Microsoft Office SharePoint Server vs Office 365 comparison

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server vs. Office 365

Download the complete report

Helped 884,976 peers since 2012

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

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
Product	Mindshare (%)
Office 365	9.9%
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server	3.6%
Other	86.5%

Content Collaboration Platforms

Featured Reviews

Daniel Giacomelli

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.

Read full review

BasilJiji

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This product is useful because when I go to the client place I can use my credentials, I can log in and I can share whatever I want to share from SharePoint Server."

"The most valuable features for us are their document management list and hybrid forms. and We also use third party ad-dons to achieve workflows and other recent apps."

"The solution is a Microsoft product, so they are constantly improving the solution."

"Microsoft Office SharePoint Server helps with return on investment as it saves a lot of time and helps clients improve their processes."

"What I appreciate most about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is how it centralizes information and collaboration in one place."

"Microsoft Office SharePoint Server's document management significantly improves collaboration within my organization."

"The ability to work through a web browser without requiring installation on devices is particularly beneficial."

"The Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is a main feature of Microsoft, and I use it for everything I share inside the organization and outside the organization; it's easy to use, easy to share, and easy to manage all SharePoint services."

More Microsoft Office SharePoint Server pros

"Great impact on project management and team collaboration."

"I love all of the applications being interlinked. I do not have to separately work on an independent system when it comes to file storage, email, and other tools."

"Office 365 is reliable and enhances productivity by allowing my team to use the same documents with multiple versions."

"The valuable features I use most are Outlook, Word, print to PDF functionality, and Excel; for our meetings, we use Teams regularly, and it serves as a good platform for our ongoing meetings and project management."

"I'd recommend the solution; it's very easy to use and extremely practical, and we find it quite useful within our organization."

"Office 365 has AI capabilities that improve our processes, as we are using Copilot to assist us in writing documents."

"It includes Office 365 applications such as Excel, Outlook, and Word."

"Teams is a really good collaboration tool; you can work basically at any part of the world and communicate and collaborate with anybody, as long as they are connected to the internet."

More Office 365 pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"The permission management features need improvement."

"With the complexity and performance, it's hard to work with."

"The search feature needs improvement. I can never find the information I need when I use it."

"It is a bit restrictive to develop in the cloud version. A lot of features are in the cloud now, and you have to develop on the outside. As far as the platform and the programming side of things are concerned, it is moving more towards configuration management rather than programming. When we are doing solutions, we are basically just configuring it to make solutions happen rather than actually using the Visual Studio code and developing from scratch in the cloud. It is almost like creating an app. You have created an app for your phone, but the app doesn't really sit on your phone. It sits somewhere on a server, and the database sits on another server. The app is just pulling and pushing information. The whole development has changed. We used to install things directly on the server and then run the application from the server. Now, it is more of a modular architecture."

"The solution requires a lot of hardware capacity for high availability and performance."

"The ability to preview files in different formats should be expanded to include formats such as embedded postscript (EPS), AutoCAD, and Adobe Acrobat PDF."

More Microsoft Office SharePoint Server cons

"One of the big changes is when Microsoft updates anything, they will switch where some of the settings are and where to find them, which becomes a little frustrating because you're used to it in one spot and it's someplace else."

"It does my job, that is what I will say. It accomplishes the tasks I need it to do."

"There are many issues with Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Exchange, making it difficult to identify positive aspects."

"I think it would be better if Office 365 enhanced communication about update policies."

"Office 365 tools work very well on Windows, but there is still some lag when using Mac computers."

"Office 365 should improve data synchronization, especially when data is accessed through the web interface and SharePoint portal."

"Security is still complex, but the admin console improving."

"Integration between Outlook calendar and Google Calendar would be a good improvement since many of our team use Android phones and personal Gmail accounts as their main calendar application."

More Office 365 cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"We have a license to use this solution. We have an E3 license which covers many different solutions."

"The pricing/licensing is easy to manage."

"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."

"Licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis, or we prepay them."

"The pricing is good for all the features that we receive, e.g., Skype for Business."

"Licensing, billing, and accounting are available from the management interface."

"The pricing is not really high, but one can get the software with the license key for free."

"The pricing is high and has actually caused us to limit the number of licenses we purchase due to budgeting."

More Office 365 pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Content Collaboration Platforms solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Marketing Services Firm

Computer Software Company

13%

Marketing Services Firm

Outsourcing Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	13
Large Enterprise	17

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	62
Midsize Enterprise	29
Large Enterprise	70

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 ...

Amazon WorkDocs vs Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

Comparisons

Compared 17% of the time

Hitachi Content Platform Anywhere vs Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

Compared 12% of the time

LucidLink vs Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft OneDrive for Business vs Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

Compared 8% of the time

Oracle Beehive vs Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

Compared 7% of the time

More Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Competitors

Google Workspace vs Office 365

Compared 42% of the time

Symphony vs Office 365

Compared 10% of the time

Dropbox Business - Enterprise vs Office 365

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft OneDrive for Business vs Office 365

Compared 4% of the time

Quip vs Office 365

Compared 4% of the time

More Office 365 Competitors

Product Reports

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

Download Microsoft Office SharePoint Server product report

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server report

Office 365

Download Office 365 product report

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

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) is a Microsoft software portal based on the ASP.NET framework. MOSS facilitates file sharing and collaboration, social networking, Web databases and Web publishing. It is hosted by Microsoft Windows Server and is accessible through Microsoft Office or the Web.

Microsoft

Office 365 is more than just Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. It provides powerful services like business-class email, online storage, and teamwork solutions that you can access from anywhere. Bring teams and resources together with solutions like Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business that make working together more productive and enjoyable regardless of where participants are located. Easily implement security and privacy controls to help protect business data and devices against malicious threats and help you meet your compliance obligations. Automatic updates ensure your employees will always have the latest features and security updates.

Microsoft

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

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server vs. Office 365