Microsoft Office SharePoint Server vs Office 365 comparison

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server vs. Office 365

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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

6.1

Number of Reviews

153

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Content Collaboration Platforms category, the mindshare of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is 3.4%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Office 365 is 9.0%, up from 5.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Content Collaboration Platforms Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Office 365	9.0%
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server	3.4%
Other	87.6%

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

Anubrata Ghosh

Technical Manager at Landmark Group

Teams streamlines collaboration but Outlook experiences occasional slowness on Mac

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. It helps with remote work, and although I don't work remotely, I have offices in Dubai and different geographical locations. It helps me connect with my colleagues and team who are not in the same geography as I am in Bangalore. Teams can facilitate team meetings, screen sharing, and organizing meetings.Regarding security, we have two-factor authentication governed by organizational policy. When trying to login to Office 365, Teams, or any Office 365 app, we are required to provide a password and use Microsoft Authenticator to sign in using a code. This is how two-factor authentication is implemented in our organization. Office 365 offers a suite of apps including OneNote, though I don't use it very often. In terms of integration with Microsoft ecosystem, it offers everything needed to get work done without any hassle.

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

"Some of the best features with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server are that it is easy to use, security is easy, and it's all integrated into the university's security systems."

"The implementation and configuring of the resolution are very easy in the online version."

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

"The forms aspect of the solution, for example, the creation of surveys, is its most valuable aspect."

"The online version doesn't have any bugs or glitches, doesn't crash or fail, doesn't need any infrastructure or virtual machine as it's completely online, and the cloud keeps it very stable."

"The most valuable feature is that it is very usable. I can navigate it, I can have a media call, I can have a call with my project team, so we can chat with every team kind of like WhatsApp. Any time there are projects or other things, we can chat in a secure way. It's automation-specific secure."

"I would recommend this product."

"There is a lot more flexibility in the cloud, especially for mobile development."

More Microsoft Office SharePoint Server pros

"The collaboration tools in Office 365 enhance my team's workflow immeasurably, and they are absolutely top class."

"The design feature of PowerPoint is really effective, the email functionalities are convenient, and the entire suite serves our needs well."

"If we compare it to competitor products out there, Office 365 stands out for the end customer side."

"Overall, it's really good; the management tools we have, such as device management tools, email management tools, and security management tools, every aspect is there—if we require any tools, we have them."

"The most valuable feature of Office 365 is automatic saving. If something happens on the computer your work is saved."

"One of the main advantages of Office 365 is its widespread use, which makes it easier to collaborate on documents."

"The technical support is outstanding."

"It has all the business tools that most companies require to run a business effectively."

More Office 365 pros

Cons

"Searching information internally in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server could be better because when we get a lot of information, it is difficult to find."

"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."

"I think that it can be improved in terms of security, to manage roles and better performance."

"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."

"The solution needs to have more flexibility. The classic version had more flexibility, however, the modern version has many more limitations."

"One of the reasons why we don't recommend the cloud version of SharePoint is the cost."

"The only complaint we have is about the lack of OCR capability."

"The velocity and speed of information retrieval in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server could be improved."

More Microsoft Office SharePoint Server cons

"The stability for Office 365 is not very good, as the application sometimes closes without any information; the old version was much more stable."

"The issue arises when I need to ask Microsoft directly for support, and I have had delays, such as with a SharePoint issue that took two weeks to resolve, and another instance where the ticket was mishandled and sent to the wrong queue, which delayed the response even further."

"Currently, Microsoft can improve Office 365 by enhancing the persistence of the user experience from platform to platform and screen to screen, ensuring that wherever you log in, whatever you're doing, everything is still readily accessible and intuitive, as you left it."

"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."

"I rate the support of Office 365 a four out of five."

"Based on the ones I've used, I think Microsoft is not actually the best."

"I haven't used Copilot too much because I don't have a license for that at the moment."

"There is no direct return on investment as IT is a cost center."

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."

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

"The pricing/licensing is easy to manage."

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

"Good reporting and good value subscriptions for international calls."

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

"I would rate the solution 3 out of 5 for the price. I think Microsoft presents a good solution concerning the price."

"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."

"I think that we pay $9.99 USD per user, monthly."

More Office 365 pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Marketing Services Firm

Financial Services Firm

15%

Construction Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Outsourcing 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	30
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 ...

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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