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President at Prescient Digital Media
Consultant
Top 20
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.
PeerSpot user
it_user9216 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user9216Head of Consulting & Solutions EMEA at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Consultant

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

President at Prescient Digital Media
Consultant
Top 20
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.
PeerSpot user
it_user635955 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user635955Project Manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User

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.

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Buyer's Guide
SharePoint
March 2025
Learn what your peers think about SharePoint. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.
PeerSpot user
Technology Manager - Applications at a local government with 501-1,000 employees
Vendor
It has an easy to distribute administration capability. The licensing structures don’t fit the needs of their products.
Pros and Cons
  • "It has an easy to distribute administration capability, and can also scale to meet a large number of future needs."
  • "The product does not perform 100% when used outside of a Microsoft based browser, Chrome, Firefox, etc."

What is most valuable?

It has an easy to distribute administration capability, and can also scale to meet a large number of future needs. It also has the ability to produce very simple web application development products, freeing up my team’s development activities for more advanced needs.

How has it helped my organization?

We mainly use this product for our intranet and capital projects team. It has allowed each business unit the ability to “own” their portion of the intranet, and allowed our capital projects team the ability to effectively manage projects that require a multitude records request requirements and archival tasks. It is very customizable, and it possesses a very logical architecture.

What needs improvement?

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. Also, the product does not perform 100% when used outside of a Microsoft based browser, Chrome, Firefox, etc. It’s getting better, but the architecture is still behind. This is largely the case for mobile as well.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have used this solution for almost nine years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of the system is fine, so long as you have a well prepared support team for your Windows offerings.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is one of the great strengths of the product, in that it scales very well. As an added benefit, due to the ease of administration, a lead in a business unit can take over such responsibilities.

How are customer service and technical support?

The level of technical support from Microsoft is very little to poor.

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

We did not have a similar solution in place. Our intranet was previously an added product to our hosted CMS. And for Capital Projects, we were using a mixture of standalone Microsoft Project install and file shares.

How was the initial setup?

After getting the infrastructure setup and deployed, installing and rolling out the product was fairly straightforward. A little bit of planning was required to better understand the differences in Web Applications from Site Collections, but that was largely straightforward.

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

Really take your time in planning the needs you are trying to meet. The licensing is very difficult to get right, and not as easy as many other alternative. Add in about a 15% cost to the initial cost estimates. You will find yourself needing to add something.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did a brief overview of the market, and found that 9 years ago, SharePoint was a viable solution. Since then, we’ve settled on using it in very narrow cases, and fill the majority of our needs with custom development.

What other advice do I have?

Invest a lot of time and energy in the planning for your needs. You will find that infrastructure needs are imperative to map out in the finest detail. Otherwise, your system will be continually under-performing. Also, pay special attention to the CAL needs.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user631614 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technology Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Some of the valuable features are collaboration, DLP, and the search capability.

What is most valuable?

Collaboration, DLP, and the search capability are some of the features I like the most.

How has it helped my organization?

It has improved our productivity to a great extent with its great collaboration features. Previously, business users were sharing documents through emails while different people contributed to the same document. This created a lot of confusion, such as:

  • Issues with merging changes from some users
  • No tracking of changes
  • Version management

The business users had to spend a lot of time to get this to closure. SharePoint has helped a great deal in this space.

What needs improvement?

  • UX
  • Performance (especially Office 365): This is an issues when the sites are accessed from Asia/Australia, which is bad compared to accessing from the USA
  • The mobile experience

For how long have I used the solution?

I have worked with this platform/tool for more than eight years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The current version is very stable compared to versions 2007 and 2010.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There are some performance issues with respect to the amount of data that has to be stored.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support is very good.

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

I have seen customers using other tools and switching to SharePoint. Technology upgrades and feature upgrades are the key reasons for this.

How was the initial setup?

The setup is complex, as you need to consider lots of things for the farm design.

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

The pricing is good. I have heard that MS gives very good deals on volume licensing.

What other advice do I have?

It's a good tool, but be prepared to adapt to the new way of working with SharePoint and Office 365. They bring their own new features which are very good, but you will experience a learning curve.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user63336 - PeerSpot reviewer
Database / SharePoint Administrator at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
It offers the ability to create workflows that can assign tasks and route documents for review and approval.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features to our organization are the ability to store and share documents across the entire corporation, and the ability to use workflows. Our organization has multiple locations and even multiple companies that need to share information both intra-company and within the corporation. The ability to create workflows that can assign tasks and route documents for review and approval allows for documentation automation and project management.

How has it helped my organization?

We used to use project folders to manage new product development. With SharePoint, it allowed us to store all of the related documentation in a single project folder. Another example would be when we have a product quality issue, a single form is filled out and routed to the various people in the organization for review and resolution to ensure the issue does not repeat itself. Several locations use the calendar feature to schedule PTO and at one plant, they use the calendars to schedule the dock doors for freight delivery and shipping.

What needs improvement?

The user profile synchronization feature is cumbersome to configure and at least initially had some stability issues. Since then, it has improved in stability, but is still not a straightforward installation.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have used SharePoint in our organization for 10 years, beginning in late 2006 with SharePoint 2007.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There have been no stability issues other than with user profile synchronization. The only times we have had SharePoint offline in the last 10 years were when we had a server issue in 2010 and when we have taken it offline for maintenance.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have not encountered any scalability issues, but our installation only supports a few thousand people.

How are customer service and technical support?

I have little experience contacting Microsoft technical support in relation to SharePoint, as we have not experienced any issues that would require their intervention.

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

I did not previously use a different solution.

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup can be daunting if you are not familiar with the product, especially if you are setting this up in a multiple-server environment, which would be the common scenario. There are three main servers in the configuration: the database server, the web application server and the web front end server. In larger installations, that number can grow, as you can have multiple front end servers and multiple servers handling the various application services.

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

As with any Microsoft product, the licensing can be complex. There are two versions of SharePoint: Enterprise and Standard. Standard does not require an additional user CAL for the SharePoint part of things, but has less features; the most important being able to use Office apps directly in the browser. SharePoint is tightly integrated with Microsoft Office, so this is a critical point.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did evaluate using FileNet as an alternative. We chose SharePoint due to its tighter integration with Microsoft Office.

What other advice do I have?

If you don’t have in-house expertise, you would be well advised to hire a competent consulting firm to help with the planning and installation. You will need to consider things such as in-house servers vs. a hosted solution, along with topology, backup and disaster recovery, security, and capacity plans. And that is just for hardware. You will also need to consider logical architecture: how you want to use social computing, document management, search and metadata structure, records management, and site security. That is just a portion of the details involved.

Beginning with SharePoint 2007, the product has steadily improved with a few minor exceptions.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user63336 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user63336Database / SharePoint Administrator at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User

It would be nice if there were some sort of form where you could fill in responses to a series of questions and then it would go to all of the various places and perform the configurations necessary. As it stands right now, you have to navigate to a number places and perform manual setups for all of the services and security.

See all 2 comments
Global consultant at LankaClear
Real User
Top 20
Allows you to easily download and upload files but provides frequent updates

What is our primary use case?

I used the solution to share the documents on my devices.

What is most valuable?

The tool’s performance is good. It is also user-friendly, allowing you to download and upload files easily.

What needs improvement?

SharePoint should not provide frequent updates.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using SharePoint for three to four months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The product is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable. Around 1,000 users are using this solution.

What other advice do I have?

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

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.
PeerSpot user
MichaelSoliman - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner at Alopex ONE UG
Real User
Top 10
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.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Sr. Business Systems Analyst at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
Libraries and lists enable capturing and organizing large amounts of information.

What is most valuable?

In general, I find SharePoint to be a very useful tool when it's configured to allow end users a certain amount of flexibility. (In one of my previous assignments, all options were completely locked down. In that kind of configuration, the usefulness of the tool is highly dependent upon whoever configured the product. In this case, they weren't particularly good.) The latest versions of SharePoint are highly useful for configuring pages for managing and conveying large amounts of information, while giving users the ability to pinpoint the specific things they need with speed and accuracy.

Libraries and lists have a feature set that enables capturing large amounts of information and organizing that information in ways that enable multiple audiences/roles to use it effectively.

How has it helped my organization?

In my previous job, I built a site to support the PMO. It consisted of a top level site that gave a view of all projects undertaken by the organization and then individual project sites that were used to manage issues, risks, changes, action items, key milestones.

The top level site also contained links out to our scheduling software (SmartSheets). The individual project sites were based on a site template, making it very easy to instantiate a new one whenever a new project was introduced. All project information was contained within a single site collection and allowed both broad and deep searches and visibility of key project metrics.

What needs improvement?

I think that the current version of the product is actually quite good, but it's not always easy to find solid training and reference information, especially from Microsoft. Typically, third parties have better offerings than Microsoft, but it still requires a bit of searching to find the most relevant and easily absorbed material.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Sharepoint in various forms since around 2003.

Over the last three years (three jobs as well), I've used SharePoint 2007, 2010, and 2013.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not encountered stability issues with either the on-premise or cloud hosted versions of the product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I was never involved in planning for scalability, and have never been aware of any scalability issues in any of the places where I've used the product.

How are customer service and technical support?

I generally avoid using Microsoft or Microsoft partner support where possible. Unless you are paying for their top-level consultants (which is frightfully expensive), you're often better off just looking things up on the internet and bookmarking the most helpful sites. In situations where support is being provided by internal staff, the results have been variable.

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

There's nothing truly like SharePoint in the marketplace that I'm aware of. You can use wiki's of various sorts and cobble together any number of open source or paid solutions that address a component of what SharePoint does. But that approach doesn't have the current product's level of integration and the maturity of its feature set.

How was the initial setup?

I don't know about setup. It was never my responsibility. Since the products were in place when I arrived, I don't know who the vendors were that partnered with Microsoft to configure and deploy the product.

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

It's Microsoft; empty your pockets. Seriously, if you obtain SharePoint under one of their blanket licensing agreements you really need to pay attention to the terms and conditions, especially if your acquisition is part of Office 365. It's typically not very easy to drop licenses for a particular subcomponent under such agreements if you find that you're not using that particular piece.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

This wasn't my choice. However, there's nothing truly like SharePoint in the marketplace that I'm aware of.

What other advice do I have?

Know what you want it for first. Talk to other businesses using the product to understand their experiences. If it looks like SharePoint can bring real business value, then find the best implementation partner that you can find. I don't know the economic ramifications of cloud vs. on-premise, but I found the cloud version of the product takes a lot of headaches out of your hands with Microsoft being responsible to administer and maintain the back end.

Finally, be very wary of proposals from within your company to build all manner of applications, web sites, and data marts with the tool. Although SharePoint is capable of a lot of things, it may be better to purchase a purpose built product rather than rolling your own.

In the same vein, it is still important to have standards and enforce them within the organization, especially on how sites are structured if they are to be used by people in various roles and departments across the enterprise. Someone has to have a vision for the architecture of your SharePoint installation and use in order to assure you get full value. If folks get to do anything they want, you'll have a crazy quilt of unrelated data, applications, and web pages.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free SharePoint Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: March 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free SharePoint Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.