SharePoint Reviews, Competitors and Pricing

it_user269952

President and Founder with 51-200 employees

Jul 19, 2015

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Integration with Outlook could be more stable, but MS Dynamics integration is a key feature.

What is most valuable?

Office integration
Collaboration
Discussions
Shared documents
MS Dynamics integration
Tasks
Schedule project integration
Subscriptions

How has it helped my organization?

It's allowed automatic distribution of technical updates to shop floor technicians in the FABs.

What needs improvement?

Cloud and Office 365 integration with Outlook could be more stable, and an external company collaborator’s connections can be iffy.
Custom site provisioning and management
Migration from On-Premise to the Cloud has no automation tools to help in migrating the enterprise content, and so this requires throttling the bandwidth to guard against attack.
New application models are too complex - in Office365 you are sharing the whole SP farm with all Microsoft customers in a region so fixes take too long.
Deploying apps in some cases have limitations because you have no access to the admin console.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using SharePoint since its initial release, including Office365, On-Line 2013, and On-Premise 2013. In total, it's been 15 years, and I was involved in the initial SharePoint Pilot test.

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What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Getting customers to see it as the de facto repository for collaboration data takes serious investment in training and executive backing. Upgrades and migration are challenging.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Occasional Office365 SharePoint outages have been noted.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues encountered.

How are customer service and support?

Customer Service:

It's poor, and if you want Microsoft support on SharePoint you have to hire Microsoft Consulting Services.

Technical Support:

It's poor, and if you want Microsoft support on SharePoint you have to hire Microsoft Consulting Services.

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

We used various methods to achieve the same results shared folders and third party document management solutions, e.g. Documentum.

How was the initial setup?

It's complex because you must spend significant time determining roles and train accordingly, or else it becomes an unstructured dumping ground for everyone’s files.

What about the implementation team?

I've done it both ways, and Microsoft Consulting Services is well equipped to properly implement SharePoint.

What was our ROI?

It's very high, I can't disclose exact figures, but it's a seven-figure number.

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

Use enterprise pricing as a part of Office 365.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

No other options were evaluated.

What other advice do I have?

Budget enough design and training dollars to seed your enterprise with certified electronic workers that can provide thought leadership, mentoring and set standards for use.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Microsoft partners

it_user183822

Project Manager with 501-1,000 employees

Jan 22, 2015

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SharePoint 2007 (MOSS) - Decent product, poor support

What is most valuable?

The best feature that I found for SharePoint was having a main point of contact for everyone involved. Whether it be for the entire company or it for a specific department, this has made it easy to create a common place.

How has it helped my organization?

When I took over SharePoint 2007, it was fairly basic in its execution. It had sections for the various departments, but it wasn't common for users to actually use it. I ended up creating various lists and libraries to begin pulling processes into the system. It was fairly shoe horned, but it did the job.

In addition to this, without the use of an extension, I began using SharePoint to do more collaborative tasks and projects. There are extensions for SharePoint to increase its functionality, but using task management, was able to create sites and manage projects in that way.

What needs improvement?

SharePoint is extremely bare bones when purchased. To really bring it into a functional state, it will require decent configuration and extensions for what you need. It comes with the basics like site creation, lists, libraries, and things of this nature. However, if you need more functionality, you will need to either go to Microsoft for those additional functionalities or to a 3rd party that provides it. This is where the cost for SharePoint balloons.

Depending on the version, there are server requirements so if you're not up-to-date on software, this will also increase the price of the service. For the functionality you get at this price point, it leaves a lot to be desired.

For how long have I used the solution?

3 years

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Sharepoint was deployed prior to me coming on-board so I'm not familiar with it.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

For the most part, SharePoint was stable based upon the set up that we have. When installing the R2 update, it did end up creating issues with the .NET code and eliminated some of the extensions. For example, the Excel extension that is used to view Excel spreadsheets within SharePoint was either damaged or deleted. This has caused issues with exporting to and from SharePoint and hasn't been corrected.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

SharePoint is tied to Microsoft's CAL pricing model so depending on your agreement, can be in line or balloon the cost. This is primarily for an on-site solution. If you're using the cloud solution, then it's still on a per user basis, but may/may not be a better fit. Our company didn't have any issues with scaling within the existing software version, however, if we were to upgrade to newer version, it would require a sizable investment.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Microsoft doesn't offer support for SharePoint unless you purchase the option. There are also 3rd party solutions for this. Support for SharePoint is minimal at best on its own. You will need support so your best bet is to purchase some type of support package through the vendor you purchase it from.

Technical Support:

See the customer service section above.

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

N/A. SharePoint was the original solution.

How was the initial setup?

I wasn't with the company during the procurement and deployment phases.

What about the implementation team?

Our solution was done in-house.

What was our ROI?

Unknown.

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

This will vary greatly depending on your CAL agreement with Microsoft and what vendor you purchase options from.

What other advice do I have?

SharePoint is a good solution and is very flexible if you're willing to invest the time and money into it. It requires full buy-in from various departments within a company and will require heavy configuration to get it to where it typically needs to be for your needs. I personally wouldn't go with SharePoint again as it doesn't fit my needs and is currently being used, but in very limited fashion.

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

it_user143376Consultant with 201-500 employees

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Jan 22, 2015

This thread sums up the essence of SharePoint for me. If you have a common process or use case in mind then it may need a lot of work to get what you want compared to existing products. If you have unique requirements or systems to interface with, then you are on the right platform.

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it_user9216

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

Sep 21, 2014

Will Office 365 change the SharePoint vendors focus?

Office 365 is a comprehensive platform that delivers main pillars like email, calendar, collaboration (including search, document management...etc.), unified communications and social.

Microsoft keeps adding to this platform like Project Online and PowerBI.

Office 365 is not an isolated platform, it works in tandem with Microsoft Azure to extend its services through Azure websites, Active Directory, and more to come.

The platform is fully managed by Microsoft and supported Microsoft SLA.

Having that said, how this will affect the existing SharePoint ecosystem and Microsoft partners specifically?

I would categorise existing Microsoft partners into:

Boutique services: they deliver software services in the shape of custom developed solutions on top of SharePoint and consultancy services.
Products companies: they develop ready-made products that utilise or serve SharePoint as a platform. For example workflow products, governance management, administration, back and restore, custom web parts, custom HR solution, ideas management...etc. You can check a lot of these products on Sharepointreviews.com
Hosting and platform management companies: they provide managed services to clients who want to outsource the hosting of their own SharePoint platform.

Let's see how each category will be affected:

Boutique services are the least affected in these categories. However, they should adapt and understand the change and the vision. Microsoft is pushing all the custom development to be outside SharePoint in the form of apps hosted on Azure websites or develop custom applications (websites, windows apps, mobile apps...etc.) that utilise SharePoint as backend; the applications will connect to SharePoint (or Office 365) using the new Office 365 APIs.

Products companies will need to reassess their strategy, review their market segments and how their clients are flexible to the new changes. There are clients slower to change or may be rejects the cloud concept.

In my opinion, the companies focusing on the platform management like upgrade and migration, back and restore, administration are hurt by the new move. In Office 365 there is no new versions that need upgrade or new farm that requires content migration. These companies needs to repurpose their products, move up in the technology stack (rather than focusing on the platform move up to the application).

The companies building ready web parts or solutions on top of SharePoint, they will need to re-architect their solutions and keep a close relation with Microsoft to stay to top of any upcoming platform changes.

Hosting companies are the most affected category. Simply they are going to lose all of the clients who are going to move to the cloud. It is not only about SharePoint; most of the clients move the email and unified communication workloads first then SharePoint follows.

Cloud strategy is an important item on all the CIOs agenda; either in the short term or long term. That's why all IT professional service firms need to re-innovate their offerings, focus on maximising the business value for their clients and divert the focus from IT only solutions

Glad to hear views and comments

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Microsoft partner

Balasubramanian.C Pmp®,IT Il®,Prince2®,Co BI T®5Manager, IT Applications at a aerospace/defense firm with 10,001+ employees

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Jun 20, 2017

I Believe Office 365 will be the future of MS Office and SharePoint will be bundled inside it.

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it_user8925

Developer with 51-200 employees

Sep 8, 2013

Comparing the Social Business Platforms: Sharepoint, Jive and Drupal Commons

If you were expecting me to have a real change of heart since my last review 4 years ago, you are probably going to be disappointed. This is the least favorite option of the 3 products I am reviewing in this roundup. I will do my best to explain why.

1. Cost

The great news is that now with Sharepoint you have some really nice pricing options. One of my original gripes with Sharepoint was that it was extremely costly. You had a lot of upfront costs + per user costs + hardware costs + expensive Desktop software costs (Visual Studio, etc.).

While many of those costs still exist for the server version, Microsoft recently added Sharepoint Online which has a much simpler pricing system. I actually reviewed both the Sharepoint Online $3 user/mo plan and the server edition on Rackspace which offers a free trial. I will detail some of those differences as we review this product.

The enterprise server edition is still pretty pricey even if you use Rackspace. Using Rackspace is a way to cut down on your company’s IT costs since you will be outsourcing some of the difficult IT infrastructure to Rackspace. That being said you would still likely have some of the same licensing costs even if you use Rackspace or another hosting provider.

SP online offers $3/mo per user costs with no minimums and they also have a $7/mo option (with a few more features) as well. Crunching the numbers for a small 30 person company you’re paying $90/mo and for a 100 person company you are paying $300/mo. This to me seems a lot more reasonable as pricing goes compared with Jive.

2. Ability to Customize

This is where your Sharepoint version matters. With the online product you have the ability to change the look and feel of the site and add apps to the site including apps from the app store (which offer free and paid apps).

Customizing the theme

Adding apps to a site

Furthermore, a big customization aspect is the ability to add multiple site collections and subsites (which has been a strong selling point for years). You can create public sites, private sites and sites that are subsites of others. You can imagine how this is appealing to large businesses with many departments. And remember you can do all of this now online without all of the expensive hardware, IT support, etc. that used to be required to run Sharepoint.

With the server edition you have much more flexibility to customize Sharepoint. Sharepoint runs on ASP.NET. If you have ASP.NET developers on staff, you have the ability to create features using ASP.NET and deploy them to the server. This has also been a big selling point for Sharepoint.

I was very critical of this aspect of Sharepoint in my original blog because as I found then, SP was much more difficult to customized (via development) than what was advertised. Even with several expert ASP.NET develoers and a windows server admin on staff we had difficulty doing simple development tasks. Numerous SP defenders responded to my original post saying these issues have been fixed over time. I no longer have Visual Studio and I no longer work on Sharepoint sites so I can’t comment on these improvements. I can say that for organizations that have ASP.NET developers, the server edition will certainly be an advantage. For businesses that don’t have Microsoft-developers, now they have an online edition only version which will likely be a better fit.

3. Overall features

As I started playing around with Sharepoint 2013 I also read some reviews to compare my experience. A quick Google search provided favorable reviews that are worth mentioning:

After reading these reviews, I discovered what I experienced and what I read were significantly different. It took me a long time to figure out what was going on. And I have built an entire Sharepoint site. I have created and deployed SP features. I have read Sharepoint books and I am familiar with the Sharepoint vernacular. I still had a difficult time figuring out how to navigate Sharepoint.

Sample site administrative homepage

To be fair, with a large platform like Sharepoint there is going to be a learning curve, especially for administrators. TechRadar puts it this way:

It takes time to figure out everything you can do, and to get the most out of it you need to get everyone to put their documents and thoughts and analyses into SharePoint sites.

So that for me is the first issue I have with Sharepoint. It just does not seem user-friendly to me. My feeling is that many of these blog reviews compare Sharepoint with itself, as opposed to comparing Sharepoint with competing products. If you strictly compare Sharepoint with prior versions you could argue that SP has improved in all aspects. But SP is no longer the only enterprise-level offering. In that light, it’s really more of a fair comparison to evaluate SP against other products with similar features.

Here is an example. I see an app for “Custom List”. This is a feature familiar to SP users but maybe not quite as clear to non-SP users. So I add the Custom List app to my site. I am not 100% what it’s for but I take the plunge and add the Custom List.

Screen grab of the “Custom List” content area.

I start adding items only to come to the conclusion, “Now What?”.

After adding a few items

This feels a little bit like Drupal taxonomy but I am not 100% certain. I vaguely remember using it somewhat like taxonomy when I worked on my last SP site, some 4 years ago.

When I click on the options area my hunch is that there are some awesome things I could do if I only knew how. And so maybe a good Sharepoint book would help me out right?

Click on menu options for an item

But then that’s the issue isn’t it? As the TechRadar reviewer mentioned that a social intranet like this is only useful if everyone is interacting with it. And SP in my opinion is just too difficult to entice everyone in an organization to use it.

Learning curve aside, one of the big selling points for Microsoft is it’s integration with other Microsoft products. Now I should mention that Jive (and probably others) also have some Microsoft integration. I did find with the online version of had some Office integration that the server edition did not (maybe because I was using a barebones version perhaps)? I found this to be a pleasant experience.

Adding a SP document

Adding a Microsoft Word doc

Office 365 is Microsoft’s online suite of products meant to compete with the very popular Google Apps suite. At Mediacurrent we use Google Apps and love it! I have looked at Office 365 and my impression is that there’s no compelling reason for companies to pay the added cost unless they have already been in the Microsoft ecosystem / upgrade cycle for many years. That being said, for a full blow-by-blow comparison check out this recent comparison from PCWorld: “Office showdown: Microsoft Office 365 vs. Google Apps.”

Conclusion

My conclusion is that Sharepoint is better in it’s current form but not significantly better than the competition. I would not be able to recommend this product to anyone who is not already entrenched in the Microsoft ecosystem. What I mean is that for companies who use Microsoft products for years, run Windows servers, and who perhaps who have even used past versions of Sharepoint, I would certainly think that those organizations would be more comfortable with this product. I am sure I will get feedback from such people who will tell me that I am overly critical of Sharepoint. I just want to reiterate that companies that have ASP.NET developers and run Windows servers, for that audience Sharepoint is probably your best bet. For other organizations I am pretty sure it wouldn’t be the best fit.

To me the best feature of Sharepoint is the ability to create multiple site collections and multiple subsites, with permission inheritance. And you can have it all plug into Active Directory. This is really how you can harness the power of Sharepoint. I also think that Sharepoint is much more suited for intranet sites and public sites. That being said, there is certainly an advantage to using one system for all.

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

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

Alfonso Alvarez

CIO at GDELS

Mar 12, 2019

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Creation of communities is very straightforward, but the user experience is very poor

What is our primary use case?

It is used to support Intranet. It has good content handling and MS Office integration, but poor user experience.

How has it helped my organization?

It has allowed documentation control and distribution through the organization, managed easily from the AD.

What is most valuable?

The lists handling is perfect, and any kind of content linked to them very easy to publish.
Creation of communities is very straightforward.

What needs improvement?

The user experience is very poor. Configuration for new aspect means usually buying add-ons or a very high level of customization.

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.

Monica Deshazo

Owner at CTC

Oct 15, 2018

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The product makes it easy to manage lists, forms, searching, and security

Pros and Cons

"The product makes it easy to manage lists, forms, searching, and security. One of the most valuable features is its integration with Active Directory."

"Processing data from multiple site collections is not easy as they reside in different databases."
"The management of the product/back-end is complex."

What is our primary use case?

Collaboration and document sharing are the primary reasons for using SharePoint. We have used the product in many government agencies for documents management, workflow, enterprise search, departmental solutions, Intranet, etc.

How has it helped my organization?

SharePoint is a big product with many features including customization flexibilities. We have deployed it in many government agencies which were in much need of process and automation improvements.

What is most valuable?

The product makes it easy to manage lists, forms, searching, and security. One of the most valuable features is its integration with Active Directory.

What needs improvement?

Processing data from multiple site collections is not easy as they reside in different databases.
The management of the product/back-end is complex.

For how long have I used the solution?

Three to five years.

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

We have purchased add-ons to handle multiple site collections, form creation, and design.

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

it_user87039

Manager of Operations at a hospitality company with 501-1,000 employees

Feb 23, 2017

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The document repository features are a distinguishing point compared to a file server.

What is most valuable?

Easy management of content and portal and the document repository features are a distinguishing point compared to a file server.

How has it helped my organization?

We use a document library with custom attributes and simple approval workflow. Some program enhancements with .NET enables the Quality Control department to distribute files to an extranet portal after senior Quality Control staff approval. Thousands of documents have been distributed in this way in the past years. This approval flow replaces ordinary emails with much clearer tracking of the workflow process.

What needs improvement?

Notification templates should be editable without coding. Also, summary notifications should be customizable too.

For how long have I used the solution?

I’ve been using SharePoint for nine years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

When the number of documents in a library grows too high, there will be performance issues. There is no easy way to archive files uploaded to SharePoint unless you have extra budget to get 3rd party solutions like AvePoint.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is not a problem as long as you can virtualize the SharePoint server farm. Hardware speed acceleration could overcome the software limitation. In my case, one front-end server served 700 users.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is done by our vendor, not directly from Microsoft. My vendor was good on supporting SharePoint.

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

We did not have a previous solution.

How was the initial setup?

The setup wizard helps you with the install. It is straightforward and easy.

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

Pricing on the server itself is acceptable, but CAL licenses could be an issue if you are not an Enterprise Agreement subscriber, or you are opening SharePoint 2007 to external users. With the new license model on SharePoint online, the issue here is not applicable.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Documentum.

What other advice do I have?

I don't think anybody nowadays should deploy SharePoint 2007. However, the SharePoint online that comes with Office 365 is worth a look. But beware of sizing as the fee is charged by data size and processing resources that would affect your SharePoint online response time.

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