Essential Studio Reviews

The Syncfusion Grid component is as good or better than any other on the market. It has every feature you could want: paging, sorting, filtering, sizing and reordering columns, exporting to PDF, CSV, or Excel. And they have just about every other rich web component you think of: Calendar, sortable list, embedded rich text/HTML editor, charts, maps, you name it. And best of all, their free community license includes ASP.Net MVC so you can develop rich MVC web UI applications. And also includes Xam

Although they have extensive documentation, they so many components that do so many things, that not every feature has specific programming examples, so you sometimes have to figure things out through trail and error. And although the MVC components all have tons of methods and parameters you sometimes have to write JavaScript to make it work the way you want. So you need to be a strong programmer.

The product has a very high quality, stability and is well documented which lead to fast development cycles.

I try to find something, but we where really satisfied with the product.

Easy to use product and great to build Blazor applications, as Blazor does not have a big suite of front-end components ready to be used.

We found many bugs in the PDF viewer component, breaking the app where we use it.

I very much liked the built in functionality with a majority of the Controls it includes. In areas where functionality was not available, but needed for development, it was easy to incorporate custom functionality into the controls through control events, and via JS if needed.

I feel some additional Demos or documentation is needed for some controls and their functions/features. I found myself in a few spots where I needed to do something, and based on reading the documentation I'm lead to believe it can be done, but no indication as to how. This results me in heading to user submitted questions looking for answers, and those tend to be very relevant to the Users needs. Of course this all isn't helpful with examples, but ultimately it could be called pet peeves as its functionality that not overly important but nice to haves.

Everything. Easy of installation / upgrade, minimal or zero bugs in versions, nice design of controls, simplicity in using.

I would like more .NET MAUI controls to reach the amount of Xamarin controls.

Wide range of controls, extensive and well-written documentation, responsive and helpful support, community license.

I have used different controls in 2 separate projects and have no bad experience to write about.

I mostly used grid, graph and pivot table.
1. easy to add the library and you can just add any library that you need.
2. easy to use
3. nice graphic
4. full of features
5. awesome documents and support

1. there were some limitations to handle selecting and deselecting rows. specifically in multi rows. deselect event didn't work properly as expected.

2. there is some limitation to making a freeze column specially when you have columns that have multiple layers of sub columns.

3. it's not easy to hide some borders in complex grids

Easy of use, community license, many controls, integration, documentation.

Rapidity of support to integrates new features or controls evolution.

It is Easy to use and has good documentation.

difficult for greater customization and modification

Good software for commercial use and customization.

Six years ago, I started developing a large scale enterprise product. It required a lot of full stack development. It runs on Windows, Android and IOS. The infrastructures is all Docker containers. I am not a UI guy and didn’t have the time to build the UI components needed. Syncfusion components work well. Their generous licensing policies made using the tools possible.

Most impressive, is that I have received the same quality support as one of their paying customers. My system has architecture that I developed to solve a problem specific to my target industry. I did hit a bug that had not been seen before. Syncfusion’s support staff verified that the bug was in their code and issued a patch without argument. I can’t tell you how many times a company has told me “the software is not supposed to do that, so it’s not a bug”.

There are components that I found difficult to understand even after reading the doc. But it was more the task at hand then a problem with a component. For example: To use the Word functions to manipulate a Word file, you must understand how Word structures its documents. But a note to support always results in a sample. So, really there is nothing negative to say.

I like the completeness and in depth features of all the controls that I use, especially the data grid control which I use extensively. The sample application and online documentation is clear and succinct.

I find that breaking down the examples by feature is great when compared to other control vendors I have seen, that simply provide a high level example and nothing to demonstrate each feature separately.

On the few occasions that I have requested support, I have always received an answer in a timely manner.

What makes the WPF suite good value is not just the number of feature rich controls, but the complete package including the documentation help and support that is available.

There are only two minor issues that I have with the suite of tools.

1. I get regular feedback from users that the date picker control is clunky to use. I can echo the feedback. Entering a date does not feel smooth, especially when entering the year. Hard to describe, but feel like it cycles back around to the year zero.

2. I would like it if I could customize the calendar control more. Would be great if I could easily template out the control for each date so I could use it to display what ever info I wanted in each date cell. Maybe there is a way to do this, but either way I have not been successful in being able to template out the calendar control for the requirements at the time.

I got Syncfusion primarily for the scheduler component and having looked at other options, this was the best front end solution I could find for my software. It's not perfect, but it's very good in terms of functionality and user interface. I think my clients will enjoy using this scheduler.

It's a bit awkward to implement and the documentation is very poor. As for the scheduler, it comes with built in popup windows for creating and modifying events, but trying to get their styling to match my own was a nightmare because they did not use the same classes for every window, and not even the same classes for every button. It was surprising how inconsistent they were with their styling and that made it impossible to create consistent spacing and styling to match the rest of my system, so I ended up blocking all the popups and creating my own but this also was not easy or obvious. I had to contact support several times just to figure out how to use my own popups.

Integration is a breeze. The software is well designed and is rock solid. One of the best additions to the software are two apps you can download, Syncfusion Controls Explorer and Essential UI kit. The Controls explorer does a great job of showcasing various controls and illustrating different ways the control can be used. The other app, Essential UI Kit provides me with both a jumpstart for getting certain screens up and running but also a real work example of how the controls can be used. As an independent developer, I don’t have the luxury of hiring a full-time designer nor the flexibility of time to see how the control works. These controls allow me the ability to get my app up and running faster than before.

The grid control still needs work. It’s great for presenting data, but if you’re looking for more flexibility when entering values directly within the grid, you’ll be disappointed. The richness of options available to you just isn’t there.

Knowledgebase on the website needs work. You can drill down to a specific control, say, Xamarin.Forms -> SfDataGrid however if I search for "Initialize" it searches the entire product line. Really frustrating and makes the feature rather useless.

Good Grid
Great PDF read/write , Excel read/write much better, faster and more reliable than microsoft stuff
Support is just outstanding; Send in a request and they both answer the questions and frequently write the code snippet for you...wow!
Excellent Code Samples, Be sure and use the Code demo/sample browser for Windows..good stuff

If it takes more then 10 or 15 minutes to understand where to find a particular feature or functionality just send the question to Support. Documentation is mediocre and not nearly as good as Microsoft. Some things that should be exposed in properties and instead implemented via event handlers.

Still much less work using Syncfusion tools then coding in Microsoft GUI widgets

Grid by default does not look like MIcrosoft Access for insert/delete records but that may just be my particular needs

4 grid products of which 2 are kept to update and recommended. I used SfDataGrid

Sometimes you have to reach out to support or documenation to get syntax for a "foreach" loop as opposed to Microsoft Tools where it's easy to do it.

For my usages and applications, SfDataGrid is not feasible to use Visual Code Generator on unbound columns

Syncfusion XLSIO tools to read/write Microsoft Office files and PDF's likes to hold onto File Locks a little too long... So easy fix is to always pass in C# FileStream type or MemoryStream done via Using (FileStream)

I recommend using Tools->Nuget Package Manager->Package Manger Console because searching for Syncfusion packages to install via browse function in Visual Studio 2019 returns too many matches and takes too long to do.

That's both a pro and con; Pro that they use Nuget to install part's of the library of tools...and Con which is not really their fault that browse search for nuget is not very good at searching (Microsoft design issue?)

It works, renders html correctly enough.

Non-platform independence for devops - requires package installation on deployment targets. Also requires manual setting of path to syncfusion binaries (that are in the nuget package!) at runtime.

Extra package e.g. Syncfusion.HtmlToPdf.Blink.Static.Linux could be created with a static compile to eliminate system dependencies and manage CVEs etc.

The code (which we have had to write ourselves) to locate the native binaries originating from the nuget package should be inside the syncfusion lib - there should be no argument to their path.

Also, while it might bloat the package, nuget supports separate native binaries per runtime [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] which would enable to create a single platform-independant nuget package - this would really lower the difficulty - especially in places like dotnet-script where you have no csproj to change the PackageReferences depending on the runtime!

It's free for small outfits - seriously though, the community edition is really useful for myself who is a small sole trader and allows me to create powerful and capable web sites easily.
There is a lot of powerful functionality "out of the box", I especially like the functionality built into the Grid components and dropdown / combo boxes are handled the way I expect them to be with little coding required for normal situations.
Their community support is very good, I have used them about 3 or 4 times and each time they have responded within a day or two with both a written solution and normally a working example that I can download and examine

One of the big issues I have is, for me, the lack of clear documentation. This is especially true when you go "off the beaten track" to try something different and it can be a headache to determine the best way to go about achieving the result (e.g. on a grid, what events fire when with what arguments). However, the support people have been good at coming up with solutions when I draw a blank.
As the product covers different environments (asp.net core, JS, MVC, Angular etc) and there are different versions (ej1, ej2 etc) it can be a bit difficult navigating through previously answered questions and applying them to my environment (in the main I use asp.net core).

I like having the large number of components in the bundle as it reduces the number of third party components I need to complete my projects. I also like how rapidly SyncFusion rolls out updates to their products and the quality and speed of response of their technical support.

I am not sure if this is SyncFusion Blazor specific or something inherent with Blazor itself, but the lack of Support for GUID in their dropdown list and other things like their event callbacks require that I change my GUIDs to string types in my models and then have to map them back to GUIDs for CRUD to the backend. Also, I really wish they had a good Step / Wizard component. I currently have to use Radzen's Step component for my WIzards and there are often CSS conflicts between Radzen and SyncFusion. If they do not add one, I will most likely have to create my own custom Step (Wizard) component before the project is finished.

Syncfusion controls add style and features to my app that would be prohibitively time consuming (if not impossible) for me to code on my own.
My app makes extensive use if Radial Menus, Photo Editor, PDF Viewer and many many other controls.
They are simple to use and work consistently well on all supported platforms. My app runs on iOS, Android and UWP and providing a consistent and rich interface across devices is essential.

Given the complexity of supporting multiple environments, I have occasionally run into stability issues with new releases. The occurrences have been rare and Syncfusion support has always come through.

Great set of Tools! But equally important I would say is the stellar support that you receive. ES also has a huge community so I've rarely had to reach out for support as there is usually documentation on whatever issue I am currently having already.

However I have been amazed that such a Enterprise Level company has a support team that actually gets back to you in a day or two with either code examples or a resolution! In my whole development career of over 15 years, I've never seen that level of dedicated support! Not from Microsoft, Google( Does Google even do support?) or any third party tool.

Integration into projects isn't bad... I just wish it was a little more streamlined especially into Visual Studio. I ended up going with the Nuget Package installation because the other proved to be buggy and problematic.

This products solves almost all our needs along with the standard ui and productivity components on the platforms that we deliver solutions on. We are almost entirely an angular/typescript, asp.net core and Xamarin shop.

Sometimes the documentation and examples leave something to be desired but the very quick and responsive customer support more than compensates for that.

I love the fact that the software is usable across a broad spectrum of different technologies - Blazor, ASP.NET Core, Javascript, Flutter, etc..

The 'immediate' support team could do a better job, but support overall is better than it would first appear. You have to

Whether you are building a website, desktop or phone applications, the tool you will probably need is already available within the library. The dashboard application also eases the development time by providing real life sample codes.

They have regular updates with new features and bug fixes. If you encounter a bug, just report it to them and expect a fix on their next update.

Although the software provides lots of tools and libraries, there are still some room for improvement. They counter this by having an amazing group of customer support people that are always ready to fix or offer other solutions. They will even provide you with a working code solution.

The good documentation, many samples, easy to apply on our software, but most of all the outstanding support from the company that supplies a sample to solve a problem or any How To question. Is very attentive when a possible bug is pointed out and if it is a bug a fix is provided in a scheduled time.

the only thing I don't like much is that upgrading the desktop projects when I upgrade the libraries is a time consuming task. But I don't think there is a way to avoid this.

Lots of components for different platforms. It is easy to use. Tech support is world class, I usually have an answer in 24 hours, and they let you know when it is going to take longer time and provide an expected date. There is a Community version which is free but you must qualify to get it (this is the one I use). Although I have not used them, there are also Reporting, Data Science and Business Intelligence support, which I plan to test shortly.

Documentation can be improved with more examples. However, this is not critical.