I keep any 3rd party libraries at a minimum especially if they include paying for it, this is because all my work is open source, at least so far, I do not have a actual job with programming, still learning more and more everyday, the one thing I do use is Advance Installer, which you can get a professional license if you qualify under a few things any of them not all of them make you qualified.

Here is the link to that page: http://www.advancedinstaller.com/free-license.html

MVPS, MCTS, Open source projects, and they even offer it if you have a blog and do a nice blog article on the product. This is so far the best solution to deployment I have found that is easier than whats offered in VS. I used installshield for years and never knew they offered this, until I got a new computer and couldn't use installshield anymore. It is also a seperate application from VS so, its really easy to use, no matter the version of VS you are using, which sold me even more due to the InstallShield thing.

Licenses are lifetime as well, they gave me an extension on my maintaince plan for free, I was worried about it expiring, basically what that does is extends support, updates etc.


The only other 3rd party dependency I use is GeckoFX, which will give you an error on VS 15, and 17, all you have to do to solve that is change xml. Its way better than the IE Control.

Other than these really I don't use anything third party. Except maybe icons - all of which are opensource/public domain.