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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 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
ProductMindshare (%)
Office 3659.0%
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server3.4%
Other87.6%
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.
Anubrata Ghosh - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The level of stability is good."
"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."
"There is a lot more flexibility in the cloud, especially for mobile development."
"What I appreciate most about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is how it centralizes information and collaboration in one place."
"Microsoft Office SharePoint Server helps with return on investment as it saves a lot of time and helps clients improve their processes."
"Sharing information is the best feature or advantage of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server based on my experience."
"Microsoft Office SharePoint Server's document management significantly improves collaboration within my organization."
"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."
"I love all of the applications being interlinked. I do not have to separately work on an independent system when it comes to file storage, email, and other tools."
"Office 365 provides instant access to essential applications such as emails and documents at any time, regardless of location, ensuring that communication is seamless and efficient, making it powerful for our organizational needs."
"The features I find most valuable in Office 365 include its user-friendly interface; we use Outlook, Teams, and SharePoint for various tasks, and overall, it is helpful."
"Microsoft 365 operates seamlessly in the background, allowing us to perform tasks across different Microsoft applications."
"It includes Office 365 applications such as Excel, Outlook, and Word."
"My primary use case is for preparing presentations to teach, often on PowerPoint."
"Office 365 has excellent facilities, it's familiar, and it's easy to comprehend when sending messages."
"Since transitioning from a simple, normal Outlook to Office 365, there has been an increase in productivity due to the larger amount of space available to handle emails without needing to delete older ones."
 

Cons

"The Branding and User Interface Design and CK Editor should be improved, as well as the upgrade process."
"The solution requires a lot of hardware capacity for high availability and performance."
"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."
"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."
"The UIs are really clunky and Microsoft needs to fix that."
"The user interface needs improvement because there is a lot of stuff in there."
"The solution needs to enable better sharing capabilities between users and external users."
"The search functionality on the on-premises version is not very good."
"I am not satisfied with the integration capabilities of Office 365, as we have not done any integration with third-party vendors."
"When sharing documents, having a feature similar to a Box note would allow quick jotting down of ideas without the need for structured and aesthetically pleasing formats, making it easier to share thoughts promptly."
"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 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."
"I haven't tried working with Copilot within Office 365; it's good, but native ChatGPT and Google Gemini are better."
"It is a pain to use, to be honest."
"It needs improvements around its compatibility with non-Microsoft products."
"The look and feel of the new Outlook is complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"We have a license to use this solution. We have an E3 license which covers many different solutions."
"The pricing is high and has actually caused us to limit the number of licenses we purchase due to budgeting."
"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."
"Licensing, billing, and accounting are available from the management interface."
"​The pricing/licensing is easy to manage."
"Licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis, or we prepay them."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

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: March 2026.
886,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.