InstallShield Reviews & Product Details

I am using this tool for the last nine years, and it has all the customization and capabilities to handle complex application configurations. The tool will help beginners to learn and understand things from Microsoft docs as well. It has a good UI option to manage customization for beginners.

Installshield is very easy to manage customizations using tables. The most powerful, capable, and widely used solution among installation developers worldwide. A quick and easy solution for creating reliable MSI installations. Installshield supports MSIX as well. Create Windows Server App Packages (WSA) from MSI Projects.Build InstallShield Projects in an Azure DevOps Pipeline Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

License cost is one of the downsides of installshield, which is one factor when deciding on a tool. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The InstallShield wizard is organized very well and it is really easy to navigate to find what you're looking for. The control over so many different aspects of the installer, like creating Custom Actions, manipulate different registry keys, prerequisite editor, which sometimes not working as expected can really give you total control of your installation. Even if you don't find how to do things inside InstallShield you can always use the InstallScript of the Custom Actions in order to try to work around the issue. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I guess the learning curve of InstallShield is pretty steep. Lots of possibilities are great but sometimes it can be hard to grasp, like using AWS for the first time. Many services and you need to understand what you want to achieve and then find out how to implement it the best way possible Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I used two types - Basic MSI and InstallScript.

The best thing that I have known about this platform is the installer that's being designed can be tweaked the way desired.

The SQL server screen designed the way is best.

I did come across a bug in the SQL server screen of a old designed installer. But referring the community helped me fixing it easily without spending much time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Cannot change the design of multi-instance screen. As there are other out of the box screens already present but they can be tweaked not similar in the Multi-instance case. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It gives the user ability to customize the installation and the option to use inbuild or custom functionality. It also provides the functionality for the multi-instance installer, which is currently unavailable in any of the other tools. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The IntelliSense needs to be enhanced more as it would be more helpful during writing code and checking for errors. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

As mentioned, it takes care of all the boiler plate stuff while creating an installer. On the other hand, if you consider the other options they are either paid or not that user friendly.

It is a fast GUI based installer creating tool which also helps customization upto some level using either custom actions or scripts. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is not free.

It does not provide full flexibility which can be used if WiX is used.

WiX is free but there is a huge learning curve for any individual. Having used both, I would suggest to go for Installshield as there are integration you can include but size of installer may increase. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Custom script and custom execution sequence and way we handle uninstall is the best way Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Hard to debug and analyze why new introduced module package is little bit difficult ,, IIS UI configuration is little bit annoying Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Easy to use,better than compeititors in market, Can be easy to use for complex products requiring huge packaging, workflows can be configued using releaseflags. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Documentation to be improved,customization could be difficult sometime, Apllication debugging is difficult, IDE can be improved like other IDE's ( Visual studio etc ), has to be in standard of other IDE's, Custom actions are little complex Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I worked for more than two years in InstallShield 2018. I feel it is the best among all available in the market for packaging and delivering the monolithic application.

APIs are user-friendly and feature-oriented.

Importing third party dll is much easy, compare to other tool. (I used c++ dlls and multiple batch files).

There support desk is good. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Some improvement can be done on the scripting part. I remember when I was using it "Double" and "int" were doing the same job.

Documentation of the available API is required. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

User Experience and API, Rollback, Registry and File Redirection Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We encountered lots of BSOD issues while we were using Installshield in NVIDIA for graphic drivers Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.