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Microsoft 365 Business vs Microsoft Office SharePoint Server comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 29, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft 365 Business
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
245
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Device Management (MDM) (2nd)
Microsoft Office SharePoint...
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Content Collaboration Platforms category, the mindshare of Microsoft 365 Business is 1.7%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is 6.3%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Content Collaboration Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

CharlesBrewer - PeerSpot reviewer
Price and reliability need improvement while general tasks are streamlined
The pricing for Microsoft 365 is too high, and quality-wise, it does not meet high standards. The operating system is outdated and inadequate. Microsoft has very poor security, and Defender is ineffective. In terms of collaboration and file sharing, OneDrive is very clunky and has frequent sync issues. It also crashes a lot and is unreliable.
Mehdi Hasankhan - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use but offers poor integrations with Oracle and has inflexible security configuration
I can't configure the current security I want. There are a lot of bots in it. Sharepoint doesn't integrate well with Oracle, and we use a lot of Oracle products at our company. Therefore, it makes more sense for us to go to Oracle instead of continuing to use Sharepoint.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The storage portion of the solution is very good. It has a very large capacity."
"I rate Microsoft 365 Business a 10 out of 10."
"The features that I like best with Microsoft 365 Business are that the files are available offline."
"It sometimes proves to be easier than using other tools."
"Microsoft 365 Business is a really good product. Microsoft provides many solutions like Microsoft Teams, which is useful for Team utilization across the globe, especially in this COVID 19 kind of scenario. If you enable the enhanced security in Microsoft Teams by using the given options, you can eliminate the third-party solutions like WhatsApp, Telegram. You can easily share your communication, which is much better. You can also collaborate. For example, instead of creating an Excel sheet on your local PC and sending it across to someone over email, you can just share it. SharePoint is one of the best tools to be implemented."
"The solution is easy to use and flexible."
"Microsoft 365 Business integrates well and improves communication, cooperation, and security."
"Microsoft Teams is the feature that I am currently leveraging for meetings, conferencing, and search-based functionalities. We've been able to extend some applications to Microsoft Teams."
"Ability to collaborate with others in one location."
"The most valuable feature is that it is very usable. I can navigate it, I can have a media call, I can have a call with my project team, so we can chat with every team kind of like WhatsApp. Any time there are projects or other things, we can chat in a secure way. It's automation-specific secure."
"The forms aspect of the solution, for example, the creation of surveys, is its most valuable aspect."
"The solution is pretty easy to use for the most part."
"The most valuable feature is the "Alert Me", which provides the ability to set an alert when content is either added or changed and that the alerts can be either real-time or aggregated for the day or the week."
"Document management and records management features are the most valuable."
"The solution's most valuable features is its document management. It allows sharing with external users and integrates well with Office apps and Microsoft Flow."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the fact that it doesn't require coding. You just need to configure it. You don't need to code before getting something running. It makes it very fast."
 

Cons

"The dashboard is an area of improvement."
"Microsoft Teams can be improved. It is a bit taxing on resources and is resource-heavy on the devices. When you install it on a PC, it uses a lot of memory. They should look for a better price model for educational institutions, and it should be free. We are also using Google Suite, which is free for educational institutions. They charge business people, not nonprofit institutions."
"Microsoft 365 Business should be made more of an open-source solution that would be accessible without any cost."
"One thing we did not like, about Excel particularly, is that it hangs a lot. It hangs a lot compared to Google Sheets."
"The pricing for Microsoft 365 is too high, and quality-wise, it does not meet high standards."
"Excel hangs many times, especially when we have equations. Excel is very heavy on the hardware, and it needs powerful hardware. I hope they can enhance the performance of Excel. Other products are working well, except for Excel."
"They need more tutorial training about using the advanced features."
"The technical support need to improve, I have had bad experiences."
"I think these tools do a pretty good job. There is only one area of improvement. Maybe Microsoft can invest a little bit more into the ease at which integration can be done with other third party applications."
"This solution is not very stable. It is useful to arrange data but it's not the best for big data. Sometimes we have issues with our reports as a result."
"The GUI is outdated."
"The product is behind in development and lacks some features."
"The product could be improved by accommodating different technologies, particularly integration."
"The solution needs to be more collaborative. I believe they are just coming up with the themes for this right now."
"The solution is like a CRM, so the initial setup is complex. It takes a few days to deploy the solution and the length of time depends on how large the company's topology is and what the client's demands are."
"The search feature needs improvement. I can never find the information I need when I use it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a monthly subscription for the use of this solution."
"The price of this solution is expensive and the price could be reduced. The licensing cost is very high because we are using an E5 license for Microsoft."
"Microsoft 365 Business could be cheaper."
"We are on an annual license for the solution. The solution could be cheaper overall."
"The price of its license should be improved. We have a contract for three years, but we pay on a yearly basis."
"We pay a monthly subscription fee for the license."
"The licensing fees are paid yearly."
"Our licensing is annual. We have a Volume Licensing deal with them."
"It can be expensive for on-premises deployments, especially when you have to support SQL Server as your backend database. That's where the cost comes into play. SQL Server has its own licensing, which Microsoft keeps on changing. Therefore, it can become costly. In the earlier versions of SharePoint, version 2007 or 2010, they had an express version where the SQL Server licensing was free. It wasn't like a full-blown SharePoint. It was only a slimmed-down version. It used to be whatever your hardware costs. You would install the free software and work with it, but you were very limited in what you could do in SharePoint. If you wanted the SharePoint Enterprise Server with all the bells and whistles, then you had to pay more to get the SQL Server license based on the number of users or servers. The subscription model is different for cloud deployments. Licensing is per user and per month. The cost also depends on the storage required. If you have a lot of sites or documents, then you need to expand it based on your needs."
"Pricing plans may be flexible depending on volume usage and your corporate relationship with Microsoft."
"One of the reasons why we don't recommend the cloud version of SharePoint is the cost. With the on premise version, you pay for the license once. For the cloud version, there is a recurring fee. It is very expensive. They expect everyone to pay $20 or $30 per user per month."
"There are some aggressive discounts offered by Microsoft for organizations that are not for profit, which we are, and it makes it quite attractive to consider."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Performing Arts
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft 365 Business?
The product's initial setup phase was straightforward.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft 365 Business?
The solution might be considered pricey for some, however, the comprehensiveness of the suite justifies its cost. It is generally still worth the money and is cost-effective when considering the pr...
What needs improvement with Microsoft 365 Business?
Every year, they are increasing their price significantly. The price has more than doubled now. Once you start using this product, it becomes difficult to switch to alternatives. Microsoft should b...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

Microsoft 365 E3, Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 F1, MS 365 Business
Office SharePoint Server, MS Office SharePoint Server
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Urban Agriculture Co., The Detroit Wallpaper Co., TransBlue Facility Management, Garner Food Company
Del Monte Foods, Unicredit Leasing, Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, Nokia Czech Republic, Perkins Eastman, JLL, ICA, óxito Software, Dorset Software, PKP Cargo, Arcapita Bank B.S.C., AVE CZ, Chesapeake Energy
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft 365 Business vs. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,711 professionals have used our research since 2012.