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Microsoft Office SharePoint Server vs SharePoint comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
4.4
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Content Collaboration Platforms (7th)
SharePoint
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Content Management (1st), Web Content Management (1st), Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) (1st), Enterprise Intranet (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Messaging and Collaboration solutions, they serve different purposes. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is designed for Content Collaboration Platforms and holds a mindshare of 6.3%, down 10.1% compared to last year.
SharePoint, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Content Management, holds 16.4% mindshare, down 20.2% since last year.
Content Collaboration Platforms
Enterprise Content Management
 

Featured Reviews

Jaufre Rouanet - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Madhur D'silva - PeerSpot reviewer
Collaborative work benefits while user-friendliness challenges persist
The most valuable feature of SharePoint ( /products/sharepoint-reviews ) is its user interface, which is very easy to use. I do not have to be very technical to use it. Its rights management capabilities and ability to restrict access to certain people are also very useful. Furthermore, I can access SharePoint from any device, whether it is a phone or laptop, which is very convenient.

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."
"The level of stability is good."
"The software is friendly to use for mixing data and analyzing it."
"This solution has provided us with a collaborative workspace to allow everyone to work together and be on the same page."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the Communication Site."
"Ability to collaborate with others in one location."
"The support from Microsoft is very quick and they are very proactive."
"It is a decent tool for collaboration, especially if you are already using other Office products."
"The most valuable features are the Integrations, web site, and search."
"It allows for simultaneous users to be on it."
"It has made us faster and more efficient."
"For SharePoint, I believe the most valuable feature is the customization and allowing you to share and edit files and documents. Being able to share externally and the precise administration of the files in terms of giving permissions and controlling who has access to what is a very good feature."
"The access control is definitely a good feature. We also appreciate the improvements they've made to the online applications, where multiple users can work on the same documents simultaneously. Everything syncs automatically."
"The most valuable features are the collaboration and sharing."
"It offers ease of use, which is crucial."
"It is very stable."
 

Cons

"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."
"The solution needs to have more flexibility. The classic version had more flexibility, however, the modern version has many more limitations."
"The solution needs to enable better sharing capabilities between users and external users. Several users also have problems with linking their emails to their Microsoft account."
"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."
"The permission management features need improvement."
"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 GUI is outdated."
"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."
"During uptime under our network, it is hard to find info when content is hefty."
"The navigation is confusing."
"Microsoft support could be better, especially for enterprise troubleshooting. They require a lot of logs and often rely on online support, which does not meet customer expectations."
"More hints and make it more user-customizable."
"No good process to import emails from several users into a single comprehensive SP repository."
"There's room for improvement in the search functionality, although it has matured significantly over the years."
"The initial setup was very complex."
"SharePoint sometimes cannot handle the amount of co-editing that we do."
 

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."
"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."
"Pricing plans may be flexible depending on volume usage and your corporate relationship with Microsoft."
"As usual, Microsoft’s licensing structures don’t really seem to fit the needs of their products. This leads to always paying for a project you will never use fully or always be adding to."
"The pricing works for us."
"Licensing can be by server or by seat."
"The solution's pricing is relatively expensive because it's bundled with other products."
"The pricing is competitive."
"SharePoint is included with our Microsoft license."
"The product is reasonably priced."
"It is very expensive.​"
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Comparison Review

it_user8925 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 23, 2013
Jive vs Sharepoint vs Drupal Commons
At Mediacurrent we often get requests to compare Drupal to other platforms used for intranet sites and social business platforms (like https://dev.twitter.com/ for example). This is often referred to as “Social Business Software”, which has grown in popularity in recent years. I decided to do a…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SharePoint?
As SharePoint is part of the Microsoft 365 suite, the pricing is acceptable.
What needs improvement with SharePoint?
The web parts in SharePoint could be more intuitive for end users. Many do not fully understand these features, and improving user awareness could foster better data relations. The learning curve o...
 

Also Known As

Office SharePoint Server, MS Office SharePoint Server
SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010
 

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
Toyota, Aeroports de Paris, ASBBank Ltd., Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals, CambridgeshireConstabulary, D&M Group, NPL Construction Company, and The Regional Municipality of Niagara.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server vs. SharePoint and other solutions. Updated: March 2020.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.