Name: SharePoint
Brand: Microsoft
Rating: 3.9 (164 reviews)

President at Prescient Digital Media

Nov 18, 2025

Plan, plan, plan. Over-budget.

First and foremost, SharePoint is an intranet platform. Though Microsoft states that SharePoint is "primarily sold as a document management and storage system" it is an information sharing platform and for "implementing internal applications, and for implementing business processes."

SharePoint is the know market leader for powering intranets: about 90% of the Fortune 1000 use SharePoint in some shape or form (with many using it to power their Intranet home page).

There are in fact two versions of SharePoint: the on-premises version, SharePoint Server, and SharePoint Online, which comes bundled in Microsoft 365 (the Cloud). Though those with Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) automatically have the latest features in SharePoint Online; those with on-premises SharePoint, have to wait for the next release to get the latest and greatest.

SharePoint’s greatest strength is it’s an all-in-one approach – 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 some features are seen as still ‘developing’ or even sub-par. But there are a lot of tools and features, and with each release, it gets better and better (though more complex).

It’s important to note that SharePoint is still a technology. It doesn’t include all of the people, process and planning that is required to make any intranet technology work. Intranet technology will fail without careful planning, process and committed people. Most of the key ingredients of a successful intranet in the digital workplace are based on people, and process; technology is merely an enabler.

Features include:

Cloud / Hybrid - Hybrid enables you to integrate your on-premises farm with the cloud, at your own pace.
Durable Links - Resource-based URLs now retain links when documents are renamed or moved in SharePoint.
Video recording, storage, and screen recording - an all-in-one video solution using Stream, including video editing.
Large files - now supports uploading and downloading files larger than 2,047 MBs
Mobile - an improved mobile navigation experience, including a very fast and easy to use app.
Search - SharePoint Search integrated the FAST Search engine, with more features, and indexes up to 500 million documents (per app).
Sharing - better user sharing options, including a Shared folder, and invitation email notifications.
Microsoft Teams - full integration with Microsoft Teams (all Teams files are stored in SharePoint).

We are Intranet consultants (www.PrescientDigital.com) and and principally use Microsoft 365 - SharePoint Online for Enterprise Content Management; improving the way our organization functions in terms of employee collaboration and knowledge sharing specifically via document management, and social collaboration (discussion groups, profiles and blogging being the most used social tools). Increasingly we use Teams, and use it with external clients that can be invited to a specific Team (project site).

Web content management and social media tools (e.g. wikis) are not best-of-breed, and usability is an issue with many features. We also encountered many, many problems with deployment -- customization and implementation requires more work than you expect. Additionally, like most organizations, a customized user experience can break (particularly specific webparts) with every SharePoint patch and upgrade. However, we found no issues with stability or scalability.

80% of our clients use SharePoint, and probably some 90% of the Fortune 1000 use SharePoint in some shape or form. We are first and foremost SharePoint intranet consultants, so we build and design other intranets, and need to deeply understand the ins and outs of SharePoint.

The initial setup of SharePoint is very easy - out-of-the-box deployment is simple, fast and a novice could manage a deployment. Customization requires a lot of work, particularly using SPFx (hiring an outside expert is strongly recommended).

A note of caution: planning is everything. The intranet is more about people and process, and any intranet requires a through plan -- for information architecture, content management, design, and change management -- plan, plan, plan. And plan to run over-budget (unless you hire very strong outside experts to develop and run your plan and budget) for customization activities.

SharePoint features major upgrades to the user experience design and mobile access, including a new dedicated SharePoint app. It’s very clean and modern, with a major emphasis on images, and video. The new "modern UX" is fully responsive, and has it's own dedicated mobile app.

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.

Continue reading: The New SharePoint

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

Last updated: Nov 18, 2025

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

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Mar 29, 2017

Err...what's Centralpoint? :D Is that an actual enterprise solution?

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reviewer1142955

Senior Analyst at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees

May 23, 2024

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Used for the creation and sharing of documents

Pros and Cons

"SharePoint is easy to collaborate with."

"The solution's support services and GenAI could be improved and made faster and more knowledgeable."

What is our primary use case?

I mostly use the solution for the creation and sharing of documents.

What is most valuable?

SharePoint is easy to collaborate with.

What needs improvement?

The solution's support services and GenAI could be improved and made faster and more knowledgeable.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using SharePoint for more than two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate the solution’s stability eight and a half out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

SharePoint is a scalable solution.

I rate the solution a seven or eight out of ten for scalability.

How was the initial setup?

The solution’s initial setup is straightforward and doesn't take much time.

What about the implementation team?

Our IT team deploys the solution.

What other advice do I have?

The solution has good integration capabilities. SharePoint supports remote work and team collaboration within our company. The solution's workflow data analysis and AI-driven content organization are good. I would recommend the solution to other users because of its reliability and AI features. SharePoint has helped our organization save time and money.

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

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

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Cesar Danecke

IT Supervisor at HORSCH BRASIL

Jan 23, 2023

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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: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

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: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

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

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Oct 17, 2013

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

Mordhi Alenazi

Business Application Development Manager at NWC

Jun 8, 2020

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Good collaboration and sharing but the workflow engine cannot support business needs

Pros and Cons

"The most valuable features are the collaboration and sharing."

"The workflow engine cannot support the business needs."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use cases are for

Central repository for document integrated with a core application.
The integration through web service with Oracle ERP and Oracle CCB
In addition, we use SharePoint two build a library for different projects for collaboration and sharing propose.

How has it helped my organization?

It has improved my organization in the following ways:

Gave us the ability to integrate with other systems that need a lot of customization.
Offers alignment between user permissions in SharePoint and other systems is not exist.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are collaboration and sharing.

What needs improvement?

Workflow engine
Video streaming and huge file retrieving and uploading
It does not support video streaming and huge file retrieving and uploading
The workflow engine cannot support business needs.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used SharePoint for six years.

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

It's not expensive.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did evaluate other options.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

Eric Wyatt

IT Director / CIO at Matanuska-Sustina Borough

Oct 3, 2019

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Integrates well to improve access, coordination, and collaboration

Pros and Cons

"The most valuable features are the Integrations, web site, and search."

"The areas of this solution that need improvement are the relationships between lists, cross-site web parts, and page-building tools."

What is our primary use case?

We use this solution for intranet, extranet, web site, content management, collaboration, integrations, eCommerce, inventory, portfolio, project, and process management.

How has it helped my organization?

This solution has given us better access, coordination, collaboration, and visibility. It is an enterprise system for many functions instead of multiple systems to support. Interactive intranet instead of static web pages, integration of other systems to include GIS. We also have better search capability.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are the Integrations, web site, and search.

What needs improvement?

The areas of this solution that need improvement are the relationships between lists, cross-site web parts, and page-building tools.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for nineteen years.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

Cecil Rupp

Works at Command Results, LLC.

Aug 10, 2019

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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: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

MichaelSoliman

Owner at Alopex ONE UG

May 26, 2019

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Good for optimizing business processes in organizations of any size

Pros and Cons

"For any organization with more than one person in it, if they are trying to organize things to let people in the company know what others are doing, then this solution is good for them."

"I would like a simpler, more cost-effective solution for connecting data sources with workflows and BI tools, or data mining tools."

What is our primary use case?

I have been consulting with this solution, combined with SQL server, since 2005. The majority of my consulting at that time changed from Active Directory and C++ to SQL Server and SharePoint.

What is most valuable?

This solution is a workflow operating system with many metadata services. Information is taken and automatically triggers actions. The specific action is based on the information itself, which is used to calculate a complex answer that results in the action.

What needs improvement?

I would like a simpler, more cost-effective solution for connecting data sources with workflows and BI tools, or data mining tools. There are different tools for data mining and for data evaluation, but you have to be a skilled programmer to tie them together. There is no simple and low-cost method to do this, provided that development time is a cost factor.

There are some automatic solutions for this task, such as Team Foundation Server, which is built on SharePoint. These tools can learn specific errors that are being made, using data mining techniques, and they are able to target these errors for correction. Having this capability built in, and customizable for the customer would be of great interest.

I would like to see support for Visual Studio to connect to SharePoint and have a wizard to connect data processes to iHubs, like an analysis server or data mining model, to an output, and to have a smart way of creating workflows. Microsoft will tell you that they already have that for SharePoint online, it's called "Flow", but it is not customer compatible.

For how long have I used the solution?

Since 2003.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is stable after the hotfixes, or service pack has been applied. This has been the case for each release since 2003. If you take the release directly to the customer then it is almost always a big mess for them during implementation.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This solution is extremely scalable. It is a highly performance-optimized web service that you just have to install correctly and then add the machine to the farm with the proper permissions. That is one of the biggest strengths of SharePoint.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is extremely well developed with Microsoft. It's just that you have to pay for it, so it is not for someone without Software Assurance.

How was the initial setup?

The setup of this solution is complex. There are SharePoint deployment architecture scenarios, and sometimes the C-level deciders underestimate the complexity of it. You have to know SharePoint very well.

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

For this type of solution, it is not wise to buy it without Software Assurance. It depends on the customer, but most are using an agreement that covers four to ten free incidents per year. You really need that, and it's well-invested money.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

When comparing this solution to other workflow operating systems like Oracle or BP Logix, I give this solution a ten out of ten.

What other advice do I have?

My advice for anyone implementing this solution is to first try everything that you want to do in a virtual environment, with people who know how SharePoint is programmed. You need to understand the psychology of business users because most of them omit essential steps when they are creating the business process model. They are used to doing things in their head, but the machine is not aware of everything that they know so some steps are missed.

Ideally, you want to buy a bunch of post-it notes and test your processes manually, by playing with different scenarios. You have to tune the business processes. I have seen projects fail because the debug phase of the business process design was not thorough.

This solution is useful for optimizing usual business processes, like writing an invoice. For any organization with more than one person in it, if they are trying to organize things to let people in the company know what others are doing, then this solution is good for them.

While this workflow operating system is better than others on the market, it is uncomfortable and expensive to really implement what you need.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner.