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Microsoft Office SharePoint Server vs Office 365 comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 29, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Office SharePoint...
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
4.3
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Office 365
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
152
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Content Collaboration Platforms category, the mindshare of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is 3.6%, down from 8.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Office 365 is 9.9%, up from 4.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Content Collaboration Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Office 3659.9%
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server3.6%
Other86.5%
Content Collaboration Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

Daniel Giacomelli - PeerSpot reviewer
Security and Compliance at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Has transformed how I manage documents through metadata and automation while enabling structured collaboration
Microsoft should restore some functionalities from older versions of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2003 and 2010. Specifically, bringing back something similar to SharePoint Designer would be beneficial. SharePoint Designer was both advantageous and challenging - developers found it limiting and preferred Visual Studio, while non-developers struggled to use it effectively. A new tool for configuring webpage design and development for content pages would be valuable. The current system is too basic. While integration of filtered lists and libraries is possible, it requires knowledge of Python or jQuery. A WYSIWYG editor would be preferable to requiring programming knowledge or Visual Studio.
BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Collaboration has transformed how our teams work and Copilot now drives faster daily decisions
The interface for the security and compliance center could be simplified. It changes frequently, which can make it somewhat difficult for admins to stay up-to-date on where specific settings are located. The compliance center modification or improvement of Office 365 needs to be introduced. The rest of the features feel acceptable to me. The reason it is not a ten is because of the complexity of managing the vast array of admin settings, which requires a specialized IT team. Even though it meets industry standards for decent security compliance such as SOC and HIPAA, the complexity of managing the admin settings needs to improve.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The best features of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server are the integration between SharePoint, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, and email."
"Some of the best features with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server are that it is easy to use, security is easy, and it's all integrated into the university's security systems."
"The support from Microsoft is very quick and they are very proactive."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the Communication Site."
"The software is friendly to use for mixing data and analyzing it."
"Enhanced user access management features fully integrated with Active Directory allowed us to gain the trust of the users and they use SharePoint to store and share all company digital content created by them."
"The most valuable feature is the "Alert Me", which provides the ability to set an alert when content is either added or changed and that the alerts can be either real-time or aggregated for the day or the week."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the fact that it doesn't require coding. You just need to configure it. You don't need to code before getting something running. It makes it very fast."
"I find the extensive list of features in Office 365 tremendously valuable, including Teams, Exchange, Outlook, SharePoint, Power Application, and Power Apps."
"Office 365 provides instant access to essential applications such as emails and documents at any time, regardless of location, ensuring that communication is seamless and efficient, making it powerful for our organizational needs."
"The way the ERP presents information for the user is very good."
"Overall, it's really good; the management tools we have, such as device management tools, email management tools, and security management tools, every aspect is there—if we require any tools, we have them."
"It's nice that it's an all-in-one solution and everything is all in one place."
"The features I find most valuable in Office 365 include its user-friendly interface; we use Outlook, Teams, and SharePoint for various tasks, and overall, it is helpful."
"It includes Office 365 applications such as Excel, Outlook, and Word."
"The product helps us be more efficient. It helps us to have a standardized way of doing things."
 

Cons

"Technical support could be improved. They are not fast enough, especially when we'll go deeper in the product itself. More complex issues make it very tough to find someone that can help you."
"I would rate my experience with Microsoft technical support as sometimes frustrating because of the time it takes for the Microsoft team to react to their particular case."
"Many of our customers would like to see an OCR feature, so it would be very good to have this in a future release."
"Sharepoint doesn't integrate well with Oracle, and we use a lot of Oracle products at our company. Therefore, it makes more sense for us to go to Oracle instead of continuing to use Sharepoint."
"Probably because I may not have extensively used the advanced search, the search option can sometimes get a little difficult to find out what exactly you're looking for."
"Searching information internally in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server could be better because when we get a lot of information, it is difficult to find."
"I would like to see the integration with Teams reinforced."
"The user interface needs improvement because there is a lot of stuff in there. I use five to eight navigation buttons. It should be more user-friendly. Frequently used menu items should be arranged in a proper way. That would be helpful."
"Office 365 could be easier to use at first. Tutorials are needed to know how to use the solution."
"The online applications have limited functionality compared to the local applications."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 could use some customization, but this area for improvement is trivial."
"It seems like every other week when we log into the administrative portals, it doesn't matter which one, it could be the active directory portal, it could be the exchange admin center or SharePoint admin center, it seems like Microsoft is consistently updating with new versions of the admin centers, which can be frustrating."
"In terms of improvement, it should have tutorials when you first have the opportunity to use it, to be able to really learn it."
"Sometimes the synchronization between the desktop and online is a little bit slow."
"They should do more testing before product releases."
"Normally, they have a way to work with specific developments, and I think they shouldn't allow the partners to make some changes they have made. When I have a client with a lot of changes, we have a problem with that because there aren't rules to develop inside the ERP, so you can do anything."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing plans may be flexible depending on volume usage and your corporate relationship with Microsoft."
"One of the reasons why we don't recommend the cloud version of SharePoint is the cost. With the on premise version, you pay for the license once. For the cloud version, there is a recurring fee. It is very expensive. They expect everyone to pay $20 or $30 per user per month."
"It can be expensive for on-premises deployments, especially when you have to support SQL Server as your backend database. That's where the cost comes into play. SQL Server has its own licensing, which Microsoft keeps on changing. Therefore, it can become costly. In the earlier versions of SharePoint, version 2007 or 2010, they had an express version where the SQL Server licensing was free. It wasn't like a full-blown SharePoint. It was only a slimmed-down version. It used to be whatever your hardware costs. You would install the free software and work with it, but you were very limited in what you could do in SharePoint. If you wanted the SharePoint Enterprise Server with all the bells and whistles, then you had to pay more to get the SQL Server license based on the number of users or servers. The subscription model is different for cloud deployments. Licensing is per user and per month. The cost also depends on the storage required. If you have a lot of sites or documents, then you need to expand it based on your needs."
"There are some aggressive discounts offered by Microsoft for organizations that are not for profit, which we are, and it makes it quite attractive to consider."
"The pricing is not really high, but one can get the software with the license key for free."
"I think that we pay $9.99 USD per user, monthly."
"​The pricing/licensing is easy to manage."
"The pricing is good for all the features that we receive, e.g., Skype for Business."
"Good reporting and good value subscriptions for international calls."
"The price of Office 365 is very expensive."
"Most of the time, we purchase Microsoft Exchange licenses, which are less expensive and provide only an email platform and 50 gigabytes of email storage for free."
"We have a license to use this solution. We have an E3 license which covers many different solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Performing Arts
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise29
Large Enterprise70
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server?
I am not aware of the pricing, so I cannot say if the solution is expensive or quite affordable.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server?
My expectation when I start using a Microsoft product is that it would be easy to incorporate diagrams and such from other Microsoft Office products. Incorporating a diagram I've embedded in a slid...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server?
I produce content about the work I'm doing inside the company, making information about IT architecture, work processes within IT architecture, and security reviews of applications or infrastructur...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Office 365?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Office 365 is that it is moderate.
What needs improvement with Office 365?
Office 365 can be improved by increasing support, which currently is not efficient and takes a lot of time to resolve issues. It has been observed that support personnel often lack hands-on experie...
What is your primary use case for Office 365?
Email and collaboration are the main use cases for Office 365 at Omagi Media Labs. It is used for internal and external communication in daily work. Groups and Teams groups are created and used in ...
 

Also Known As

Office SharePoint Server, MS Office SharePoint Server
Microsoft Office 365, Office 365 Enterprise, Office 365 Enterprise E1, Office 365 Enterprise E3, Office 365 Enterprise E5, Office 365 ProPlus, Office 365 Business, Office 365 Business Essentials, Office 365 Business Premium, Office 365 F1
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Del Monte Foods, Unicredit Leasing, Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, Nokia Czech Republic, Perkins Eastman, JLL, ICA, óxito Software, Dorset Software, PKP Cargo, Arcapita Bank B.S.C., AVE CZ, Chesapeake Energy
Me & the Bees Lemonade
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server vs. Office 365 and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.