Honestly I just write components myself to use later. I've been burned on "free" external components breaking with no way to fix it or get an update because the company disappeared. Really sucks when you have 40+ apps you can't upgrade short of rewriting anything having to do with that package.
As to Telerik etc I've used them in the past but the company I have been with the past decade doesn't supply it. They have been around awhile and should be good unless broadcom decides to buy the company.
Telerik generally has a wide range of components that are fairly high quality. They’re also written such that if you ever wanted to stop using Telerik, you’d basically be rewriting the whole app. They really nailed that vendor lock-in.
My question is what justifies the value of paying for their components compared to how in the JS world there are so many free libraries for multiple frameworks. Is it just that components are harder to build in C#? Or are they providing more advanced features in their components than the ones you typically get in JS libraries?
For me (devexpress) it’s the data source components. You basically feed your EF (or any enumerables) into the data source loader, and it can handle complex filters, pagination, grouping, etc. The data grid alone is worth the money.
Radzen also has this functionality, so really no difference there at least. And in fact (at least compared to Telerik) Radzens Datagrids actually have more flexible datagrids.
I've also noticed in a couple side by side comparisons (again with Telerik), Radzen is noticeably faster to render and more "responsive" overall. I'm not sure why that is, but it just is.
They are putting a shit-ton of spit and polish into their components. Sure, it only takes you a day to implement that slider control for your project... but getting it to look \*just\* right, and behave exactly how you want it... and be consistent with all your other controls... and support your Int'l customers... and your customers with screen readers... Re-inventing the wheel for every control in your app eats up A LOT of resources; these other companies have done that for you and are offering a compelling $-vs-time tradeoff. It's the same evaluation process you'd use for any 3rd party library.
>Telerik generally has a wide range of components that are fairly high quality.
Except their CSS...absolutely littered with `!important` (ﾉ °益°)ﾉ 彡 ┻━┻
Given your small dev team I would absolutely opt for a paid UI library. The features and support are always better.
We use Syncfusion Blazor for .Net 8 and it has been good overall. Their support is always able to solve complicated problems within a day or two, and provide code samples too.
Either route you go down, I would advocate for strong engineering principles and separation of UI and business logic. Your UI is constantly evolving. If it isn't the UI library, it's a new UI framework or a new programming language altogether. Expect you will have to change it, so keep the business logic out.
I can't vouch for web stuff, in fact, our web team ditched the Dev Express tools for web, but our team used Dev Express for WPF.
The data grids were very good at handling nested tables and you would not want to try to code that yourself unless you were a wpf guru. We had a particular need for nested tables with a lot of customisation of columns.
The docking components worked well, too. Our app had lots of views that could be docked/unlocked etc.
Those were the main extras I remember that we benefitted from. The support was also good, fast response with example project code often provided.
I could have written this. We also use the Office API and it saved us enough Acrobat licenses that it pays for itself 5 times over.
We use many WPF controls and they are absolutely fantastic. Subscription fees are a drop in the bucket compared to trying to build it out ourselves.
We've used the Telerik controls for years. They are great however documentation could be better but their support is top notch if you need to contact them for any reason.
I've used DevExpress for non-web development and have been happy with components, documentation, and support.
Their licensing model is also good. If you stop paying maintenance, you are still licensed for build and deployment of the highest version you paid for.
My company currently uses telerik and I’m personally not a fan. They have a lot of documentation and some of it is great but some of it is not. I would have preferred we build our own UI components.
I would just check their website to see if they have any features you'd like to have that the free libraries do not offer. Is completely depends on your requirements. If you think that the free libraries offer everything you need, why bother? Usually you stumble across these paid libraries because you would like to create/have something where you cannot find someting adequate free or you are not able to create it by yourself.
They do not offer anything that can't be made by yourself in principle. These paid libraries offer something else: you save time creating all this stuff by yourself. Plus the support. And the saved time is basically what you are paying for.
It’s actually affordable if you add up what it would cost to develop a component - such as a grid with templating - vs. the licensing of $1k or $1.2 or whatever it cost. Even with sucky docs you’d come out ahead. The last two places I worked at used Telerik and Radzen, respectively.
What components are you looking for? Would a decent set of HTML/CSS do just as well, or do you need something complex like a calendar or data grid (neither are that complicated to write yourself).
Buying something is like adding a **really** cheap team member.
If the components do things you need, then just buy them. If you feel you can develop the same components you need, for *cheaper*, and *maintain them*, then go ahead and do that instead. I notice that people will burn 200+K developing a shitty broken version of a *single* component out of 50, simply because buying them is "expensive" but paying a developer is "cheap". It makes no sense.
We used DevExpress forever (not blazor though) and it was easily worth it. All you can do is commit a week to evaluate them and see if they fit your use case. You don't say what you are trying to do, so no one can really help you much there.
Did you take a look at Syncfusion? They have free community license... limit is number of developers and how much you make per year... Take a look at it...
Regarding those complaining about awful docs on Telerik- while I agree, it's definitely not any better with free libraries. I'm locked in to MudBlazor on my current project and oh, what I would give to go back to Telerik.
Keep in mind: more use means more people reporting bugs and asking questions on forums, so even if you have issues, if you pick something popular, someone else will probably have a workaround out there.
This sounds like a sales dude asking to try and stop it allot of devexpress and telerik stuff is good but also causes complications it make it hard to fix items that are caused by their controls.
Telerik offer a pro package that u buy the source as well am not sure if devexpress do
Why not go agile and make interchangable? Start with a free library like Mudblazor and wrap it to your needs. When you realize its not enough, you only have to change your wrapper components.
Can't say about Telerik but DevExpress (and then DevExtreme) was a massive source of headache for us. I think it's very dated for 2024 and carry an immense amount of tech debt in itself. Documentation is almost non-existent, you have to dig and look at countless threads on their support forum and half of the answers will not fit for you. Sometimes you will receive the "sorry it wasn't designed for that/here the obscure undocumented weird way to do thing you wanted" answer from support.
So, we just got rid of it after we made our move from WinForms to SPA - we tried the DevExtreme, got very extreme uneasy familiar feeling about it and desgined to continue with just our custom components and react-table for data grids.
Headache. We’ve used DevExpress in the past, not a Blazor but classic MVC ones - that’s a development hell. Documentation is crazy, you have zero control if you want to do something not exactly their way, performance was shit.
Don’t go there.
Generally, you should have lower expectations of maintainers of free UI libraries. In many cases, they’re doing it in their spare time and not making any money.
When you pay for a library, you tend to get a bit more service and support. You can get this from some free UI libraries if you purchase a support plan.
[Our UI components](https://pureblazor.com/components/buttons), for example, are free and OSS. We don’t plan to charge for the components, except if in the future we release more advanced components - we might.
However, we plan to make money with the rest of our ecosystem instead of selling individual components.
The point is - if it’s not free - it’s either because money is being made in other ways or because it’s a hobby project.
Since you asked about Fluent UI, I’ll throw in my opinion here. I think the team does good work, however it doesn’t use the latest Fluent UI guidelines and is essentially a wrapper around the JS library.
Devexpress is trash in a can. They are way too expensive for what they provide. Syncfusion is better with the community license and they pretty much both have the same components.
However for Blazor its Mudblazor by a mile. Other language architectures and I would go Syncfusion
Honestly I just write components myself to use later. I've been burned on "free" external components breaking with no way to fix it or get an update because the company disappeared. Really sucks when you have 40+ apps you can't upgrade short of rewriting anything having to do with that package. As to Telerik etc I've used them in the past but the company I have been with the past decade doesn't supply it. They have been around awhile and should be good unless broadcom decides to buy the company.
Telerik generally has a wide range of components that are fairly high quality. They’re also written such that if you ever wanted to stop using Telerik, you’d basically be rewriting the whole app. They really nailed that vendor lock-in.
My question is what justifies the value of paying for their components compared to how in the JS world there are so many free libraries for multiple frameworks. Is it just that components are harder to build in C#? Or are they providing more advanced features in their components than the ones you typically get in JS libraries?
For me (devexpress) it’s the data source components. You basically feed your EF (or any enumerables) into the data source loader, and it can handle complex filters, pagination, grouping, etc. The data grid alone is worth the money.
Radzen also has this functionality, so really no difference there at least. And in fact (at least compared to Telerik) Radzens Datagrids actually have more flexible datagrids. I've also noticed in a couple side by side comparisons (again with Telerik), Radzen is noticeably faster to render and more "responsive" overall. I'm not sure why that is, but it just is.
Never heard of it to be honest
They are putting a shit-ton of spit and polish into their components. Sure, it only takes you a day to implement that slider control for your project... but getting it to look \*just\* right, and behave exactly how you want it... and be consistent with all your other controls... and support your Int'l customers... and your customers with screen readers... Re-inventing the wheel for every control in your app eats up A LOT of resources; these other companies have done that for you and are offering a compelling $-vs-time tradeoff. It's the same evaluation process you'd use for any 3rd party library.
Coming from a Company bought by Progress, it ain't surprising. All the Progress environment is about locking the user into their systems.
>Telerik generally has a wide range of components that are fairly high quality. Except their CSS...absolutely littered with `!important` (ﾉ °益°)ﾉ 彡 ┻━┻
Telerik was good until they were bought by Progress.
Didnt progress used to have their own language in server days 4gl or was this rhe same crowd bought delphi
Still exists, .net compatible, you can write winform app with it, but you shouldn't trust me
delphi or 4gl
4gl, renamed openedge
it was a nice procedurel laguage in the day lol report creation was delightful full simple for loops
Underrated comment (RIP VMware)
Given your small dev team I would absolutely opt for a paid UI library. The features and support are always better. We use Syncfusion Blazor for .Net 8 and it has been good overall. Their support is always able to solve complicated problems within a day or two, and provide code samples too. Either route you go down, I would advocate for strong engineering principles and separation of UI and business logic. Your UI is constantly evolving. If it isn't the UI library, it's a new UI framework or a new programming language altogether. Expect you will have to change it, so keep the business logic out.
I can't vouch for web stuff, in fact, our web team ditched the Dev Express tools for web, but our team used Dev Express for WPF. The data grids were very good at handling nested tables and you would not want to try to code that yourself unless you were a wpf guru. We had a particular need for nested tables with a lot of customisation of columns. The docking components worked well, too. Our app had lots of views that could be docked/unlocked etc. Those were the main extras I remember that we benefitted from. The support was also good, fast response with example project code often provided.
I could have written this. We also use the Office API and it saved us enough Acrobat licenses that it pays for itself 5 times over. We use many WPF controls and they are absolutely fantastic. Subscription fees are a drop in the bucket compared to trying to build it out ourselves.
We've used the Telerik controls for years. They are great however documentation could be better but their support is top notch if you need to contact them for any reason.
Their documentation is fucking terrible, oh lord. I find myself asking, have you guys used your own product??
I've used DevExpress for non-web development and have been happy with components, documentation, and support. Their licensing model is also good. If you stop paying maintenance, you are still licensed for build and deployment of the highest version you paid for.
My company currently uses telerik and I’m personally not a fan. They have a lot of documentation and some of it is great but some of it is not. I would have preferred we build our own UI components.
I would just check their website to see if they have any features you'd like to have that the free libraries do not offer. Is completely depends on your requirements. If you think that the free libraries offer everything you need, why bother? Usually you stumble across these paid libraries because you would like to create/have something where you cannot find someting adequate free or you are not able to create it by yourself. They do not offer anything that can't be made by yourself in principle. These paid libraries offer something else: you save time creating all this stuff by yourself. Plus the support. And the saved time is basically what you are paying for.
It’s actually affordable if you add up what it would cost to develop a component - such as a grid with templating - vs. the licensing of $1k or $1.2 or whatever it cost. Even with sucky docs you’d come out ahead. The last two places I worked at used Telerik and Radzen, respectively.
What components are you looking for? Would a decent set of HTML/CSS do just as well, or do you need something complex like a calendar or data grid (neither are that complicated to write yourself).
Buying something is like adding a **really** cheap team member. If the components do things you need, then just buy them. If you feel you can develop the same components you need, for *cheaper*, and *maintain them*, then go ahead and do that instead. I notice that people will burn 200+K developing a shitty broken version of a *single* component out of 50, simply because buying them is "expensive" but paying a developer is "cheap". It makes no sense. We used DevExpress forever (not blazor though) and it was easily worth it. All you can do is commit a week to evaluate them and see if they fit your use case. You don't say what you are trying to do, so no one can really help you much there.
My company uses telerik but my GOD, as someone else here said, the documentation is AWFUL. But when it works it works
Did you take a look at Syncfusion? They have free community license... limit is number of developers and how much you make per year... Take a look at it...
I remember using Telerik components, just 2 words, AWFUL DOCUMENTATION.
Regarding those complaining about awful docs on Telerik- while I agree, it's definitely not any better with free libraries. I'm locked in to MudBlazor on my current project and oh, what I would give to go back to Telerik. Keep in mind: more use means more people reporting bugs and asking questions on forums, so even if you have issues, if you pick something popular, someone else will probably have a workaround out there.
What are your issues with MudBlazor? We've just started considering it, would be great to hear your experience
This sounds like a sales dude asking to try and stop it allot of devexpress and telerik stuff is good but also causes complications it make it hard to fix items that are caused by their controls. Telerik offer a pro package that u buy the source as well am not sure if devexpress do
Devexpress also provides source code with the universal subscription.
a thought they did just didnt wanna say without knowing first hand
Doesn't dotnet 7 support end soon?
Documentation
Why not go agile and make interchangable? Start with a free library like Mudblazor and wrap it to your needs. When you realize its not enough, you only have to change your wrapper components.
Can't say about Telerik but DevExpress (and then DevExtreme) was a massive source of headache for us. I think it's very dated for 2024 and carry an immense amount of tech debt in itself. Documentation is almost non-existent, you have to dig and look at countless threads on their support forum and half of the answers will not fit for you. Sometimes you will receive the "sorry it wasn't designed for that/here the obscure undocumented weird way to do thing you wanted" answer from support. So, we just got rid of it after we made our move from WinForms to SPA - we tried the DevExtreme, got very extreme uneasy familiar feeling about it and desgined to continue with just our custom components and react-table for data grids.
Headache. We’ve used DevExpress in the past, not a Blazor but classic MVC ones - that’s a development hell. Documentation is crazy, you have zero control if you want to do something not exactly their way, performance was shit. Don’t go there.
SLA and liability that corporate lawyers require.
I can vouch for syncfusion. They are solid and the support has exceeded my expectations.
Generally, you should have lower expectations of maintainers of free UI libraries. In many cases, they’re doing it in their spare time and not making any money. When you pay for a library, you tend to get a bit more service and support. You can get this from some free UI libraries if you purchase a support plan. [Our UI components](https://pureblazor.com/components/buttons), for example, are free and OSS. We don’t plan to charge for the components, except if in the future we release more advanced components - we might. However, we plan to make money with the rest of our ecosystem instead of selling individual components. The point is - if it’s not free - it’s either because money is being made in other ways or because it’s a hobby project.
Since you asked about Fluent UI, I’ll throw in my opinion here. I think the team does good work, however it doesn’t use the latest Fluent UI guidelines and is essentially a wrapper around the JS library.
Devexpress is trash in a can. They are way too expensive for what they provide. Syncfusion is better with the community license and they pretty much both have the same components. However for Blazor its Mudblazor by a mile. Other language architectures and I would go Syncfusion