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 #7, while Office 365 is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.5. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server holds a 6.3% mindshare in CCP, compared to Office 365’s 6.9% mindshare. Additionally, 80% 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 29 Microsoft Office SharePoint Server reviews

1,409 Views
1,240 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Office 365

Read 143 Office 365 reviews

2,360 Views
1,440 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: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server vs. Office 365

June 2025

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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

7th

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

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

143

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Content Collaboration Platforms category, the mindshare of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is 6.3%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Office 365 is 6.9%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Content Collaboration Platforms

Featured Reviews

Jaufre Rouanet

Partner and CEO at JRC CORPORATE CONSULTING

Integration enhances workflow while user support requires improvement

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server should add some 'tip of the days' and small videos to help users grow within their experience with SharePoint. More integration with Copilot and with the AI platform would be great. Additionally, having the ability in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server to summarize when bringing in SharePoint folders would be beneficial, providing extracts, analysis, proposals, and summaries of those documents.

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Gary Cook

Executive at Empowered Analytics

Access to advanced features boosts productivity despite pricing concerns in developing regions

I need to do maintenance for Office 365 very seldom, once a year. In the maintenance process for Office 365, we have about 12 people involved. For the maintenance side of Office 365, only one person is involved. Looking at Office 365's pricing, I would give it a 4 on a scale from 1 to 10. My overall rating for Office 365 is an 8 out of 10, but for the product itself, I would give it a 10. I would definitely recommend Office 365 to other businesses, probably a 9 out of 10 for recommendation. This is only because of its price and the fact that they do not take into account developing countries such as South Africa, where they should give us more favorable prices or local prices. We do not have a partnership with Microsoft, which is a sore point for us. We have reached out to Microsoft South Africa, and they are very hard to contact and largely uncooperative. We are a B-Level 2 and a B-Level 1, which are local affirmative action ratings that companies get. Level 1 is the highest, and Level 8 is the lowest. We hold amongst the highest BEE ratings, but we have not found Microsoft South Africa to be forthcoming or very open. We should have a partnership with them, and we run Power BI as we are a Power BI shop now. I strongly would want to see a box within Office 365 for our team to have ChatGPT through OpenAI as well. We use Excel as a data source for many tasks and find that it integrates really well with Python. We write a lot of Python code and use Excel as a data sheet many times, and we operate through SQL and other zero elements as well. From an Office 365 viewpoint, we find that with Copilot and Python and Excel's provision for Python, it is very useful.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's a very robust product."

"It is a decent tool for collaboration, especially if you are already using other Office products."

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

"The solution's most valuable aspects are its collaboration capabilities, its communications site and the innovation within the product itself."

"The level of stability is good."

"Ability to collaborate with others in one location."

"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."

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

More Microsoft Office SharePoint Server pros

"I like all of the features."

"As an email provider, I believe Office 365 is the best email provider."

"Cloud-based management is valuable and software deployment is positive."

"The most valuable feature is the integration between net and mobile devices."

"The most valuable features of Office 365 are Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Teams. Teams helped us to collaborate more through its call and document sharing features."

"Great impact on project management and team collaboration."

"There are no more server and hardware operational costs and downtime, updates, etc. for all the workloads available. Newer features and updates are available immediately. Can be managed from a single web interface. Cloud-based, so same experience for all users, regardless of location."

"The most valuable feature of Office 365 is that it has many solutions bundled together."

More Office 365 pros

Cons

"The GUI is outdated."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"I would like to see the integration with Teams reinforced."

"The product could be improved by accommodating different technologies, particularly integration."

"The ability to preview files in different formats should be expanded to include formats such as embedded postscript (EPS), AutoCAD, and Adobe Acrobat PDF."

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

More Microsoft Office SharePoint Server cons

"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 could use some customization, but this area for improvement is trivial."

"We have found that, with Teams, if you are including one more person who is not in the company ecosystem, supposedly I'm inviting them as a guest in the chat. However, when I do that, I can't share files."

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

"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."

"The integration with mobile services is not so good. It's coming, but they could improve a lot."

"In terms of improvement, it should have tutorials when you first have the opportunity to use it, to be able to really learn it."

"I rate the support of Office 365 a four out of five."

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."

"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."

"Pricing plans may be flexible depending on volume usage and your corporate relationship with Microsoft."

"Licensing, billing, and accounting are available from the management interface."

"The pricing/licensing is easy to manage."

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

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

"I would rate the solution 3 out of 5 for the price. I think Microsoft presents a good solution concerning the price."

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

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

More Office 365 pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

32%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Office 365?

For pricing, I think it's fairly priced, I would rate it 8.

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What needs improvement with Office 365?

The areas of Office 365 that have room for improvement are what should be better in this solution.

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What is your primary use case for Office 365?

A typical use case for Office 365 is how I primarily use this solution.

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Comparisons

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Compared 5% of the time

Kiteworks vs Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

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Google Workspace vs Office 365

Compared 40% of the time

Amazon WorkDocs vs Office 365

Compared 9% of the time

Atlassian Confluence vs Office 365

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft OneDrive vs Office 365

Compared 7% of the time

Dropbox vs Office 365

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

June 2025

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server report

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Buyer's Guide

Office 365

June 2025

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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

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server vs. Office 365

June 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server vs. Office 365

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server vs. Office 365 and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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