What users are saying about
Notepad++
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Top Rated
249 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 9.1 out of 100
Based on 249 reviews and ratings
Top Rated
631 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 9.1 out of 100
Based on 631 reviews and ratings
Attribute Ratings
- Notepad++ is rated higher in 1 area: Likelihood to Recommend
- Visual Studio IDE is rated higher in 2 areas: Usability, Support Rating
Likelihood to Recommend
9.5
Notepad++
95%
56 Ratings
9.1
Visual Studio IDE
91%
100 Ratings
Likelihood to Renew
Notepad++
N/A
0 Ratings
10.0
Visual Studio IDE
100%
3 Ratings
Usability
8.0
Notepad++
80%
1 Rating
9.0
Visual Studio IDE
90%
1 Rating
Support Rating
8.4
Notepad++
84%
29 Ratings
8.8
Visual Studio IDE
88%
28 Ratings
Likelihood to Recommend
Notepad++
Notepad++ is a great lightweight text editor and is an immediate install to replace the default Windows Notepad for me. It is suitable for quickly opening and editing single text files and for jotting down quick notes that may be temporary.It is great for quick edits on copy & pasting pages of text. I would use it to update paths using vertical selection or through regex search & replace.It is not a full IDE for any kind of code editing but it is very fast to open single code files, xml or json and is my preferred way to look at contents in these files rather than opening in a code editor.
Technology Architect
TELUS CommunicationsTelecommunications, 10,001+ employees
Visual Studio IDE
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.
Senior Associate - IT
Eurofins IT Solutions Pvt limitedInformation Technology & Services, 10,001+ employees
Pros
Notepad++
- Robust and full of features such as programming language specific settings
- Like being able to create new tabs, so I can easily go back to a prior project
- For a computer savvy person, its simple to use...simple menus, robust search features
- The ability to build and test macros, is more of a universal programming environment than a text editor

Verified User
Technician in Information Technology
Information Technology and Services Company, 51-200 employeesVisual Studio IDE
- 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.

Verified User
Team Lead in Information Technology
Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employeesCons
Notepad++
- Stability - It can be buggy and when it crashes it can often be only remedied by reinstalling it. I've had to do that a number of times.
- Add-In Quality - It appears that some add-ins aren't up to snuff as the other add-ins are. They too can cause Notepad++ to crash.
- Appearance - It just appears outdated, not really a big deal.

Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology
Chemicals Company, 501-1000 employeesVisual Studio IDE
- 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.

Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology
Pharmaceuticals Company, 1001-5000 employeesPricing Details
Notepad++
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
—Notepad++ Editions & Modules
—
Additional Pricing Details
—Visual Studio IDE
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
$45 per month
Visual Studio IDE Editions & Modules
Edition
Professional | $45.001 |
---|---|
Enterprise | $250.001 |
- per month
Additional Pricing Details
—Likelihood to Renew
Notepad++
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Visual Studio IDE
Visual Studio IDE 10.0
Based on 3 answers
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.
Digital Solutions Architect
DynacareHospital & Health Care, 1001-5000 employees
Usability
Notepad++
Notepad++ 8.0
Based on 1 answer
Many of the features are not out of the box. We have install them separately

Verified User
Employee in Corporate
Information Technology & Services Company, 10,001+ employeesVisual Studio IDE
Visual Studio IDE 9.0
Based on 1 answer
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.
Senior Programmer
Rotair IndustriesAirlines/Aviation, 11-50 employees
Support Rating
Notepad++
Notepad++ 8.4
Based on 29 answers
I haven't needed to utilize any support related to Notepad++. I guess this is a good thing because I found it to be quite intuitive. There are almost infinite features you can tweak and plugins you can download but I haven't had to do that because Notepad++ is really good right out of the box.

Verified User
Professional in Information Technology
Insurance Company, 51-200 employeesVisual Studio IDE
Visual Studio IDE 8.8
Based on 28 answers
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.
Software Development Director
Fresh ConsultingInternet, 201-500 employees
Alternatives Considered
Notepad++
You can't compete with free software, especially when that free software doesn't come with unnecessary bloatware and is packed with powerful tools. The closest software that I have used that comes close to Notepad++ has a simple SQL code editing tool built into it, but the software is expensive and only really works for SQL. I'm surprised that they haven't started charging for Notepad++ yet.

Verified User
Employee in Information Technology
Transportation/Trucking/Railroad Company, 201-500 employeesVisual Studio IDE
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.
Risk Analyst
Deutsche BankBanking, 10,001+ employees
Return on Investment
Notepad++
- Notepad++ has saved me time for quick coding jobs where I don't need to fire up a full-featured code editor.
- It saves me a lot of hassle by automating the formatting and sorting of text in a variety of use cases, especially for creating or editing mock data for projects.
- It is a free product (although you can donate to support its development) and has been a great tool for me to rely on over the years.
Software Engineer
Lockpath, Inc.Computer Software, 51-200 employees
Visual Studio IDE
- 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.
Senior Software Developer
TimeTrak Systems, Inc.Computer Software, 11-50 employees