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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 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 Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Office 3659.9%
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server3.6%
Other86.5%
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 support from Microsoft is very quick and they are very proactive."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the fact that it doesn't require coding. You just need to configure it. You don't need to code before getting something running. It makes it very fast."
"The most valuable feature is the "Alert Me", which provides the ability to set an alert when content is either added or changed and that the alerts can be either real-time or aggregated for the day or the week."
"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 software is friendly to use for mixing data and analyzing it."
"Sharing information is the best feature or advantage of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server based on my experience."
"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."
"From my partner perspective, the best advantages of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server are that it's easy to use, and we can easily communicate, share documents, and assign permissions to specific people."
"For me, the most valuable features in Office 365 are the integration between all of the various apps and how you can still communicate even without third-party apps."
"Overall, Office 365 brings organization efficiency, as these tools are very helpful for every organization to maintain their records, organization data, compliance, and collaborations."
"Office 365 has significantly enhanced collaboration and productivity through integrated tools like Teams, Excel, and Power BI."
"Every application in the Office 365 bundle is beneficial, making day-to-day tasks easier."
"Especially now with Office 365, you can access your files always on the go—you do not have to use your laptop or connect to the company network, and as long as you have a device, even a mobile device, you can actually use it and access your emails."
"One of the main advantages of Office 365 is its widespread use, which makes it easier to collaborate on documents."
"The features I have found most valuable in Office 365 are Exchange Online and Microsoft Teams, which are the mostly commonly used products in my organization."
"The functionality that is most valuable is the solution's ability to detect patient data in email attachments. Whenever a user sends out an email with patient data embedded in an attachment, it triggers an alert. The tool can detect a social security number and various other forms of patient identity. Emails are then automatically generated and sent."
 

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 document management features of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server are not very good compared to OneDrive."
"The GUI is outdated."
"Sharepoint doesn't integrate well with Oracle, and we use a lot of Oracle products at our company. Therefore, it makes more sense for us to go to Oracle instead of continuing to use Sharepoint."
"I would like to see more Agile techniques and seamless integration with other applications."
"Workflows could be simplified."
"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."
"I would like to see the integration with Teams reinforced."
"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."
"Using Office 365 is not that flexible on some mobile devices, like Android."
"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."
"Data protection and email security are almost the same for all the organizations, irrespective of their segment (SMB or enterprises), with standard subscription at least basic Data loss prevention and Advance threat protection can be enabled for SMB segments, it is available in enterprise version / Premium versions."
"Microsoft could improve their support; I don't deal with Office 365 or Office 365 application-specific issues, but I wonder if it's similar where you get someone from Microsoft to hold your case, which could take a couple of days, maybe a week in between when they get back in contact with you."
"I would like to see the macro functionality in Excel made simpler."
"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."
"Office 365 can be improved by increasing support, which currently is not efficient and takes a lot of time to resolve issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing plans may be flexible depending on volume usage and your corporate relationship with Microsoft."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"We have a license to use this solution. We have an E3 license which covers many different solutions."
"Licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis, or we prepay them."
"The pricing is not really high, but one can get the software with the license key for free."
"The price of Office 365 is very expensive."
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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
7%
 

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.
883,026 professionals have used our research since 2012.