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I'm actually having trouble finding any detailed, unbiased 3rd party reviews of the major ASP.Net component suites. I'm primarily interested in a detailed comparison of Telerik, DevExpress, and Infragistics - primarily for ASP.Net (not WPF/Silverlight).

There are plenty of questions and answers here about this - but nothing that I've found that presents a detailed comparison/gap analysis of controls, comparison of strengths & weaknesses, non-anecdotal comparison of support and documentation, etc.

Something like a Gartner report would be almost ideal - has anyone seen any other research reports or other detailed 3rd party analysis?

ScottBai
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  • I have done these comparisons several times in the past and IME you really need to do it yourself, that way the results reflect the particular challenges you are throwing at them. Component suites also evolve, so what may be a sucky suite now may very well be awesome again in 12 months time, and vice versa - what is great now may suck this time next year. – slugster Aug 23 '11 at 20:42
  • My personal recommendation is Telerik, I've used their components at multiple shops through out my career and have always been quite pleased with their work. – Chris Marisic Aug 23 '11 at 20:50
  • Review the http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6581389/devexpress-or-telerik-controls-comparison/6582123#6582123 discussion regarding this inquiry. – Mikhail Aug 23 '11 at 21:21
  • @Mikhail Preyskurantov - that is an excellent reference - but far from a 3rd party review or analysis even though two vendors responded. Not particularly detailed either. – ScottBai Aug 23 '11 at 22:32

1 Answers1

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I have experience with all three, and in my opinion Telerik offers the superior product for ASP.NET development. Each suite has a devoted fanbase, but Telerik's suite just seems more intuitive. Their controls are just easy to use and they work well. Their support/community and documentation are fantastic too, which is a big plus as well. If I had to rank them:

  1. Telerik
  2. DevExpress
  3. Infragistics

I've had good experiences with both Telerik and DevExpress, but I found Infragistics a little too bulky and convoluted, and it seems like you need a lot of hacks to get their controls working correctly with the more out-of-the-norm implementations.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like Telerik is slightly more concscious of best practices than the other two, especially Infragistics. Both DevX and Telerik perform well with a lot of data, but DevX might have a small advantage there. When it comes to aesthetics though, Telerik wins hands down. Looking at performance and aesthetics, I have to give it to Telerik.

I think you'll be happy with either Telerik or DevExpress, but you'll have to weight them for yourself. I would pick Telerik, but that's just me.

Resources

If you're willing to take Infragistics off the list (which I think you should), here is the best comparison that I could find, and it's probably not as detailed as you were looking for:

Here is a fairly detailed comparison between DevExpress and Infragistics (and some other suite):

And here's another question on SO, but it has some good information from a lot of users:

Community
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James Johnson
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  • Indeed, each suite has a devoted fanbase - and while you provided good information, it doesn't really address my question which is seeking a (hopefully) detailed analysis along the lines of a published research/analysis report or at least a very detailed review. But I'll mark one more tally in the Telerik column :-) – ScottBai Aug 23 '11 at 21:44
  • I looked for an analysis of all three, but I didn't see anything that compared all three the way you were looking for. – James Johnson Aug 23 '11 at 22:55
  • @ScottBai: I edited my answer... found something resembling a comparison. Doesn't seem to be a detailed comparison anywhere online. A project to consider, maybe? – James Johnson Aug 23 '11 at 23:10
  • @ScottBai: Seriously though, take Infragistics out of the list of contenders. Of that much I'm sure. :) – James Johnson Aug 23 '11 at 23:14
  • I would concur with this, and add that DevExpress have a couple of things that were counter-intuitive (different to established standards and how everyone else does it), and the Telerik support team is fantastic. – slugster Aug 23 '11 at 23:29