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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

"The ability to create simple web pages with diagrams and links is valuable, particularly for intranet work and creating wiki pages for a team to show how we do certain things."
"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 support from Microsoft is very quick and they are very proactive."
"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."
"I believe the control and the restrictions, accesses that we can have once we decide to share any document through Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, are the most beneficial aspects for me."
"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 software is friendly to use for mixing data and analyzing it."
"Ability to collaborate with others in one location."
"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."
"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."
"One of its strengths is the integration with SharePoint and other applications like Teams, which allows for seamless communication and file sharing."
"Many of the features in Office 365 are good, but I think Excel is a very good tool."
"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."
"The solution is quite intuitive and easy to use."
"The valuable features of Office 365 include easy integration with different platforms, and it's the standard solution because almost all people use this Microsoft Office solution."
"I like that it is cloud-based, wherefrom any computer I can access my documents and continue working."
 

Cons

"The solution is like a CRM, so the initial setup is complex. It takes a few days to deploy the solution and the length of time depends on how large the company's topology is and what the client's demands are."
"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 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."
"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."
"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 document management features of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server are not very good compared to OneDrive."
"I would like to see the integration with Teams reinforced."
"Searching information internally in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server could be better because when we get a lot of information, it is difficult to find."
"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."
"It could be more user-friendly for inexperienced people."
"I rate the support of Office 365 a four out of five."
"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."
"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."
"Their support is so terrible and unusable except during dire emergencies."
"Using Office 365 is not that flexible on some mobile devices, like Android."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Pricing plans may be flexible depending on volume usage and your corporate relationship with Microsoft."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The price of Office 365 is very expensive."
"Good reporting and good value subscriptions for international calls."
"I think that we pay $9.99 USD per user, monthly."
"We have a license to use this solution. We have an E3 license which covers many different solutions."
"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."
"Licensing, billing, and accounting are available from the management interface."
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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
13%
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.
882,744 professionals have used our research since 2012.