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Office 365 vs Symphony comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Office 365
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
152
Ranking in other categories
Content Collaboration Platforms (1st)
Symphony
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Social Software (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Messaging and Collaboration solutions, they serve different purposes. Office 365 is designed for Content Collaboration Platforms and holds a mindshare of 9.9%, up 4.9% compared to last year.
Symphony, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Social Software, holds 4.7% mindshare, down 7.3% since last year.
Content Collaboration Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Office 3659.9%
Google Workspace8.9%
Dropbox Business - Enterprise8.4%
Other72.8%
Content Collaboration Platforms
Enterprise Social Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Symphony4.7%
Slack Business - Enterprise11.2%
Microsoft Teams8.4%
Other75.7%
Enterprise Social Software
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Nenad Pejcic - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Professional Services Engineer at Aspire Technology
Makes tasks like network planning and performance monitoring much easier
I have experience with solutions from other vendors like Nokia, Huawei, and Tyson. The main pros of Symphony, in comparison, are the modules that provide a comprehensive overview and the automation features for planning data. These aspects are notably beneficial and stand out. On the downside, the major cons revolve around user customization. Unlike other vendors where you can create your reports and customize navigation, Symphony's user optimization in the SCAP module is limited. This lack of flexibility is a significant drawback, especially when compared to other solutions. Overall, while certain modules like those related to SolarWinds are straightforward and comparable, Symphony falls short in terms of user customization.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The integrations with Teams and SharePoint are beneficial as we use Teams for sharing and editing documents, which helps with document collaboration."
"The product helps us be more efficient. It helps us to have a standardized way of doing things."
"Office 365 fulfills our basic requirements for developing documents and basic forms; it provides a lot of facilities and options, which are very helpful, and I use it for document creation which saves a lot of time compared to other document creation tools."
"Every application in the Office 365 bundle is beneficial, making day-to-day tasks easier."
"The features of Office 365 that have significantly enhanced my workflow productivity include Excel, which is a very good product that helps assist me with my work."
"The phone VoIP product provides genuine a unified communication solution."
"If you have a global solution, you can go from one product to the other very easily. And then you can share data between all the different tools of Office which is good because participation and sharing is very good. That's the most important aspect of Office 365."
"Cost to value is much better than on premise SharePoint."
"I found the RAM Commander module in Symphony to be the most valuable."
"Symphony and Laravel are the most comfortable frameworks for any developer. It is also lightweight."
"The solution is user-friendly, and it is very good security-wise."
"The entire product is good."
"The overall functions are good."
 

Cons

"Be sure you understand ADFS and, if you decide to go with it, what you get and don't get with it."
"Security is still complex, but the admin console improving."
"The one big problem with the solution is if you are presenting in Teams and someone puts their hand up, you don't get a notification. If you are running a meeting and just presenting you don't know that people have their hands up and want to ask a question."
"Office 365 could allow for smoother collaboration with other companies, which is the main reason we use it. The B2B connection is something we need, like global adverse lists between two tenants or multiple users. That's what we're missing at the moment."
"The integration with mobile services is not so good. It's coming, but they could improve a lot."
"The online applications have limited functionality compared to the local applications."
"Sometimes the configurations of the error troubleshooting are pretty problematic and there are a lot of issues that happen even if you follow the step-by-step guides. They can work on fixing this issue. If there are a lot of issues in your Windows or your Office or anything, you restart your PC and it works. They need to get rid of this need."
"In terms of improvement, it should have tutorials when you first have the opportunity to use it, to be able to really learn it."
"The area that needs to be improved is modular asset management. When we are uploading the assets in bulk, it is not aligned."
"To improve the situation, enhancing the functionality for integrating with other applications and addressing ticketing issues is crucial."
"The solution needs to improve CI."
"The solution is very expensive, and its pricing could be improved."
"Compared to established vendors, it lacks user flexibility and customization, especially in the PM module."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is not really high, but one can get the software with the license key for free."
"Licensing, billing, and accounting are available from the management interface."
"Licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis, or we prepay them."
"The pricing is high and has actually caused us to limit the number of licenses we purchase due to budgeting."
"The pricing is good for all the features that we receive, e.g., Skype for Business."
"I would rate the solution 3 out of 5 for the price. I think Microsoft presents a good solution concerning the price."
"The price of Office 365 is very expensive."
"For the moment, we are paying on a monthly basis because we are still adapting the support and how we want to proceed. I think we will move to paying for the annual license."
"It is fairly an expensive product, but works for us."
"It's a costly product, but the number of available features justifies it."
"Symphony is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
55%
Media Company
6%
University
5%
Retailer
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise29
Large Enterprise70
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 ...
Ask a question
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Comparisons

 

Also Known As

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
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Me & the Bees Lemonade
BNP Paribas, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Citi, Credit Suisse, JP Morgan Chase
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Google, Dropbox and others in Content Collaboration Platforms. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.