The major areas where Visual Studio Express lacks features compared to Visual Studio Professional:
- No add-ins/macros
- Some Win32 tools missing
- No Team Explorer support
- Limited refactoring support
- Debugging is much more limited (particularly problematic for server development is no remote debugging)
- Lack of support for setup projects
- No report creation tools
- No Office development support
- No mobile platform support
- Limited set of designers
- Limited set of database tools
- No code profiling or test framework support
- No MFC/ATL support
- No support for compiling C++ to 64-bit images (workaround is to install Windows SDK which is free)
NOTE: it is often said that the Express EULA does not permit commercial development - that is not true (Visual Studio Express FAQ Item 7)