SharePoint Reviews, Competitors and Pricing

Project Manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Mar 29, 2017

Among the most useful features are the site permissions and the social enterprise features.

What is most valuable?

Among the most useful features I like are: the site permissions (distributed governance model), the social enterprise features (micro blogs, activity feeds, community sites, Following, Likes and Reputations), app store, search and query, external data access, security, site management and site customizations.

How has it helped my organization?

It's been a process-improvement catalyst in the sense that it enabled and empowered real-time collaboration and dashboard tracking of business intelligence reports and performance analytics. It's certainly reduced the number of hours needed to create, update and maintain worksheets and forms hosted on legacy systems, databases and it also reduced overhead on obsolete file repositories.

What needs improvement?

Well, for SharePoint Online, the add-on features which are free tend to expire within a month or earlier. It would be great if these free add-on features would last longer or last permanently.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using SharePoint since 2012.

Buyer's Guide

SharePoint

November 2024

Free Report: SharePoint Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about SharePoint. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.

DOWNLOAD NOW

824,052 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

We have not encountered any deployment issues, fortunately.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have not encountered any stability issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have not encountered any scalability issues.

How are customer service and support?

Customer Service:

The customer service I would rate a 3.5 out of 5 (5 being highest); responsive, timely, proactive.

Technical Support:

The tech support I would rate a 3.5 out of 5 (5 being highest); responsive, strategic, proactive and precise.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used an open-source CMS (Joomla-based) and due to the limitations, we switched to SharePoint.

How was the initial setup?

Very straightforward setup and not that complex.

What about the implementation team?

We used our in-house support team to deliver the implementation.

What was our ROI?

Not sure about ROI.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Do your due diligence first and conduct an in-depth discovery session with stakeholders prior to designing your solution that uses SharePoint as a platform

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Alfresco and Confluence, and then decided on SharePoint.

What other advice do I have?

Ease of use, ease of setup, ease of administration, ease of configuration, ease of customization... what's not to like? SharePoint's got exactly what you need. Just don't expect too many frills, bells, whistles in terms of UI, but even then, it gets the job done.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user262269

Assistant Manager, Operations Automation at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Mar 7, 2017

Download

You can assign permissions, create user groups, and automate workflows. I would like to see a more intuitive way to assign permissions.

What is most valuable?

Flexibility to create customized lists and folders
Ability to assign permissions
Ability to create user groups and automated workflows
Easy to use
Provides flexibility to create separate user groups with specific read, write, and access for certain folders
Ability to restrict access: Prevents the vendors from touching our master files

How has it helped my organization?

It has allowed my team to seamlessly share requirements with one another and provide feedback while working off one version. It is a one-stop shop for all our project documents.

We are currently working with two different vendors (one from Europe and one from India). We used SharePoint as a central workspace where the different groups can upload their files respectively without restriction. They can also have a central folder where RBC and vendors can edit simultaneously.

What needs improvement?

For this version, assigning permissions should be more intuitive.

An improved user interface would be beneficial. Achieving our goals in a multi-vendor project was not an easy task because of the 2010 UI.

I’m not sure if SharePoint 2013 makes it easier to assign specific access for folders. I found a lot of help online that was mostly for 2013.

We should have the ability to create customized permissions for user groups much easier than it is today. For example, being able to specify which lists and folders a group can access. In 2010, there is no easy way to do this.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used SharePoint for about two years now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I did not have any stability issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I did not have any scalability issues.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is excellent.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have always used Microsoft SharePoint for my projects.

How was the initial setup?

We have an excellent onboarding process that our IT team put together, so setup was not particularly complex.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I was not involved in this process.

What other advice do I have?

Look at scalability and stability and see whether the features of the product really meet the needs of your organization.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Buyer's Guide

SharePoint

November 2024

Free Report: SharePoint Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about SharePoint. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.

DOWNLOAD NOW

824,052 professionals have used our research since 2012.

MINBALEYENEW

IT proffesional at Ambo university

May 26, 2024

Download

Used for information sharing and provides good integration capabilities

Pros and Cons

"The most valuable feature of the solution is file sharing or information sharing."

"The solution should be made more user-friendly for technical and business people."

What is our primary use case?

We use SharePoint for information sharing.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of the solution is file sharing or information sharing.

What needs improvement?

The solution should be made more user-friendly for technical and business people.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using SharePoint for six months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

SharePoint is a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

SharePoint is a scalable solution that supports more than 1,000 users.

How was the initial setup?

The solution’s initial setup is easy.

What other advice do I have?

The solution has good integration capabilities. I would not recommend the solution to other users because it is not easily compatible or operable by everyone. More than 20 engineers and managers are needed for the solution's deployment. SharePoint is a good solution for IT collaboration.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Last updated: May 26, 2024

Cesar Danecke

IT Supervisor at HORSCH BRASIL

Jan 23, 2023

Download

Enables us to share information more securely

Pros and Cons

"The online editing capabilities, file sharing, auditing, information security, ease of solution management, and the easy user adaptation to the platform are the most valuable features."

"The way to change the version of the files in SharePoint should be improved. The method of synchronizing files from local to the cloud can also use improvement."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case is for file sharing. SharePoint is implemented in our environment for files and user sharing. We also use it for simultaneous editions.

How has it helped my organization?

We had all the group files registered in SharePoint, including all local files. It was possible to share the information more securely.

What is most valuable?

The online editing capabilities, file sharing, auditing, information security, ease of solution management, and the easy user adaptation to the platform are the most valuable features.

What needs improvement?

The way to change the version of the files in SharePoint should be improved. The method of synchronizing files from local to the cloud can also use improvement.

I would also like to see improvements in the interface, speed to load the page, mark favorite directories, synchronize the most recent, and the least accessed files automatically do the archiving. I would like to have an option at the first sync to choose more locations on your computer.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using this solution for more than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of SharePoint is very good, amazing.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

SharePoint is easy and has new features now. Scalability with SharePoint is good and easy for us at work. To maintain the product, we do not need a large amount of professionals, we currently have three professionals to administer the platform.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support with SharePoint is very good, very easy and includes support for multiple languages. It can be opened by several channels.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

What motivated us to switch solutions was the easy solution management, space scalability, additional features, easy synchronization, data security, and sharing control.

How was the initial setup?

The initial configuration of SharePoint was very easy. The configuration, training, and communication with the users took less than two months.

What about the implementation team?

Internal deployment of the system was conducted through a Microsoft partner and was very easy. We had our internal professionals deploy the system together.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

With regards to licensing, it depends a lot on what you need to do, there are many plans, and options to choose from, you need to plan and enjoy 100% of what the product offers, so you can decide if the value is right.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I used several products, but sharepoint brought them all together. I used windows file server, linux, file versioners, website to share documents.

What other advice do I have?

Compared with other products, SharePoint is very good. We do not have other products that are as good as SharePoint.

SharePoint is definitely richer in features with functionality which helps us to get our work done. I would rate SharePoint a 10 out of 10.

The solution is integrated with the entire Microsoft platform, from e-mail to Azure computing, so the solution as a whole is easy to manage and has a central administration that facilitates the view of the entire environment.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Toby Ward

President at Prescient Digital Media

Aug 3, 2022

SharePoint for Intranets

SharePoint is appreciated for its simplicity of use out-of-the-box, though derided for problems (and the expenses) customizing the user experience (design, navigation and information architecture).

SharePoint is replete with functionality and applications, and is the most comprehensive intranet development platform on the market. It is, unfortunately, expensive, and most of the feature set that we use, and that our clients use, fall short of expectations, and often below best-of-breed. SharePoint isn’t a niche product that is supposed to be superb at web content management, or social networking; it’s a broad solution, one that has something for everybody; a solution that can please some, but not all.

SharePoint’s greatest strength is that it’s an all-in-one solution – it’s a portal, a content management system, a search engine, a social collaboration platform, a web development platform, and so much more. Its greatest weakness is that it’s an all-in-one solution – everything and the kitchen sink; a jack-of-all-trades, a master of none. Some argue that SharePoint is a “mile wide, but a foot deep.” It offers so much, but many features are seen as sub-par.

SharePoint is part enterprise content management (ECM) solution, part portal solution, part web development platform, part social media platform. It offers many, many solutions and functions – often too much for most organizations – but it is Microsoft’s hope that it will become everything to everybody including the de facto platform for the company intranet, website(s) and extranet(s). In sum total, it is an amazingly powerful solution, but often fails to live up to expectations.

SharePoint 2013 was a fair solution, with an abundance of time, patience… and money, it could work; SharePoint 2016, is even better, but still requires a lot of care, and investment.

The latest, SharePoint 2019 (and SharePoint Online in Office 365), further improves upon previous versions, notably the mobile experience and the user experience.

SharePoint has a new mobile app, so you can access your intranet using a phone app, instead of using the browser. Outside of the app, SharePoint has a new, clean mobile experience – greatly enhanced over the mobile experience in SharePoint 2016.

Another big, major improvement to SharePoint is the new user experience (UX) design and general usability of SharePoint. It is noticeably superior to previous versions of SP. It’s very clean and modern, with a major emphasis on images, and video.

“SharePoint 2019 has the most UX (improvements) than we’ve ever delivered before in a SharePoint release,” Hani Loza, of the Microsoft SharePoint team.

Among the new UX features, particularly noticeable in the new SharePoint Communications Sites, are drag-and-drop web parts for image galleries, slideshows, hero slideshow, and video.

Microsoft has released a new video function and portal, called Stream. Using Microsoft Stream, videos will play automatically in a page, and it includes auto transcription, face detection, and enhanced sharing and tagging. The Stream team say “audio transcriptions and face detection make finding relevant content easy—even for specific words or people shown on screen, whether in a single video or across all your company’s videos.”

From a governance perspective, SharePoint is good, when compared to other platforms. It is not perfect, but no solution is.

Like the content of your website or intranet, planning and governance is technology agnostic; whether it’s SharePoint or another portal or content management platform, the necessity for and the approach to governance is the same. In short, governance lives and dies with its owners, and the rules they put in place, regardless of the technology. Governance is largely applicable to any technology platform and as such is generic to start.

When building a governance model for SharePoint, the major components should include:

The umbrella ownership model – Centralized? Decentralized? Collaborative?
Defined ownership structure (names and titles)
Roles and responsibilities (jobs and duties)
Decision making process (who is responsible for what and when)
Authorization (who is responsible for what and when)
Policy (what is allowed, and what is not allowed)

While governance is generic in nature, regardless of the software and hardware, there are some components of SharePoint that require specific consideration. Site Collections and Team Sites are so easy to deploy, and it is so easy for even the most neophyte web users to create a site (e.g. Team Sites, My Sites, Publishing Sites, etc.), SharePoint sites can easily grow at exponential rates and amount to tens-of-thousands in a short period of time. ‘Baking’ in rules and inheritance to site collections is critical to ensuring a consistent, uniform user experience.

These issues and others are discussed in-depth including, SharePoint governance, and some of the specific, requisite steps and policies for implementing intranet and in the SharePoint Governance white paper.

To learn about the specifics of intranet design with SharePoint, see the Intranet Design white paper.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user9216Head of Consulting & Solutions EMEA at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

Report as inappropriate

Oct 17, 2013

I would add education about what is governance and what needs to be governed.

Toby Ward

President at Prescient Digital Media

Apr 6, 2022

The SharePoint Intranet – Pros and Cons

SharePoint has conquered the enterprise intranet. Although the conquest is never as bloody nor expensive as more invasive conquests, such as the Mongols under Genghis Khan, intranet citizens are not always thrilled by the new system and structure under Gates Khan.

SharePoint is present in about 90% of the Fortune 100; and plays a prominent intranet role in about 70% of knowledge worker intranets (either powering the main intranet portal, or delivering associated collaboration sites and/or document repositories). This in spite of its history.

SharePoint 2007 was a dog; SharePoint 2010 was a dressed-up dog; but SharePoint 2013 represented a leap forward to a more user-friendly, true web platform. SharePoint 2016 saw improvements, but perhaps the most significant advances have come in the last couple of years with the release and evolution of SharePoint online (and eventually SharePoint 2019) with the advent of Office 365.

SharePoint Online, and the on-premises version SharePoint 2019 (though the Online version is constantly being updated and improved upon) represent considerable improvement to a a very usable, complex digital workplace solution. SharePoint Online Modern Experience has become a truly mobile friendly solution, with a number of improvements to collaboration (particularly Teams and a dedicated mobile app) and for hybrid cloud scenarios.

There are a lot of reasons to buy into or upgrade to Online or 2019: the latest iteration of Microsoft’s portal-web development platform represents a massive, multi-million dollar upgrade on the previous versions of SharePoint (a version that was typically oversold given its underwhelming if not frustrating performance and lack of execution). SharePoint Online and 2019 are massive upgrade from 2013: noticeable improvements to social computing (social networking via Delve and Teams), mobile computing (responsive design with "modern" pages and a dedicated mobile app), better Office integration, Teams, cloud and hybrid integration, search and more.

But it’s not all good news, and it’s not a solution that fits every organization.

Here at Prescient Digital Media, we upgraded move to SharePoint Online in Office 365 (which is more feature and functionally rich than SharePoint 2019). Though some problems persist, the bugs and challenges are not as persistent as versions 2013 and 2016. There are some obvious improvements (pros) and some persistent issues (cons):

Cloud – you no longer need to worry about patches, maintenance and security; Microsoft takes care of this for you
Mobile – enhanced mobile access experience with completely responsive sites and apps, and dedicated single sign-on apps for each of the tools in the Office 365 toolset
Social – enhanced social networking via Delve, Teams and Yammer
Web CMS – enhanced publishing and management interface (employing the ‘ribbon’ from Office)
Branding – the new "modern pages" are slick and responsive; it can be more challenging to implement new custom designs using the new modern pages versus classic, and MS has openly cautioned against customizing the home page
Search – search is much improved with the full integration with the FAST search engine, but requires some configuration work

There are far more pros than cons, but there should be at the price MS charges. SharePoint is very good for a small to medium-size intranet in a .NET environment that requires a web development platform focused on enterprise content management. In some scenarios, SharePoint can excel as a large enterprise intranet, but it can cause headaches if its overly customized .But it is not cheap, typically requires a lot of work and customization, and doesn’t always work as promised.

Speaking of conquest, the Chinese learned Mongol lessons the hard way, and built the Great Wall. Although a firewall is requisite with any intranet, not just a SharePoint intranet, walls kill collaboration and employee knowledge management. More salient, key lessons can be drawn from implementing and working with SharePoint:

Licensing represents a fraction of the cost
Planning and governance are mission critical – mission critical
Custom or third-party web parts and applications can really enhance the experience
Social collaboration doesn’t just happen, it’s earned
Change management is the key to success

For more information see the SharePoint For Communicators white paper, at www.PrescientDigital.com.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user635955Project Manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Report as inappropriate

Mar 28, 2017

Scored quite high when we evaluated it on compliance and compatibility with required ECM features (Gartner ECM assessment criteria used in our assessment), i.e. scored in the range of 92% to 96%. Among the criteria evaluated were library services, record services, content creation and capture, metadata management, workflow and BPM, navigation and search, security and access control, and architecture and integration functionalities.

See all 9 comments

Cecil Rupp

Works at Command Results, LLC.

Aug 10, 2019

Download

Supports us in software development projects and integrates well with Microsoft Project

Pros and Cons

"This solution has helped us with the categorization, organization, management, discovery, and delivery of program and project related information."

"This solution would benefit from the implementation of enhanced online forms and template development capabilities."

What is our primary use case?

We use this solution for supporting software development programs and projects.

How has it helped my organization?

This solution has helped us with the categorization, organization, management, discovery, and delivery of program and project related information.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of this solution is the integration with MS Project.

What needs improvement?

This solution would benefit from the implementation of enhanced online forms and template development capabilities.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using this solution for fifteen years, off and on.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Again, no problems on our applications.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have never seen it hit a wall in terms of supporting our programs, and I have been the senior contractor program and project manager overseeing two large Health IT projects, both with more than 100 team members and as many as 11,000 assigned tasks.

How are customer service and technical support?

he Microsoft reps were always helpful; although they were not always up to speed with the latest offerings and capabilities from Microsoft. Persistence pays off thought. I usually eventually got the answers to my questions.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

NO, client requires use of SharePoint for content management on IT programs and projects.

How was the initial setup?

It seemed easy enough. The one issue I had was setting up a project portal where we wanted to implement a number of SDLC Templates via SharePoint. This was a couple of years ago, but the integration of a legacy Microsoft forms product was not very clean or adequate. It looks like the previous tool has been replaced with Microsoft Forms. I haven't had a chance to use this product yet.

What about the implementation team?

In house.

What was our ROI?

Confidential

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I don't have experience in that area.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

No, client requires use of SharePoint for content management on IT programs and projects.

What other advice do I have?

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user1031406

HRIS Consultant at Express Scripts Holding

Mar 11, 2019

Download

It is easy to administer as a business user

What is our primary use case?

Shared document repository and communication tool for projects and teams
I love SharePoint lists; they are pretty flexible and easy to create and export data from.
You can also restrict the view to customize to specific audiences.
It is also easy to create subsites, and security can be applied to individual pages.

How has it helped my organization?

It is a good tool that makes managing projects and teams much easier. All documents and calendars are in one central location.

What is most valuable?

SharePoint lists
Calendar
Subsites
Security
Survey
It is easy to administer as a business user.

What needs improvement?

The UI could be more flexible out of the box. With coding, you can customize the look and feel to your heart's content, but configuration without coding is limited.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.