What are the benfits of a standalone Windows .exe vs an installer?

Question

I am trying to make an application as easy to deploy as possible for Windows and I am trying to choose between packaging the application as a .exe or using an installer. I was wondering if anyone had opinions on the relative merits of either way? My preference would be to use a .exe as it would be just click and run for a user.

Answer 1

You should only need an installer if you have lots of components that need to be installed in specific places, or components that need to be registered for them to work (eg COM components that need to be added to the registry). An installer can obviously also add shortcuts to your app in the start menu etc.

If your app can exist as a single .exe file that can be run from anywhere in the file system, then that would be a much simpler and cleaner solution for a lot of people.

Keep in mind though, that less technical users might expect an installer and won't understand that there are no links in the start menu.