There there are some important differences between both. In order to bind the controls inside the template, you must use a data binding expression on the appropriate control property whereas boundcolumn type can be bound directly to the grid data source by setting the DataField property. You can take a look at this article,on Column Types , check the section under GridTemplateColumn, it shows the difference in using GridCheckBoxColumn, GridDropDownColumn etc and TemplateColumns with a check box, drop-down control etc.