It’s Official: VS 2010 Branding & Pricing

Microsoft just announced final branding and pricing for the Visual Studio 2010 lineup!  Here’s what it looks like (you can call this either the stadium or Lego view):

BRANDING

There are three minor changes to product names, listed below:

* Not available as a separate product for purchase.

PRICING

Below is the suggested pricing (USD) for each of the 2010 products.

* Subscription contents vary by purchased product.

A couple things to note:

• TFS 2010 and a TFS 2010 CAL are included with every MSDN subscription
• The above prices are suggested list price.  Companies buying development tools licenses usually go through volume licensing which usually result in lower prices.

Not sure what product has what?

Here’s another angle:

For more details on each feature, you can view a matrix here.

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 31, 2010
  I really don't understand why MS choose to introduce the Premium SKU. I wonder how the Express edition fits into this picture - from the above it dosn't seem to differ very much from the Professional SKU. Do I understand correctly that database projects (aka DataDude) will be available only in VS Premium? I believe it was available in VS 2008 Professional so if I do the upgrade would I loose these projects? I can't find MS-test projects in the above pic too.

• Anonymous
  January 31, 2010
  Hi Szymon, Express will still be there, and free as usual.  There are several distinct differences between Express and Professional, one notable one being what's always been there:  In VS you have a true multi-language IDE - in Express you get one language/platform at at time.   There are other things you get in Pro that you can't in Express as well, such as source control integration, macro security, and various project templates. The differences in 2010 will be roughly the same as in 2008, which you can view in full here:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=727BCFB0-B575-47AB-9FD8-4EE067BB3A37&displaylang=en In 2008, "DataDude" projects were only available in a Team System or Team Suite edition, not in 2008 Professional.   Test project types will be available in Pro and above, as they are necessary to support various test types, including unit testing (which is included in Pro).

• Anonymous
  April 05, 2010
  The problem with these tiers is the HUGE price steps.  While the higher SKUs have additional functionality, it's impossible to justify the cost of moving up if you only need a small fraction of the additional functionality. For example, code profiling, something that used to come in the basic professional SKUs (in the guise of the basic-but-serviceable PREP, PROFILE, and PREPORT) is now in Premium or higher.  The price step from Professional (without profiling) to Premium is $400.  I can't imagine paying an additional 50% for this one feature, even though it is a very important feature. I see nothing else in Premium that I need or want.  I've had MSDN subscriptions in the past, but never gotten any value out of them.  So while the next tier may indeed have lots more functionality, that's kind of moot if you don't need most of it.

• Anonymous
  April 05, 2010
  I guess I misread the table.  The jump from Pro to Premium is not $400, but $4670!  Who would pay $4.5k for code profiling?  And what other choices are there?

• Anonymous
  April 14, 2010
  As an independent, $549 for the Pro upgrade is out of my price range right now. It looks like I will be using a combination of VS2008, 2010 express, and SharpDev (Open source IDE has advantages and disadvantages over VS.) I received VS2008 for free as a Microsoft Hero, the 2005 upgrade was only $150.

• Anonymous
  April 15, 2010
  @Dennis. That VS 2008 from the Heroes thing is a standard, so you can get that upgrade to 2010 Pro for 299.99 at http://store.microsoft.com/microsoft/Visual-Studio-2010-Professional-Upgrade-for-Visual-Studio-Standard-Users/product/BE303EE9

• Anonymous
  April 28, 2010
  Does anyone know whether (and when) the premium and/or ultimate editions will be available for purchase without the MSDN subscription?

• Anonymous
  May 14, 2010
  Can anyone answer the question on volume licensing for VS2010 Ultimate at range of 1-5 users or 6-10 users? Seems to me MS is asking for $11,899 for ultimate PER user. That's lotsa sheckles.

• Anonymous
  May 14, 2010
  It all depends on your agreement with Microsoft and what pricing level you qualify for.  Your best best is to contact a reseller (if you have one) and see what they can do for you.

• Anonymous
  October 18, 2010
  VS's cost is more, for the common pple :(

• Anonymous
  December 16, 2010
  Having cut Standard Edition from the lineup (under the guise of a 'product lineup simplification'), this unfortunately increases the cost substantially for those who don't need beyond Standard features but require the plugin architecture. This is a bad hit. Basically, we end up paying hundreds more per license for nothing extra in 2010 - and using an MS tool becomes harder to justify (making platform adoption of Windows harder to justify; we dev for largely Linux apps) Any chance that the Express editions will be improved to be able to use more useful extensions? Or a useful middle range product will be reintroduced? Selling VS over Eclipse just got a lot harder. Selling Windows over Linux is more difficult too. The Express edition (lacking the ability to integrate Visual Assist or our custom plugin) just isn't a useful tool; 'Pro' is way overloaded and too expensive.

• Anonymous
  December 16, 2010
  Rough quote from  Sam Guckenheimer speaking on Visual Studio: "DevDiv (developer division) is a servant of three masters in Microsoft. Satisfaction, adoption, and revenue. MS sells products that cost money. This is clearly important. But if this were all they did, they would probably be shut down and jettisoned. The biggest products are used by tens of millions, not mere millions. They promote the adoption of these platforms, and they are measured on the level of satisfaction with the products."  Agile 2009. I don't think - and I'm not alone - that this price point subdivision is encouraging adoption. There needs to be a wider range of products.