Visual Studio 2013 Community Edition versus Visual Studio Online Professional

Question

Is Visual Studio Community edition able to use my repositories on the Visual Studio Online account?

I have been paying $50 monthly for Visual Studio Online Professional which is included in the Online account, but now I'm really wondering do I still need to pay that. I have few projects on the Online account which I can't give up, but I understand the included Pro is pretty much same as the Community edition. So why am I really paying it anymore? Do I lose my online projects or something if I stop paying?

Answer 1

Let me see if I can help out here with sorting out some details. There's a few things to understand about the Visual Studio IDE and access to a Visual Studio Online account. Let's start with some basics:

• Each Visual Studio Online account allows up to five users access to the basic capabilities of Visual Studio Online. Essentially, you only pay for Visual Studio Online Basic per-user fees once you have reached your sixth person. The Visual Studio Online Basic user plan doesn't provide any access to a specific IDE so you "bring your own IDE" whether it's Visual Studio, Eclipse, Xcode, etc.
• Visual Studio Online Professional includes the basic capabilities of Visual Studio Online as well as access to the Visual Studio Professional IDE on a monthly rental.
• Visual Studio Community has a EULA that has some restrictions on how you are able to use it currently essentially has the same set of capabilities as Visual Studio Professional with some minor differences. Most notably, if you are an enterprise building commercial applications, you aren't able to use Visual Studio Community. There's more details available here and here.

Therefore, in your case, if you meet the conditions of the Visual Studio Community edition's EULA, then you should be good to go with using Visual Studio Community and one of your free Visual Studio Online basic licenses.