When comparing Kendo UI vs CanJS, the Slant community recommends CanJS for most people. In the question“What are the best JavaScript libraries for building a UI?” CanJS is ranked 12th while Kendo UI is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose CanJS is:
CanJS supports all modern browsers and IE9+.
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Pros
Pro Free Core tools
Kendo UI is separated into a commercial and open source frameworks. The core of Kendo UI is in the open source frameworks, but some usability and benefits of Kendo UI are lost without the commercial version.
Pro Platform-based UI
Kendo knows what device it is being viewed on so it can adjust the UI accordingly. If a user is on a PC the user will see things differently than on a mobile device. Between iOS and Android the user will also notice a different as it pulls from the core UI of those core systems.
Pro Theme Builder
An interactive tool that has been created to customize an apps theme. Users are able to select from many pre-defined themes, edit them, and download the theme to bring into a project.
Pro Great browser support
CanJS supports all modern browsers and IE9+.
Pro CanJS can be used with any other library
CanJS is a collection of individual libraries, each separately available as npm packages. It's easy to use just what you need.
Pro Real time support
CanJS's model layer (can-connect), support real-time updates to lists without adding any additional code.
Cons
Con Expensive commercial tools [$699, $1,499]
The other core tools developed with Kendo are the commercial tools. There is the Professional version for $699 that will result in more jQuery UI widgets and client support. The $1499 "DevCraft" Complete edition gets developers the DevCraft .NET toolbox, testing and debugging frameworks and applications, as well as priority support.