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

6.2

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

"Document management and records management features are the most valuable."

"It's a very robust product."

"The software is friendly to use for mixing data and analyzing it."

"The support from Microsoft is very quick and they are very proactive."

"The features for low-code and no-code capabilities in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server are among the best, which are very user-friendly and not seen in any other cloud services, such as S3 from AWS and blob storage from Azure."

"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."

"Sharing information is the best feature or advantage of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server based on my experience."

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

More Microsoft Office SharePoint Server pros

"The cloud service and Skype are the most valuable features."

"Office 365 is particularly valuable for collaboration, reporting, and documentation related to compliance."

"My primary use case is for preparing presentations to teach, often on PowerPoint."

"The integration with Teams and SharePoint has impacted our project management in an awesome way; we can contact all team members through Teams, and all the information they produce is stored in our SharePoint."

"Office 365 significantly improves our operational efficiency by consolidating our phone system, file storage, and email into one ecosystem."

"Many of the features in Office 365 are good, but I think Excel is a very good tool."

"Office 365 fulfills our basic requirements for developing documents and basic forms; it provides a lot of facilities and options, which are very helpful, and I use it for document creation which saves a lot of time compared to other document creation tools."

"The products are quite simple for the end-users to use, the up-time is very good, the product is practically maintenance-free, and the multi-layer security is excellent from the security standpoint."

More Office 365 pros

Cons

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

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

"Regarding the setup for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, I have to rate it lower, maybe a seven out of 10, as it is a little bit more complex and not so easy to use in some use cases."

"The document management features of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server are not very good compared to OneDrive."

"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."

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

"Workflows could be simplified."

More Microsoft Office SharePoint Server cons

"It needs improvements around its compatibility with non-Microsoft products."

"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."

"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."

"It would be a fantastic opportunity if their solution could be used in combination with VoIP software, allowing you to combine VoIP software and Office 365 on a single platform."

"Sometimes the synchronization between the desktop and online is a little bit slow."

"I'd like to see them add more features in the future in order to continue to advance the product."

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

"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."

More Office 365 cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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 pricing/licensing is easy to manage."

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

"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

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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

Performing Arts

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 ...

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Product Reports

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

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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