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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
6.1
Number of Reviews
152
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Content Collaboration Platforms category, the mindshare of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is 3.8%, down from 9.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Office 365 is 10.3%, up from 4.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Content Collaboration Platforms Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Office 36510.3%
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server3.8%
Other85.9%
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.
BJ
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 level of stability is good."
"The solution's most valuable aspects are its collaboration capabilities, its communications site and the innovation within the product itself."
"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."
"The solution is scalable. You can do both horizontal and vertical scaling."
"The implementation and configuring of the resolution are very easy in the online version."
"The integration with security tools in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is one of the significant pluses since it alerts the IT team if anyone tries to redirect an email, which is illegal for us."
"The forms aspect of the solution, for example, the creation of surveys, is its most valuable aspect."
"Office 365 is a reliable and feature-rich platform. To fully benefit from it, users need to explore its various tools, which enhance productivity."
"Office 365 has AI capabilities that improve our processes, as we are using Copilot to assist us in writing documents."
"It has more features than somebody would expect, and it is worth taking a deeper look into the features available."
"The most valuable feature is Microsoft Exchange."
"Office 365 has positively impacted the organization as it is productive, easy to use, and serves as the main tool for meetings and external communication, crucial for day-to-day operations."
"The technical support is outstanding."
"I like all of the features."
"Office 365's most valuable features include its cloud storage and the ability to have the same document accessible on multiple devices."
 

Cons

"The areas around security, such as protection, need to be included."
"The document management features of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server are not very good compared to OneDrive."
"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."
"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."
"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 ability to preview files in different formats should be expanded to include formats such as embedded postscript (EPS), AutoCAD, and Adobe Acrobat PDF."
"I think these tools do a pretty good job. There is only one area of improvement. Maybe Microsoft can invest a little bit more into the ease at which integration can be done with other third party applications."
"Making it more intuitive could help teams adopt it faster and use it more effectively by being more user-friendly."
"Office 365 could be easier to use at first. Tutorials are needed to know how to use the solution."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 could use some customization, but this area for improvement is trivial."
"Microsoft Word is a little bit left behind regarding the tools it has."
"Using Visual Basic, I have had a lot of trouble with relative paths when programming for Excel, and sometimes it is very difficult to debug programs."
"They should do more testing before product releases."
"The integration with mobile services is not so good. It's coming, but they could improve a lot."
"The feature to convert PDF file to a Word document needs improvement as well as the feature to save the file automatically when typing, without using the save command."
"It needs improvements around its compatibility with non-Microsoft products."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"Pricing plans may be flexible depending on volume usage and your corporate relationship with Microsoft."
"We have a license to use this solution. We have an E3 license which covers many different solutions."
"I would rate the solution 3 out of 5 for the price. I think Microsoft presents a good solution concerning the price."
"The pricing is high and has actually caused us to limit the number of licenses we purchase due to budgeting."
"​The pricing/licensing is easy to manage."
"Licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis, or we prepay them."
"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."
"Licensing, billing, and accounting are available from the management interface."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
8%
Computer Software Company
19%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
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 needs improvement with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server?
There are areas that could be improved with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. My company has more than 5,000 collaborators. The question of how Microsoft Office SharePoint Server can be a better ...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server?
The regular use cases with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server are to share files and to plug them into websites in collaboration features from Office 365. The advanced search functionality is accep...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Office 365?
I didn't inquire about the specific costs of transitioning from the previous tools. However, I was informed that the cost of using the Microsoft ecosystem is higher than the combined cost of using ...
What needs improvement with Office 365?
I don't have any ideas off the top of my head at the moment about what I would improve about Office 365. I can't think of anything that frustrates me about the tools. I mentioned that I use Copilot...
What is your primary use case for Office 365?
We use the Microsoft Office 365 suite for personal purposes. We use Teams for communications, and we use Azure DevOps for some of our workflow management. I use Office 365 for Outlook for emails. I...
 

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: December 2025.
879,899 professionals have used our research since 2012.