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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
5th
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 Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
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 solution's most valuable features is its document management. It allows sharing with external users and integrates well with Office apps and Microsoft Flow."
"The solution is scalable. You can do both horizontal and vertical scaling."
"The implementation and configuring of the resolution are very easy in the online version."
"The software is friendly to use for mixing data and analyzing it."
"The forms aspect of the solution, for example, the creation of surveys, is its most valuable aspect."
"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."
"The support from Microsoft is very quick and they are very proactive."
"The scheduling capabilities of Microsoft Teams are particularly helpful, allowing me to create internal teams and organize project-related communications."
"Office 365 applications are indispensable for data cleansing, data collection, and analytics, with Excel acting as the primary system for formulas, data extraction, and data cleansing across various sectors in Egypt, including banking and real estate."
"The most innovative feature of Office 365 is the Power Apps, which allows us to automate literally everything that we want automated. For example, sending attachments to specific folders on SharePoint, adding people's SharePoint when certain apps are performed, or emailing certain people at certain instances, such as when you've done a follow-up with the CRM and you need a marketing email to be sent out at a particular point."
"The biggest benefit of Office 365 is having everything in one place with well-integrated tools, leading to time savings as everything is housed in a single environment, facilitating communication, data processing, data input, and data saving."
"Office 365 has AI capabilities that improve our processes, as we are using Copilot to assist us in writing documents."
"The return on investment is always an improvement, and I think it's a significant improvement due to the many integration options available."
"I think there's more advantage in using Office 365 compared to Google or AWS collaboration tools if you are using Microsoft in your productivity tools, due to the seamless integration."
"The design feature of PowerPoint is really effective, the email functionalities are convenient, and the entire suite serves our needs well."
 

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 ability to preview files in different formats should be expanded to include formats such as embedded postscript (EPS), AutoCAD, and Adobe Acrobat PDF."
"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."
"I would like to see the integration with Teams reinforced."
"The solution needs to be more collaborative. I believe they are just coming up with the themes for this right now."
"The product is behind in development and lacks some features."
"Workflows could be simplified."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"There are several additional features we would like to see, such as advanced features of SAN protection in Office 365. The main thing is the SAN protection; we would like to see a lot of advanced features added because we had a lot of spam attacks."
"I'd like to see them add more features in the future in order to continue to advance the product."
"I'm not sure if there are areas of improvement. For us, it's working quite well."
"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."
"I would like to see the macro functionality in Excel made simpler."
"As a private user, I do not appreciate the cloud features, but I doubt that this is something Microsoft would consider a feature request."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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 price of Office 365 is very expensive."
"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."
"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."
"Good reporting and good value subscriptions for international calls."
"​The pricing/licensing is easy to manage."
"The pricing is good for all the features that we receive, e.g., Skype for Business."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
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.
883,896 professionals have used our research since 2012.