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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
4th
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 February 2026, in the Content Collaboration Platforms category, the mindshare of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is 3.7%, down from 9.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Office 365 is 10.2%, up from 4.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Content Collaboration Platforms Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Office 36510.2%
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server3.7%
Other86.1%
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

"It's a very robust product."
"The feature that I value the most about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is the ability to have multiple persons in a file at the same time, which was not possible when we started using computers."
"The solution's most valuable aspects are its collaboration capabilities, its communications site and the innovation within the product itself."
"This solution has provided us with a collaborative workspace to allow everyone to work together and be on the same page."
"The ability to work through a web browser without requiring installation on devices is particularly beneficial."
"The solution is pretty easy to use for the most part."
"The software is friendly to use for mixing data and analyzing it."
"Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is a scalable solution because our applications are not staying in one place, year on year we are increasing users, so definitely it can scale with what we need."
"There are all sorts of really good tools for use on the information security side that allow us to make sure that our people are doing business and doing business right."
"It's nice that it's an all-in-one solution and everything is all in one place."
"The pivot table feature is most valuable because it helps me understand large volumes of data in a very short time."
"It is stable."
"We use it for documentation management, to collaborate with Microsoft Teams, web calls, web conference calls, chats, and as a documentation repository mainly. We have an Office pack suite to be able to write documentation, make spreadsheets, and create PowerPoints."
"Office 365 has AI capabilities that improve our processes, as we are using Copilot to assist us in writing documents."
"The Teams integration and SharePoint functionality have helped with project management in work and school environments."
"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."
 

Cons

"Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is more accessible for the average user, but it lacks certain features that more advanced users would look for, making it seem unnecessarily complicated to do simple things or things one expects to be simple."
"The product is behind in development and lacks some features."
"The areas around security, such as protection, need to be included."
"Workflows could be simplified."
"Making it more intuitive could help teams adopt it faster and use it more effectively by being more user-friendly."
"This solution is not very stable. It is useful to arrange data but it's not the best for big data. Sometimes we have issues with our reports as a result."
"The solution needs to enable better sharing capabilities between users and external users. Several users also have problems with linking their emails to their Microsoft account."
"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."
"A need that a company like ours has is that we want to be able to have data flow into one tool, for example, for all the management of tasks through the company and workflow of who is doing what and so on. There are no real solutions for this at the moment in Office 365. It would be nice if they could implement this in the next release, so we can have one solution from one company giving us the whole data and flow of data into the company."
"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 the next release, I would like to have a more intuitive tutorial."
"I would like to see the macro functionality in Excel made simpler."
"I started working a lot on Microsoft Teams and I find it a bit vast. It should be divided out a bit so that someone can use it for basic functionality, like audio, video, and calls. Then, if someone wants more advanced functionality for file sharing and team creation, and so on, they could use a separate app."
"The integration with mobile services is not so good. It's coming, but they could improve a lot."
"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."
"I'd like to see them add more features in the future in order to continue to advance the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Pricing plans may be flexible depending on volume usage and your corporate relationship with Microsoft."
"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."
"Licensing, billing, and accounting are available from the management interface."
"We have a license to use this solution. We have an E3 license which covers many different solutions."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"​The pricing/licensing is easy to manage."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
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: February 2026.
882,606 professionals have used our research since 2012.