I've written a fair amount of lawmaking in my IT career and released a skillful number of Windows programs also, and so a good tool to create Windows installer packages was e'er cardinal. Each program would have a dissimilar set of needs, such as scripts, DLLs, security settings, etc., so i tool that could handle a circuitous prepare of requirements was necessary.

If you have the coin or need tons of back up, y'all can always go with InstallShield, the solid selection for many companies using Windows. We always used InstallShield in our early days as it came packaged with Visual Studio and Visual Foxpro.

However, information technology is not the but good software out there for creating Windows installers. In this article, I'm going to mention a couple of other gratis and paid (though much cheaper) utilities y'all tin effort out in your organization.

Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS)

If you love open source software, you may want to cheque out the Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS). NSIS is a professional system that you lot can utilise to create everything from very simple to very complex Windows installers. It'due south minor, even so has a large feature set up, which makes information technology suitable for Internet distribution.

Equally yous can tell by the name, NSIS is script-based, which allows y'all to create logic equally complicated every bit you demand to handle whatever situation. Luckily, for beginners, it also includes a agglomeration of plug-ins and pre-divers scripts to get you started.

Here is a short list of some of my favorite features of this MSI package creator:

  • Ability to create Windows installers that tin install, uninstall, set system settings, extract files, and more.
  • NSIS has an overhead of only 34KB! It is past far the smallest Windows installer compared to InstallShield and Wise.
  • One installer that is uniform with all major version of Windows from Windows 95 to Windows 10.
  • Iii pinch methods (ZLib, BZip2, LZMA) to ensure the greatest compression for your installer packages.
  • Script based installer is better than other programs that just generate a listing of files and registry keys. Using the script language, you can perform many different installation tasks similar upgrades, version checks, system reboots, modification of environment variables, access to Windows API and more.
  • Create custom dialogs and interfaces to include user input, configuration options, and even a custom wizard interface.
  • Extend the capabilities of NSIS with plug-ins that tin communicate with the installer.
  • Back up for web installation and file patching across the Internet.

The plan supports a tons of other features including installer cocky-verification using checksum, list and tree for component selection, silent mode for automated installations, full lawmaking editor for writing scripts, etc.

Advanced Installer

Advanced Installer also has a free version, but information technology also has several other versions that go up in price depending on how complex your installer needs to exist. It's updated very often and works extremely well.

If yous're looking for something more professional that likewise includes some options for support, then Avant-garde Installer is a skilful pick. If you want a characteristic breakup between the 5 dissimilar versions they accept, so bank check out the link. The free version really has a lot of features and we were able to employ that in our company for a long time because our installers were fairly simple.

One unique feature to Advanced Installer is Installer Analytics. Information technology'south basically a set of tools to see how users install, utilize and uninstall your applications. Y'all can easily see how large your user base is, load a survey when a user uninstalls the program, and go data about the user's system and geographic location. All of this on a sleek and modern spider web interface that you tin examination yourself.

It too lets you easily repackage your applications into the new AppX format, which is required for the Universal Windows Platform. It doesn't require any code changes and they have a free AppX converter tool. Those are just some of the unique features, but Advanced Installer pretty much covers all the bases. Bank check out the total list of features here for each edition.

Inno Setup

Inno Setup is an avant-garde Windows installer that is completely free and that has been around since 1997. Information technology's got a ton of features and works not bad for small businesses with moderately complex requirements.

Here is a list of some of the all-time features of Inno Setup:

  • Supports all versions of Windows from Windows 2000 up to Windows 10
  • Supports installation of 64-bit applications on 64-flake Windows
  • Supports the cosmos of a single EXE file for easy file distribution
  • Customizable setup types and full support for application uninstalls
  • Creation of shortcuts, registry entries and INI files
  • Supports silent installs and Pascal scripting engine for more advanced installs
  • Third political party extensions that enhance the features of Inno setup

Overall, this is a really good selection since it's completely free and very easy to use. Information technology's not going to be able to practise what InstallShield or even Advanced Installer can exercise, simply information technology covers pretty much all of the nuts.

WIX Toolset

The WIX Toolset is a free set of tools for creating Windows installers that works with Visual Studio 2022 or higher. I mention it last considering it requires the biggest learning curve. You can create some very complex installers with it, but you lot'll exist coding quite a scrap and using a control line often.

WIX Toolset is based on the XML authoring model. If you don't have Visual Studio, yous tin use the Wix tools or MSBuild. It supports building MSI, MSP, MSM, and MST installer files. It as well supports a large number of Windows Installer features.

So those are some of the meliorate known and stable programs you tin can utilize to create Windows installers. I'm sure in that location are many others out there, so feel gratis to permit the states know which one you employ in the comments. Bask!