Microsoft Office SharePoint Server vs Office 365 comparison

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and Office 365 are both solutions in the Content Collaboration Platforms category. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.4, while Office 365 is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.5. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server holds a 3.3% mindshare in CCP, compared to Office 365’s 8.6% mindshare. Additionally, 82% of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Office 365 users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Office SharePoint...

Read 40 Microsoft Office SharePoint Server reviews

2,146 Views
1,717 Comparison Views

82% willing to recommend

Office 365

Read 153 Office 365 reviews

6,167 Views
4,379 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Microsoft Office SharePoint...

Office 365

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 29, 2025

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and Office 365 compete in enterprise productivity solutions. Office 365 has an edge due to its cloud-based versatility and collaboration capabilities.

Features: SharePoint Server provides document management, version control, and customization, allowing businesses to tailor workflows and templates without extensive coding. Office 365 includes advanced collaboration tools, integration with SharePoint and Teams, and security features like data loss prevention.

Room for Improvement: SharePoint Server could enhance its ease of deployment, reduce IT resource requirements, and simplify updates. Office 365 may improve offline capabilities, further optimize its security features, and expand multi-language support.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Office 365 offers an efficient cloud deployment, reducing maintenance and providing responsive customer service integrated into its model. SharePoint Server's on-premises deployment can be complex, requiring significant IT resources but offers strong data control.

Pricing and ROI: SharePoint Server requires significant upfront investment in infrastructure, suitable for specific customization needs. Office 365 uses a subscription model, offering predictable costs and high ROI through frequent updates and innovative features. Pricing starts at $5 per user per month for basic plans, including access to Office applications and OneDrive storage.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Office SharePoint Server vs. Office 365 Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server vs. Office 365

April 2026

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Helped 896,202 peers since 2012

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 May 2026, in the Content Collaboration Platforms category, the mindshare of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is 3.3%, down from 7.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Office 365 is 8.6%, up from 6.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Content Collaboration Platforms Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Office 365	8.6%
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server	3.3%
Other	88.1%

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

"The solution is scalable. You can do both horizontal and vertical scaling."

"I like the collaboration, the ability for multiple users to work on a single document and be able to firstly collaborate and share notes about the document, as well as being able to work on the document without losing the information."

"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."

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

"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."

"This product is useful because when I go to the client place I can use my credentials, I can log in and I can share whatever I want to share from SharePoint Server."

"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."

More Microsoft Office SharePoint Server pros

"What I appreciate in the Office 365 world is having Copilot as an assistant that can help automate many things."

"I like that mail and calendar are available anywhere."

"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."

"The most beneficial aspect of Office 365 for me is its compatibility across companies, ensuring seamless communication and collaboration because the majority of people use the product."

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

"With Office 365, I have never encountered issues; my experience is entirely positive."

"The ability to convert Word documents to PDF file is one of the features I love most."

"A major efficiency gain enabled by Office 365 automated tools is that it helps with sharing documents and information, so efficiency can be improved substantially."

More Office 365 pros

Cons

"The solution needs to be more collaborative. I believe they are just coming up with the themes for this right now."

"The user interface needs improvement because there is a lot of stuff in there."

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

"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."

"With the complexity and performance, it's hard to work with."

"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."

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

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

More Microsoft Office SharePoint Server cons

"Office 365 can be improved by increasing support, which currently is not efficient and takes a lot of time to resolve issues."

"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."

"Using Office 365 is not that flexible on some mobile devices, like Android."

"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 rate Microsoft technical support a five or six, as the support is not satisfactory."

"The cost is a big challenge. It is really quite expensive and puts quite a strain on our budget."

"As a private user, I do not appreciate the cloud features, but I doubt that this is something Microsoft would consider a feature request."

"I would like to see improvements in connections to external content types and their connectors."

More Office 365 cons

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."

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

"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."

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

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

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

"Licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis, or we prepay them."

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

More Office 365 pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Marketing Services Firm

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

10%

Construction Company

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	63
Midsize Enterprise	31
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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Office 365?

Office 365 could be improved or enhanced in some ways. It would be better if it were more simple to find the points, or sometimes there are so many possible configurations that it makes you confuse...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Office 365?

Teams and Outlook are important for us, and Teams is central to our operations. I utilize Power Automate for streamlining repetitive tasks in our organization, but not for large tasks. For tasks su...

See all answers

Comparisons

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LucidLink vs Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft OneDrive for Business vs Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 31% of the time

Symphony vs Office 365

Compared 11% of the time

Dropbox Business - Enterprise vs Office 365

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft OneDrive for Business vs Office 365

Compared 4% of the time

Oracle Beehive vs Office 365

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

May 2026

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server report

Download Microsoft Office SharePoint Server product report

Buyer's Guide

Office 365

May 2026

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 enhances collaboration, document management, and version control while integrating seamlessly with Office apps, Teams, and OneDrive for efficient communication and content sharing.

Offering automation, workflow management, and effective metadata usage, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server improves operational efficiency. It's user-friendly with low-code and no-code capabilities, ensuring accessibility for organizations. Robust security measures and access control with Active Directory integration provide secure data handling, while real-time editing allows multiple users to collaborate productively. Its search functionality streamlines information retrieval, although enhancing this feature could further improve usability. Addressing the need for a more intuitive interface, distinct integration between Team and SharePoint sites, workflow simplification, as well as improved performance with large data handling, would add to its practicality. Better third-party application integration, enhanced document sharing, and increased licensing flexibility are areas for potential development.

What are the key features?

Collaboration: Enables seamless team collaboration with integrated Office apps and Teams.
Document Management: Advanced version control and document sharing capabilities.
Automation: Streamlines processes with workflow management and metadata usage.
Security: Robust access control with Active Directory integration.
Real-Time Editing: Allows multiple users to edit documents simultaneously.
Search Functionality: Assists in swift information retrieval.

What benefits or ROI should users consider?

Improved Productivity: Real-time editing and seamless integration enhance work efficiency.
Security Assurance: Strong access control supports safe data management.
User Accessibility: Low-code and no-code features increase ease of use.
Operational Efficiency: Automates workflows and optimizes document handling.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is utilized in industries such as healthcare, finance, and manufacturing for document sharing, collaboration, and internal communications. It supports project management, custom application development, and acts as an enterprise content management system. Organizations leverage its integration with Microsoft Teams for coordination and use it as a corporate portal. It facilitates data management, serves as a document library, and supports workflows with advanced capabilities like integration with Power Apps and Power BI for enhanced data visualization and interaction.

Microsoft

Office 365 integrates cloud services for efficient collaboration, offering a set of tools like Teams, SharePoint, and Outlook. Designed for productivity with multi-device access, it supports automation and remote work through its cloud-based features.

Office 365 enhances business efficiency by providing a comprehensive suite of applications such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, crucial for document creation and management. It offers seamless communication and collaboration via Outlook for email and Teams for meetings. The integration with SharePoint and OneDrive ensures robust document management and storage, facilitating remote access while supporting advanced security and automation features like Power Apps and Copilot. Despite its extensive capabilities, users note room for improvement in areas like cost, external connectivity, and upgrade disruptions. There's a need for better integration with third-party apps, enhanced Excel performance on Mac, and improved AI functionalities to simplify usage.

What are the most valuable Office 365 features?

Integration: Connects various Microsoft services for improved workflows.
Cloud Collaboration: Facilitates teamwork through Teams and SharePoint.
Advanced Security: Includes features ensuring data protection.
Real-time Editing: Allows simultaneous document work.
Automatic Updates: Ensures up-to-date software without manual intervention.
Multi-device Access: Supports various devices for versatility.
OneDrive Storage: Offers scalable cloud storage solutions.
Automation Tools: Power Apps and Copilot increase efficiency.

What benefits and ROI should organizations consider?

Productivity Boost: Streamlined tools for efficient task completion.
Global Accessibility: Work can be conducted from any location.
Cost Management: Flexible licensing aligns with business needs.
Security Assurance: Mitigates risks and protects data integrity.
Support for Remote Work: Enhances collaboration across distances.

In industries such as healthcare, finance, and education, Office 365 is used to manage documents securely, facilitate meetings through Teams, and store sensitive information on OneDrive. Its user-friendly tools support teaching and learning, enhancing productivity and providing robust solutions for document sharing and communication.

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

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Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server vs. Office 365

April 2026

Free Report: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server vs. Office 365

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