Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials vs. Microsoft Visual Studio

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Redgate's SQL Toolbelt Essentials includes industry-standard tools for SQL Server development & deployment, enabling users to include SQL Server databases in agile processes and enabilng developers to embed robust and scalable development practices.
$1,209
per year per user (1-4 users)
Visual Studio
Score 8.9 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
Redgate SQL Toolbelt EssentialsMicrosoft Visual Studio
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Professional
$45.00
per month
Enterprise
$250.00
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Redgate SQL Toolbelt EssentialsVisual Studio
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Redgate SQL Toolbelt EssentialsMicrosoft Visual Studio
Considered Both Products
Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials
Chose Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials
I've used Visual Studio Database Projects for this type of work in the past with some success, but Redgate SQL Compare is faster, more transparent, and simply easier to use.
Faster is self explanatory.
More transparent, means that it's much easier to set up your desired options …
Chose Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials
We only looked at Redgate SQL Compare if I recall correctly.
Chose Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials
We haven't compared SQL Compare with other tools in a VERY long time because they are honestly THE BEST.
Visual Studio

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Redgate SQL Toolbelt EssentialsMicrosoft Visual Studio
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Score 8.6 out of 10
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Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
DBeaver
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Score 8.6 out of 10
PyCharm
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Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprises
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Score 8.6 out of 10
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Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Redgate SQL Toolbelt EssentialsMicrosoft Visual Studio
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(14 ratings)
9.2
(104 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(5 ratings)
8.8
(15 ratings)
User Testimonials
Redgate SQL Toolbelt EssentialsMicrosoft Visual Studio
Likelihood to Recommend
Redgate
We use SQL Compare to troubleshoot performance problems quite a bit since our data model is more like a template and not everything is 100% in sync and customization occurs between different client databases. We continually get pulled into performance issues and the developers will say Client A is performing different than Client B, why? Using SQL Compare, we usually find that one client was tuned and had indexes altered or added that weren't deployed to all clients or other objects weren't deployed correctly during the release. On the other hand, since our data model practices allow client databases to drift I tried to create a new golden image by trying to compare multiple databases based on the same data model and found it to be a very difficult process to complete using SQL Compare. SQL Compare gave me too much information and doesn't allow enough filtering to eliminate a lot of the noise.
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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.
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Pros
Redgate
  • Simple and easy comparison of database schemas and data. Differences can be copied or synced from one database to another with a click of a button.
  • You can save "projects" so that you can easily rerun a previous comparison whenever you need to.
  • It has a very simple, easy to learn interface. I've never needed to read any documentation or watch any tutorials in order to figure out how to do something.
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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.
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Cons
Redgate
  • Pricing.... I wish there was an inexpensive developer version I could buy for myself.
  • Portability.... I would like to use it from a flash drive so I can use it where ever I am asked to work.
  • Unbundled.... This may be available already but I dont' recall I can buy it cheaply as a stand-alone product. Its only part of the bundle - cost effectively.
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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.
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Likelihood to Renew
Redgate
No answers on this topic
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.
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Usability
Redgate
It's a good tool to have, but becomes expensive to buy a user license for each developer.
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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.
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Support Rating
Redgate
They have a great community website where you can search for answers but are also very responsive when it comes to direct support.
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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.
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Alternatives Considered
Redgate
I've used Visual Studio Database Projects for this type of work in the past with some success, but Redgate SQL Compare is faster, more transparent, and simply easier to use. Faster is self explanatory. More transparent, means that it's much easier to set up your desired options for schema change deployment scripts. Easier to use, It's really dead simple. Start a project, connect your source, connect destination, click compare.
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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
Redgate
  • Makes deployment fairly simple. Cutting our deployment time down.
  • With the SDK, we can customize our deployment process very quickly and easily.
  • History is not great, it does create scripts you can go back and see but it would be nice to have a quicker version view by object to save time.
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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.
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