If you’re worried about subscriptions and cloud-based software, check out the standalone purchase options below. We hope that this doesn’t imply that your software can be revoked whenever Microsoft feels like it.

This seems like a weird decision at first, but it does make sense when you consider that some teams have services in Azure and want to start using Visual Studio to support those services without having to set up entirely different billing information.īe warned: according to Microsoft, under this payment plan, you are merely “renting” Visual Studio for the duration of the subscription.

Subscriptions additionally introduce people to basic tiers of Azure to hook people into the full Microsoft stack.īilling for Cloud Subscriptions is tied to an Azure account and its billing preferences. We suspect the main reason behind this marketing push is because they can make more money from subscriptions as opposed to standalone purchases (describes more below). Microsoft seems to be pushing their Cloud Subscription option as “the most convenient purchase plan” for developers. Instead of fishing through multiple pages of charts and tables, let us guide you through the maze that is Visual Studio’s pricing options in this single, straight forward article. Even worse, the feature documentation and product names seem to change every six months. The only problem? Microsoft has made understanding the feature and licensing differences between the many versions of Visual Studio as confusing as possible.

Good news! Microsoft has Visual Studio plans and options for every type of developer and team. Or maybe you have a friend that won’t stop talking about Visual Studio.īut you’ve heard Visual Studio is expensive, so how will you ever learn how to use it if you’re a new developer? Maybe you’ve learned how to create basic programs after reading our guide to becoming a software developer using tools outlined in our essential tools guide. If you’ve ever wondered why you should use a full development environment over a text editor like Notepad++, then using Visual Studio will definitely put any questions to bed.

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