It’s true. Visual Studio Professional can be had for as little as $45, though it can take a little digging to find this option. And there is a catch (or two).
It’s available at this price through Visual Studio Online. And the first catch is… it’s a subscription. That $45 is going to have to be paid every month in order to maintain your license.
But that’s less than $550 per annum for Visual Studio Pro, with no extortionate up-front cost, unlike certain other IDE’s that could be mentioned, and you can get your first month on a free trial basis. Plus of course, it’s part of Visual Studio Online, so it comes with a host of other benefits and features, should you want or need them.
In fact, I suspect that many people think that Visual Studio Online is only those “other benefits”, comprising essentially Team Foundation Server based ALC services for up to 5 users (plus twiddly bits like some cloud storage). The ability to obtain Visual Studio Professional licenses through this channel is curiously hard to find (here’s a link to save you the trouble of looking), and what isn’t immediately apparent is catch #2…. it involves also having an Azure subscription.
As far as I can tell however (and I hope this is the case since this is the situation I shall be in when my free trial period expires), this does apply to the Pay As You Go Azure plans, so if you’re not consuming any cost bearing Azure services, then a Visual Studio Pro subscription will be all that you are paying for. As something of a plus side to this, your subscription is then also managed through the Azure Management Console, along with all your other Azure services.
As it happens, I was interested in exploring some Azure services so this was no issue for me, whether I end up paying for some other Azure services as well or not.
Why would I want Visual Studio Pro when I already have Delphi (albeit XE4) and indeed RemObjects Elements. Particularly since RemObjects Elements comes with Visual Studio Shell. I already have Visual Studio, right ?
Not quite.
Although Visual Studio Shell is indeed a complete Visual Studio IDE, certain MS SDK’s will not install their support into it. If you have VS Pro, then they will install into that. Otherwise they will often install a copy of Visual Studio Express, of the appropriate edition.
With RemObjects Elements on top, you pretty soon end up with a plethora of Visual Studio environments. Messy to say the least.
With Visual Studio Professional, RemObjects Elements and whichever Microsoft SDK‘s you care to tilt your hat to will all install into the one IDE !
Opting for a Visual Studio Pro subscription is therefore a pretty cost effective way of consolidating all of those IDE’s into one, reclaiming some disk space and not a small modicum of sanity into the bargain!
at some point i get the impression that the VS makers have real fear that other IDEs get more spread then their own, and therefore bestow it to the masses 😉
And yes, Netbeans is very slow and Eclipse is dying because Netbeans is used for US Mitilary projects
“That $45 is going to have to be paid every month in order to maintain your license. But that’s less than $550 per annum for Visual Studio Pro…”
Hold on. That’s true – it is $10 less per year. $45 paid every month is $540 – still a lot.
A subscription plan or pay-as-you-go is an interesting model and maybe other IDEs (no need to hint as to which!) could do it too. But when you look at the comparative costs, they’re *all* expensive. I don’t think your criticism is completely fair.
I’ve long maintained that some people come to read this blog just to find things to take issue with. Here is a case in point. 😉
What criticism is it that you think is unfair precisely ? I was careful to avoid any criticism. Unless you consider making an oblique reference to factual observations relating to other, unspecified products is “criticism”. Which would be more than a little harsh I feel. 🙂
But, since you mention it, $540 is not really a lot in this day and age, and certainly not for what you get in exchange in this case.
You got me wondering though, so I had a look and OK, I give in… let’s compare it to Delphi XE6.
Even with the current Embarcadero fire(monkey?) sale pricing, an initial license purchase is over $1300, with ongoing annual support and maintenance of $460. To further insult their customers intelligence, the first year of support and maintenance is ON TOP of the initial license purchase and is charged up-front.
So your total initial outlay is almost $1,800 up front, with $460 p.a. thereafter. And that is just for Delphi, not even RAD “Studio”. Consider that with Visual Studio Pro you get C#, VB, C++, F#, JavaScript and more.
So, let’s say we’re feeling particularly flush and decide to push the boat out for RAD Studio Pro, there-by DOUBLING (woot) the number of languages in that IDE (but no .NET support, what-so-ever).
Now we’re into truly eye-watering territory with almost $2,800 up front and over $700 per annum there-after.
And these are the current “new version coming soon” sale prices and I have NOT included the Mobile
GougeAdd-on Pack.Seriously, as (I presume) a current Delphi customer you think that $45/mth for a Visual Studio Professional subscription is “a lot” ?
O.o
To me, your blog title was somewhat click bait…
Where is my VS Pro for $45 ? Oh, you meant per month on subscription.
Fine, and a nice alternate offering from MS, but with that spelled out in the blog title, how many less hits would you have received ?
Um, aren’t most blog titles/news headlines ? When reading headlines blog/titles I always bear in mind that if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. 😉
You may also sign up for becoming a Microsoft Partner and then you may subscribe to the Action Pack for ISVs. This pack includes VS Pro, many MS licenses for Windows, servers, Office, some free Azure services etc.
Being a member of the Partner program costs nothing and the Action Pack subscription costs 360EUR/year.
This always used to be limited by the fact that you were only licensed for “internal use”. For the development products this meant you could develop in-house systems but couldn’t develop products for sale/distribution. Has this changed ?
Also, I think the enrolment qualifications for Action Pack rule out this option for individual developers (unless operating through an incorporated company). Community level subscription is available, but this only provides VS Online Basic, with VS Express editions, not Pro.
It’s for “internal use only” in terms of you are not allowed to sell the licenses. There is no other technical or legal limitation. And there might be another limit regarding the size of your company (number of employees) – I’m not sure here.
There are LOT of limitations with the Action Pack.
Specifically (from MS FAQs) : “These licenses cannot be used for direct revenue-generating, commercial purposes” and “For instance, the MSDN subscriptions cannot be used by partners for client specific solutions because this is a direct-revenue generating activity.”
Overall if you’re in the software business you’re better off buying a retail license to avoid this.
Not maybe as onerous but you always must use the latest version of the software – meaning you cannot (legally) continue to use an older version once your action pack renewal comes up..
Yes those are the limitations that I remember.
Well, if you have to put it that way…
=D
So are you a Visual Studio / .NET fanboy or what?
Oh the irony. People who know me will tell you that I am a reluctant Visual Studio user. Very reluctant. And as for .NET ? I think it – and especially C# – sucks.
But, a good deal is a good deal, and for people who find themselves having to use Visual Studio (or wanting to explore beyond the limits of the Express Editions without huge expense), highlighting the availability of such good deals seems only sensible, don’t you think ?
This post was inspired by my having mentioned this option to someone in the RemObjects Talk forums and their response to learning about it. I had assumed that everyone knew about it, but clearly Microsoft are doing quite a good job at keeping it quiet. 🙂
Buying VS Pro just to use RemObjects tools sounds bit silly.
If you plan to use VS itself (without RO) then yes this all makes tons of sense since as you get a single IDE for all your languages.
Assuming you just paid a lot more money for RemObjects tools i don’t see how the “extortionate up-front cost” is a major factor in VS purchase at this point.
Not to mention VS license you’re referring to is a rental one vs perpetual license if you just bought it outright and then could use it as long as you want (not to mention actual VS upgrade price is lot less once you own it so for year 2 you’re better off have been bought the VS license).
if you plan to use the VS Online tools then that’s another matter.
Monthly rental model makes sense for VS only users but once you also buy into RO then buying everything with full license to me seems to make lot more sense.
Yes, I use RemObjects Elements. But no, I don’t only use Visual Studio for that. I also use Eclipse and Xcode.
w.r.t Visual Studio, I am currently building a web service back-end and intend using Azure for that. As mentioned in the post, the Azure SDK tools for Visual Studio do not support the VS Shell that hosts the RemObjects compilers. Also Elements currently lacks some templates in this area, e.g. for ASP.NET MVC WebAPI applications (and, I think, the ability to deploy directly to Azure hosts etc). It should be added that RO are working on providing these – and other – templates.
Many people may be happy with using the Express editions when compelled to do by Microsoft SDK’s lack of support for VS Shell. But for those that are unhappy with that situation and think that VS Pro might be preferable, the option of a reasonable monthly payment is perhaps better than having to lay out $00’s just to find out.
Incidentally, to avoid confusion for anyone reading your final comment, RemObjects Elements is also a subscription model, albeit with an annual term rather than monthly. Also, with RO, you do not have to have a current subscription to retain a valid license at the end of the term, you simply lose the access to new versions/updates etc that the subscription provides.
With Visual Studio you need a current subscription, but since it is on a monthly term I believe you can cancel/suspend and restart any time. There is no minimum term.
So if my web back-end is all done and I don’t need the Azure SDK support in VS Pro next month, I reduce my VS Pro licenses to 0 (in my Azure console) and don’t get charged for it. Of course, I then need to revert to using the VS Shell for any RO work in the meantime, so the potential inconvenience of that is also a factor for someone weighing up the value of the subscription, not just the actual features and capabilities of VS Pro itself.
I think that the option to subscribe in monthly installments is a good investment. Instead of laying out money in a single payment you can spread your payments; In my case, Adobe Cloud offering for Photoshop ( $9 / monthly) was a perfect solution. I do not use Photoshop every day so I could never pay 600 for a license. However, the monthly subscription plan worked out perfect for me. I did what I had to do within two months and then discontinued my subscription. If I need the access to Photoshop again, it is good to know it is there.
Offline compilation seems to be possible still. Sounds like a nice offering.
Thanks for clarifying the VS Pro and SDK requirements – good to know if one decides to use RO Elements.
Assuming you have to go thru uninstall/reinstall cycle each time you stop the VS subscription it’s still lot of work IMHO (i would think you will need to maintain the Azure code also).
Unless i misunderstood something we have 3 licensing modes in play here:
1. Visual Studio retail is a perpetual license. Use it as long as you want. For next version you need to pay the upgrade cost (less than new license cost) but all released updates like service packs are “included”.
2. Visual Studio Online is rental – as long as you pay you can use it and once you end it you have to stop using it (but you can restart anytime). You always have access to the latest version.
3. RemObjects is actually a retail license as far as i can see it (meaning perpetual) but without updates unless you also get a subscription (which is included in the initial purchase. After that the subscription is fairly expensive $499-699 which does give you new versions and support also.
Good to have all the options but i’d personally still buy the VS retail license over the VS Online one and have a stable dev environment for a while.
I have not yet gone thru that “cancel/renew” cycle, but the impression I get is that there would be no need to uninstall/re-install. Visual Studio performs a check to verify the current validity of the subscription (though I have not determined whether this is performed every time you start the IDE or only once to determine the current subscription period expiry and then again only after that to determine whether the subscription has been extended).
Either way, it is a consideration that for a development system not connected, and cannot be connected if required, to the internet, this could present a problem.
I suspect however that in this day and age, such development systems are few and far between. 🙂
The RO Subscription is more expensive than the VS Pro subscription (annualised), that is true. Worth bearing in mind however is the level of service delivered in exchange for that subscription. RO generally provide an updated release on a monthly basis, along with a regularly updated roadmap and progress reports. In addition to that, there is access to the current beta line, with updates to that on a weekly basis or occasionally even more frequent than that.
If any problems or questions are encountered, the Chief Architect is highly accessibly and responsive in the RO Talk forums.
Only recently I reported a strange issue with the compiler requiring me to use an intermediate variable where one shouldn’t have been necessary, due to a particularly exotic use of generics causing a type resolution issue in the Oxygene compiler for Java.
It was fixed and delivered in a new beta just 3 days later.
You can get AppMethod for $25! Of course, this also leaves out a couple of details, but there you have it.
http://www.appmethod.com/pricing
btw, your poll seems to be broken.
You can actually have AppMethod for free (conditions apply), But since I don’t see any sign that anyone is actually interested, let alone using it, it appears that they literally can’t even give FireMonkey away. 😉
“can’t even give FireMonkey away”
I doubt you can back that up.
I do wish there were a free Delphi version, though.
Selective quoting. The full quote was “it appears that they can’t [give it away]”.
I can back this up my citing the observations that give this appearance.
1) Google “AppMethod” and tell me how many results are anything other than marketting/advertising content. There is no apparent evidence of anyone using AppMethod.
2) Search the forums where developers hang out and ask questions about the tools they are using and see how many mention AppMethod.
3) Consult your own connections – how many people do you know that are using AppMethod ? If you know any at all, are they using it in earnest and/or recommending it to others or just poking around out of curiosity ?
Based on my observations in these areas it appears that AppMethod is a dud.
You presumably have counter-observations ?
I don’t use Appmethod. It’s a subset of Rad Studio.
I fail to see that that has to do with anything ?
“I fail to see that that has to do with anything ?”
You asked about my observations.
Again with the selective quoting. I didn’t ask for any old observation. I asked if you had any observations on which to base any suggestion that AppMethod was in fact anything other than a dud.
Clearly you don’t. Thanks for playing. 😉
“So your total initial outlay is almost $1,800 up front, with $460 p.a. thereafter.”
Are these Australian dollars? Microsoft pricing is in USD, so it might be worth comparing apples to apples. According to shop.embarcadero.com, a new Delphi Professional license is $1,039 USD and SA is $312. That’s an up front cost of just over $1,300 (still, ouch!) and $312 per year after that. Your Rad Studio costs are a little off, too.
Of course, you can continue to use the licenses if the subscription isn’t renewed. It’s one of my beefs with the Appmethod model.
US dollars. You appear to forgetting to take FireDAC into account. I didn’t include Mobile Add On Pack, but without FireDAC it really isn’t comparable,
Not forgetting FireMonkey. It’s in the Professional SKU for local access, just like dbExpress. You can use ADO for remote database access, or buy the CS add-on, which is extra.
I suppose it’s only fair to point out that RAD Studio Professional supports Mac, iOS and Android out of the box. How much more would this support cost for VS?
Oh trust me, I wish we *could* forget FireMonkey. 🙂
Visual Studio Pro – out of the box – has no artificial constraints on database access, so for an Apples and Apples comparison you have to include FireDAC.
And it was fortunate indeed that someone revealed the plans that Embarcadero had to prevent people from using ADO (or anything else, other than the CSGouge Add-On Pack) for remote database access using Pro, forcing them to back down in the face of the ensuing protest. Otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to write what you did. 😉
It’s only fair to point out that you can use Mono for addressing those platforms you mention. Not “in the box”, but it is free and easily available, though I cannot speak for how workable this is in practice. For additional outlay there is of course RO Elements (not just workable, but a veritable joy to use) and Xamarin (a good reputation which I find somewhat puzzling since the people I know who actually use it really don’t like it), although I believe the Xamarin option can quickly become ust as expensive as RAD Studio.
It is also only fair to point out that to suggest that FireMonkey “supports” those platforms is disingenuous to say the least. Go implement an Android Widget or deliver an app to run on an x86 Android device then come back and talk about Android “support”.
It is also only fair to point out that whilst Delphi and RAD Studio claims to be the most complete solution for developing, among other things, Windows applications, there is no support whatsoever (any more) for .NET or for Windows Phone or Windows Surface.
If anyone can keep a straight face while talking about “complete” and “support” and “Delphi” in the same breath then it can only be surmised that the Irony Bypass operation that they must have undergone was indeed a complete success. 😀
You don’t need FireDAC to connect to remote databases. You’re stretching a little. Well, maybe more than a little.
Ah yes, you’re right, you can use dbGo. Ok, you can save the cost of the FireDAC add-on.
Which is great news!
I had no idea that the dbGo ADO solutions worked on Android and iOS. It does, right ? Because you were very keen to point out that “support” for these platforms was included in the RAD Studio price, but didn’t seem to see any need to add FireDAC to that. So they must have found a way to make ADO work on those devices, yes ?
I don’t need to ask whether ADO – and thus dbGo – works on OS X, because obviously this a given since you don’t need it even in Delphi Pro, which doesn’t support Android or iOS, but does support OS X. So full “support” for all the “supported” platforms is all in the box. No need for anything else. Right ?
Of course not.
Honestly, I don’t think I am the one painting their oranges green in order to compare with apples. 😉
But this wasn’t the point of my post, which was only to make people aware who otherwise might not be, that there was a cost effective option for making use of Visual Studio Pro. If other people wish to indulge in deluded argument that Delphi really isn’t all that expensive and construct all kinds of justifications that fly in the face of reality, good luck to them.
I have more interesting things to do.
I don’t know how many mobile devices you connect to from iOS or Android. FireDAC will work nicely.
And if you had more interesting things to do, you wouldn’t spend so much time making unbalanced comparisons with the sole purpose of bashing Delphi.
imho, of course.
Make up your mind Bruce. Is FireDAC needed or not ? I don’t want an answer, just find it interesting that on the one hand you say it shouldn’t be factored in because it’s not needed and then seem to require it to be present to support some other argument of yours.
Are there two Bruce McGee’s ? Or just one that can’t make up his mind ? 😉
My only mistake is allowing myself to be drawn into wasting my time with people who clearly have nothing better to do than make meaningless comparisons and constantly shifting arguments.
You’re manufacturing a discrepancy where there isn’t any. FireDAC is included in the Professional SKU for local database access, such as you might use on iOS or Android.
You’re manufacturing a discrepancy where there isn’t one. The Professional SKU included FireDAC for local database access, such as you might use on iOS or Android.
Apologies for the double post.
With MS now releasing quarterly updates and a new “major” release every year it makes having a subscription more attractive – paying a big up-front cost just so you get a “perpetual” license doesn’t make sense any more as that software is old hat and rendered useless pretty quickly and you’ll end up buying upgrades as well. Subscription pricing is a pretty good deal for VS these days (esp compared to the old MSDN subscriptions). FYI is you’re launching a start-up or your business is less than 3 years old, take a look at BizSpark which gives you completely free access to VS (any edition) and loads of other MS software for 3 years.