive products, custom coding, and best-of-breed combinations of all our current application.
Chose OutSystems
OutSystems is more dedicated to web development and not so much as a marketing and analytics tool. It's easier to make more custom solutions.
Visual Studio

No answer on this topic

Features
GNU EmacsOutSystemsMicrosoft Visual Studio
Low-Code Development
Comparison of Low-Code Development features of Product A and Product B
GNU Emacs
-
Ratings
OutSystems
7.9
54 Ratings
6% below category average
Microsoft Visual Studio
-
Ratings
Visual Modeling00 Ratings5.351 Ratings00 Ratings
Drag-and-drop Interfaces00 Ratings8.052 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform Security00 Ratings6.351 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform User Management00 Ratings8.149 Ratings00 Ratings
Reusability00 Ratings9.954 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform Scalability00 Ratings10.051 Ratings00 Ratings
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GNU EmacsOutSystemsMicrosoft Visual Studio
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User Ratings
GNU EmacsOutSystemsMicrosoft Visual Studio
Likelihood to Recommend
8.2
(4 ratings)
7.1
(130 ratings)
9.0
(105 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(4 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(2 ratings)
7.5
(44 ratings)
8.8
(15 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
GNU EmacsOutSystemsMicrosoft Visual Studio
Likelihood to Recommend
Open Source
Emacs is best utilized on a Unix system where it can be easily installed and accessed. It allows for quick editing of files on a system whether you are accessing it locally through the console or remotely via an ssh connection. Once users familiarize themselves with the Emacs shortcuts, it becomes a pretty efficient text manipulation program. On a standard Windows computer, it is less likely to use Emacs for code editing, especially if you have a local repository on your host machine.
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OutSystems
Well suited for internal exposure of business processes (invoicing, API layer to other systems, customer maintenance etc), whether a UI is required or not. Not so well suited for full fledged web design. An OutSystems application must serve one particular business need, if gets too much functionalities and responsibilities it tends to get chaotic and complex.
Read full review
Microsoft
When working with base C# code for desktop and web projects, then Microsoft Visual Studio is ideal as it provides the libraries and interfaces needed to quickly create, test and deploy solutions. It is when slightly more complex scenarios are required that issues can arise. The built-in integration for things like PowerBI Paginated Reports and dashboards is far from ideal.
Read full review
Pros
Open Source
  • GNU Emacs is a text editor that can do almost anything that you want to do with it. It is fairly easy to extend the functionality using Emacs Lisp with a large library available.
  • It can be easily customized using themes as well as custom code to change the look and feel as well as how everything works.
Read full review
OutSystems
  • Developing end user interfaces with ease and speed with a modern look and feel.
  • First class low code development to reduce time to market with visual programming
  • Their technical support team is fast and responsive. We've yet to have any issues they could not resolve.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • I like how the tabs and panels are organized; everything is gathered together so you can find what you're looking for quickly.
  • If you can't find something, there's a thorough search engine that searches all of Visual Studio's features.
  • The Team Foundation Server feature is fantastic since it allows us to easily deploy and roll back changes on the server.
Read full review
Cons
Open Source
  • Emacs is old, so it's a little crufty and not too easy to pick up and start using. There is a community package called Spacemacs that simplifies a lot of things that you do with Emacs. It is probably better suited to beginners.
  • Sometimes, the choices that were made to integrate certain functionality change the basic models for that functionality. This is seen primarily in the version control system support, where multiple version control systems are supported and "unified" to a standard Emacs-y way of doing things. This can be confusing to the new user not familiar with the Emacs way.
  • Emacs has, as its foundation, a lisp interpreter. This means that the extension language for Emacs is emacs-lisp. Some people find lisp hard to understand and have difficulties writing Emacs extension code, or understanding existing code.
Read full review
OutSystems
  • Price – The licensing model of OutSystems is very expensive and not suitable for small scale developments. This is offset by the time to develop and stability for larger scale developments
  • Flexibility on PaaS version – The PaaS hosted version of OutSystems limits your flexibility to access the front end and backend database systems which can significantly restrict your options on high data volume developments or where anything requiring slightly out of the ordinary access is required
  • Same price for PaaS and self-hosted system. Licensing model dictates that you pay the same price even when you host the system on your own hardware which effectively means you pay more to manage the infrastructure yourself
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Would be great if there was a better way to save and restore open tabs.
  • The built-in test runner can be improved, for example, by adding the ability to save a set of commonly run tests, etc.
  • Better integration for Microsoft SQL server would be great.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Open Source
No answers on this topic
OutSystems
We are very happy with OutSystems and our developers deliver good work. OutSystems lets us build new software on a regulare (2 weekly) basis, which is highly flexible and adjustable. Even without very much experience, our developers manage to build usefull software, which is working a lot better than our previous (legacy) software.
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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.
Read full review
Usability
Open Source
No answers on this topic
OutSystems
OutSystems has a feature in which we can develop a functionality in a application and can use that functionality in another application without developing it again. That is main plus point for the development team so they can work with different functionalities rather focusing on the same thing again and again. if we want to make any change on the user side then we can make it live with just the deployment using the service center.
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Microsoft
I love the overall usability of Microsoft Visual Studio. I’ve been using this IDE for more than 20 years, and I’ve seen it evolve by leaps and bounds. Today, with AI and code-suggestion/completion features, developers no longer need to remember countless libraries, methods, or language syntax, or invest a huge amount of programming effort to complete a project. It truly offers everything a developer needs to program, debug, test, and deploy in a single IDE.
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Support Rating
Open Source
Everything that you need to know about Emacs can be found on the internet. There are many Emacs "cheat sheets" that list out all of the shortcuts for Emacs. There are videos on how to use Emacs. Emacs is easily installed using the standard Linux package managers and can also be easily updated through them as well. There are tutorials on how to customize Emacs to your liking.
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OutSystems
The tech support is very reachable. Usually by [email] from but also by phone if needed. We had some difficulties at the start with understanding "what our machine was doing" under high performance load. After some good sessions understanding our needs they delivered good solutions for our problems we had in the beginning.
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Microsoft
There are many resources available supporting Visual Studio IDE. Microsoft whitepapers, forum posts, and online Visual Studio documentation. There are countless demonstration videos available, as well. If users are having issues, they can call Microsoft Support, but depending on the company's agreement with Microsoft, the number of included support calls will vary from organization to organization. I've found that Microsoft support calls can be hit or miss depending on who you get, but they can usually get you with the right support person for your issue.
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In-Person Training
Open Source
No answers on this topic
OutSystems
Excellent material full of hands on that improve the understanding of the platform.
Read full review
Microsoft
IT is very complicated to understand all the functions that the environment has if you are not familiar with this type of development environments. It is important to select a good in-person training to achieve to understand all the possibilities and the capacity of the application. In this case, you will be able to develop a lot type of different applications.
Read full review
Online Training
Open Source
No answers on this topic
OutSystems
The online training material is well designed and explanations are step by step, helping trainees to understand and follow each exercise and new concept.
Read full review
Microsoft
If you are not accustomed to develop in this type of development environments it would be complicated to follow all the parts of the course because if the course does not include a great tour with all the concepts to develop you will not have the option to understand all the functions.
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Implementation Rating
Open Source
No answers on this topic
OutSystems
In a large company, patiently and consistently work the behind the scenes politics with business and IT partners across the firm.
This is transformational - you will need a solid set of key business partners to lock arms together to move forward.
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Open Source
Of course, Vim is a good contender for comparison as well, so I'll include it. I find Emacs much easier to learn, which will help speed up productivity for newer users. It seems much faster than VIM and VSCode, especially under load. It's highly highly customizable, in ways other editors don't stack up against. Its lack of bloat also is a nice addition to a great product.
Read full review
OutSystems
I tried to use WordPress with some success. Also looked at Joomla. But when I saw OutSystems I knew I had been wasting my time there. It takes you longer to get going with OutSystems - but even I as a novice realized immediately that Outsystems is simply in another league. Outsystems is powerful. (Can you compare WordPress and Joomla to Outsystems - I don't think so).
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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.
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Return on Investment
Open Source
  • Emacs is free software, there is no cost at all.
  • It has helped tremendously in situations where many, or large, log files need to be searched.
Read full review
OutSystems
  • The ease of use of the OutSystems development process has been the biggest ROI for us. We have developed our Framework product and maintained/enhanced it with only 4 workers.
  • OutSystems has enhanced their product very significantly over the last 4 years. They have gone from a simple to use tool to a very simple to use sophisticated tool that covers the standard mainframe-based computing apps and the apps used on handheld mobile devices all using the same basic set of development tools.
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Microsoft
  • Using the integration between Visual Studio and our source control service, the cost of re-work and losing code is drastically reduced.
  • Paid versions of Visual Studio enable developers to be so much more productive than hacked-together open source solutions that it's hard to imagine developing in Windows without it.
  • When combined with support subscriptions and the vast array of free online help options available, Visual Studio saves our developers time by keeping them coding and testing, not wasting their time trying to guess their way out of problems or spend endless hours online hoping to find answers.
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ScreenShots