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Alfresco vs SharePoint comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.4
Alfresco boosts ROI through efficient document management, reducing costs, enhancing efficiency, and offering customization and robust community support.
Sentiment score
5.6
SharePoint enhances efficiency, collaboration, and remote access, boosting savings, though ROI measurement remains challenging for some organizations.
Alfresco provides a significant return on investment by efficiently managing documents.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
Time spent searching for documents has reduced significantly, and I saw a noticeable drop in duplicate or outdated documents, speeding up the search system by more than thirty to forty percent.
Software Engineer at Netaji Subhash Engineering College
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.2
Alfresco's vibrant customer service and active community support ensure user satisfaction, though response times vary; ratings are generally positive.
Sentiment score
5.9
Opinions on Microsoft SharePoint support vary, with effectiveness dependent on contracts, often leading users to third-party or community solutions.
I would prefer a direct relationship with them, focusing on updating their products more like in an agile practice
Head Of Information Technology at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Alfresco's technical support is very fast and professional.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
Customer support is good because they are responsive.
Technical Project Manager at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
There is a lack of detailed and timely responses, and support is not always transparent with the solutions.
Practice Manager at a consultancy with 201-500 employees
The quality of Microsoft's technical support is very high.
Consultant/Administrator O365 solutions at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
It's also difficult sometimes to get the right information because we speak at first to a generalist and they have to go to a specialist.
Supervisor at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Alfresco efficiently scales across multiple layers, supporting growth with robust clustering and handling large content volumes effectively.
Sentiment score
6.6
SharePoint is scalable and adaptable for large deployments, though skilled IT teams are critical for successful implementation.
Implementations needing to handle millions of documents may involve complex cluster setups requiring expert assistance.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
Making it easy to scale from a load-balancing and infrastructure perspective.
Cloud Security & Governance at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
SharePoint is massively scalable and I would rate it as 8.5 out of ten.
Cloud Architect at Freelance
SharePoint allows multiple teams to work at the same time, making it adaptable for large data volumes.
PM at EUIPO - European Union Intellectual Property Office
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Alfresco is stable but requires expertise for setup and scalability, with occasional issues under high loads mitigated by JVM tuning.
Sentiment score
7.6
SharePoint's stability depends on proper infrastructure planning, with issues mainly from poor architecture and configuration, but generally reliable.
The stability of Alfresco is rated highly as it hardly goes down.
Head Of Information Technology at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Alfresco is generally a very stable and high-performance platform.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
Those issues have now been corrected.
Technical Project Manager at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
From my experience, it offers high availability and reliability, and I have not faced any major downtime issues.
Software Engineer at Netaji Subhash Engineering College
The stability of SharePoint is high; it is quite stable and resilient.
Cloud Security & Governance at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Everything runs smoothly, and I have no problems with its stability.
Financial Director at Est
 

Room For Improvement

Alfresco needs UI enhancements, better integrations, improved security, and more accessible customization, reporting, and advanced document capture features.
SharePoint's interface and integration challenges hinder usability, requiring third-party solutions and expertise for customization and efficient enterprise use.
It would be beneficial if Alfresco offers different options for document storage, such as databases or cloud solutions.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
Governance of this system is required. If you don't have proper governance, things can go wrong.
Technical Project Manager at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Microsoft forces users to upgrade their license to access proper auditing information, which is essential and should be included in any license.
Practice Manager at a consultancy with 201-500 employees
The rights management aspect can be particularly challenging, which may affect the overall user-friendliness of the product.
Lead Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Expansion of scalability is needed, specifically the threshold limits for site items should be increased beyond the current 5,000 items.
 

Setup Cost

Alfresco's Enterprise edition is costlier with added expenses, while the Community edition is free for budget-conscious projects.
Enterprise SharePoint pricing involves Microsoft 365 bundling, on-premises licensing, hybrid flexibility, and careful planning for scalability and features.
The pricing of Alfresco starts at $100,000, which can be expensive for small projects.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
Pricing is considered mid-range.
Head Of Information Technology at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Unlike Drupal, all necessary applications are included in the Microsoft license, making it cost-effective.
PM at EUIPO - European Union Intellectual Property Office
Microsoft offers bundled pricing for Office, SharePoint, and Exchange, making it cost-effective.
Cloud Security & Governance at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Enterprise licensing is generally cost-effective compared to individual purchases.
Lead Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

Alfresco provides adaptable, affordable document management with seamless integration, boosting efficiency and collaboration with advanced automation and indexing.
SharePoint enhances collaboration and document management with powerful search, customization, and seamless Microsoft Office integration for improved productivity.
This makes the record independent of the document, which is beneficial as documents often change, and it helps avoid continual updates to the registry.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
The most valuable features of Alfresco include its integration with the scanning solution, the ability to search, and the capability to store and index to capture metadata.
Head Of Information Technology at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
It is highly extensible, meaning you can do whatever you want.
Technical Project Manager at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Additionally, SharePoint acts as a version control system, allowing easy recovery of past document versions.
Cloud Architect at Freelance
Its rights management capabilities and ability to restrict access to certain people are also very useful.
Lead Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The most valuable feature of SharePoint is the ability to collaborate on documents without having multiple versions.
Financial Director at Est
 

Categories and Ranking

Alfresco
Ranking in Enterprise Content Management
2nd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Document Management Software (1st)
SharePoint
Ranking in Enterprise Content Management
1st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
165
Ranking in other categories
Web Content Management (2nd), Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) (1st), Enterprise Intranet (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Enterprise Content Management category, the mindshare of Alfresco is 7.1%, down from 7.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SharePoint is 11.4%, down from 16.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Content Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SharePoint11.4%
Alfresco7.1%
Other81.5%
Enterprise Content Management
 

Q&A Highlights

AS
Community Manager at PeerSpot (formerly IT Central Station)
Apr 04, 2023
 

Featured Reviews

UC
Technical Project Manager at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Extensive customization and governance enhance document management experience
Currently, the challenge is the general availability to users. Initially, they had poor documentation, but over the years, their documentation has highly improved. Initially, we had challenges finding the extension points and understanding how to extend the system. The workflow was one of the hurdles we had. At that time, it was not that beautiful or feature-rich. Even today, workflow consists of basic workflows. If you want to extend, you have to implement your own customizations. They are using it extensively with features such as records management, CMIS, Share UI, and Web Scripts. All these features are being used extensively. Governance of this system is required. If you don't have proper governance, things can go wrong. If you don't have a proper policy of how documents should be maintained, issues can arise. You have to make rules, such as one folder should not have more than 5,000 subfolders or children. This was advised by Alfresco, but we did not have that advice, so we had challenges when everything was dumped into single folders. It slows down the systems and sometimes becomes unusable. Whoever is going to use it should have that governance system in place.
RK
Software Engineer at Netaji Subhash Engineering College
Centralized document governance has boosted collaboration and made knowledge sharing structured
SharePoint is a powerful platform, but there are a few areas where I think it could be improved, such as user experience. For new users, the interface and navigation can feel quite complex, specifically when working with multiple sites and document libraries. Another improvement would be search functionalities. While it is good sometimes, it does not always return the most relevant result unless a document is very well-structured and tagged. Also, initial setup and customizations can be time-consuming and may require technical expertise, specifically when configuring workflows or permissions. From a modern development perspective, tighter and more seamless integrations with tools including Power Automate and better support for custom backend integrations through APIs could make it more efficient. Overall, simplifying usability and enhancing search and integration capability would make SharePoint even stronger. One additional area I would appreciate improvement would be performance and responsiveness, especially when dealing with a large document library. Sometimes loading or navigating through large datasets can feel quite slow. Another aspect is permissions management. While it is very powerful, it can become complex to manage at scale, specifically when there are multiple levels of access across teams and projects. Improving developer experience would also be beneficial. Making customization, API integrations, and extensions more straightforward would help teams, especially backend developers, leverage SharePoint more efficiently.
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886,719 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user8925 - PeerSpot reviewer
Developer with 51-200 employees
Aug 23, 2013
Jive vs Sharepoint vs Drupal Commons
At Mediacurrent we often get requests to compare Drupal to other platforms used for intranet sites and social business platforms (like https://dev.twitter.com/ for example). This is often referred to as “Social Business Software”, which has grown in popularity in recent years. I decided to do a…
 

Answers from the Community

AS
Community Manager at PeerSpot (formerly IT Central Station)
Apr 4, 2023
Apr 4, 2023
Alfresco scores are high on all features of an ECM solution and tools. Back office processing, rated as 3.36 good. Business Process Application 3.55 Good to excellent. Document Management 4.12 Excellent. Records Management 3.81 Good to Excellent. Team Productivity 3.66 Good. Compared with Sharepoint the ratings are as below. Back office Operations 3.29. Business Process Application 3...
2 out of 8 answers
Aug 4, 2014
Hi, Sorry but I am not familiar with Alfresco. We have experience with the followings: WebSphere CMS, Sharepoint and Drupal. Thank you, Jacob (Kobi) Welber CTO
it_user71736 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works with 51-200 employees
Aug 4, 2014
www.springcm.com routinely solves this problem and there now is an "easy button" on ECM and we have lots of clients to prove it, plus it includes some pre-configured apps that are very quick to deploy and derive value from. ok, commercial over... two quick questions: 1- do you need to integrate with salesforce.com? 2- what is the primary challenge with sharepoint?
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
Midsize Enterprise39
Large Enterprise81
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alfresco?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing is that Alfresco is very cheap and cost-effective.
What needs improvement with Alfresco?
One area where Alfresco can be improved is the ability to scan directly using Alfresco. Additionally, I would appreciate improvements especially when it comes to the ability to integrate with socia...
What is your primary use case for Alfresco?
My main use case for Alfresco is that I implemented Alfresco Content Services to solve complex enterprise problems for content service, record management, and process management. Using this tool, I...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SharePoint?
I do not know the difference between the prices of the two solutions; I did not work on this project.
What needs improvement with SharePoint?
SharePoint is a powerful platform, but there are a few areas where I think it could be improved, such as user experience. For new users, the interface and navigation can feel quite complex, specifi...
What is your primary use case for SharePoint?
My main use case for SharePoint is storing data, and it has primarily served as our document management and team collaboration platform. I have used it to organize and share documents, manage versi...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Over 1,300 companies from 180 different countries. Including EuroStar, Saks Fifth Avenue, NASA Langley Research Center, and KLM.
Toyota, Aeroports de Paris, ASBBank Ltd., Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals, CambridgeshireConstabulary, D&M Group, NPL Construction Company, and The Regional Municipality of Niagara.
Find out what your peers are saying about Alfresco vs. SharePoint and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
886,719 professionals have used our research since 2012.