HCL Connections vs Microsoft Office SharePoint Server comparison

The compared HCLSoftware and Microsoft solutions aren't in the same category. HCLSoftware is ranked #6 in CP , and holds a 5.0% mindshare in the category. Microsoft is ranked #4 in CCP , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 3.7% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of HCLSoftware users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 82% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

HCL Connections

Read 55 HCL Connections reviews

1,088 Views
392 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Microsoft Office SharePoint...

Read 40 Microsoft Office SharePoint Server reviews

1,464 Views
1,244 Comparison Views

82% willing to recommend

HCL Connections

Microsoft Office SharePoint...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between HCL Connections and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Atlassian, Liferay and others in Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals).

To learn more, read our detailed Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)

February 2026

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Helped 882,032 peers since 2012

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

HCL Connections

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) (6th), Enterprise Social Software (16th)

Microsoft Office SharePoint...

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

4.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Content Collaboration Platforms (4th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Messaging and Collaboration solutions, they serve different purposes. HCL Connections is designed for Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) and holds a mindshare of 5.0%, up 2.9% compared to last year.
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, on the other hand, focuses on Content Collaboration Platforms, holds 3.7% mindshare, down 9.1% since last year.

Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
HCL Connections	5.0%
SharePoint	24.3%
Liferay Digital Experience Platform	16.8%
Other	53.9%

Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)

Content Collaboration Platforms Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server	3.7%
Office 365	10.2%
Google Workspace	9.3%
Other	76.8%

Content Collaboration Platforms

Featured Reviews

Hasnain Zahid

Talent acquisition & development specialist at Software Productivity Strategists, Inc. (SPS)

A stable tool useful to manage marketing-related activities

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten. Sometimes, the portal hangs because I find that if I am on a web page, I have to log out, and then I have to log in to the portal again. Since I see that the portal hangs at times, I have to move from one side of the portal to the next, making me feel that some things are scattered in the product. I attended a meeting with IBM recently, and they are improving a few of the things, in my opinion. The concerns that I have related to the product are being improved since I think many other users have reported issues similar to the ones I faced.

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Daniel Giacomelli

Security and Compliance at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Has transformed how I manage documents through metadata and automation while enabling structured collaboration

Microsoft should restore some functionalities from older versions of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2003 and 2010. Specifically, bringing back something similar to SharePoint Designer would be beneficial. SharePoint Designer was both advantageous and challenging - developers found it limiting and preferred Visual Studio, while non-developers struggled to use it effectively. A new tool for configuring webpage design and development for content pages would be valuable. The current system is too basic. While integration of filtered lists and libraries is possible, it requires knowledge of Python or jQuery. A WYSIWYG editor would be preferable to requiring programming knowledge or Visual Studio.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."

"The most valuable feature is the Activity flow that is used to catch new activities."

"The solution is pretty easy to use for the most part."

"It is a decent tool for collaboration, especially if you are already using other Office products."

"It's a very robust product."

"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."

"Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is a scalable solution because our applications are not staying in one place, year on year we are increasing users, so definitely it can scale with what we need."

"The software is friendly to use for mixing data and analyzing it."

"Microsoft Office SharePoint Server helps with return on investment as it saves a lot of time and helps clients improve their processes."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the Communication Site."

More Microsoft Office SharePoint Server pros

Cons

"The inclusion of a file plugin for Windows Explorer would make it easier to use."

"The support is an area where the product can improve...If you are having an issue on a Monday, the support personnel will contact you next Monday."

"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."

"The product could be improved by accommodating different technologies, particularly integration."

"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 product is behind in development and lacks some features."

"Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is more accessible for the average user, but it lacks certain features that more advanced users would look for, making it seem unnecessarily complicated to do simple things or things one expects to be simple."

"The solution needs to be more collaborative. I believe they are just coming up with the themes for this right now."

"Making it more intuitive could help teams adopt it faster and use it more effectively by being more user-friendly."

"Searching information internally in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server could be better because when we get a lot of information, it is difficult to find."

More Microsoft Office SharePoint Server cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"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."

"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."

"Pricing plans may be flexible depending on volume usage and your corporate relationship with Microsoft."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Performing Arts

14%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Marketing Services Firm

11%

Wholesaler/Distributor

Computer Software Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Marketing Services Firm

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	22
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	26

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	13
Large Enterprise	17

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with HCL Connections?

The support is an area where the product can improve. My company faces some support-related issues because whenever we create or generate a ticket, it takes two days for the product's support team ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for HCL Connections?

I use HCL Connections for marketing purposes. The IBM product in our company already provides us with direct links to the marketing and HR sides.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server?

I am not aware of the pricing, so I cannot say if the solution is expensive or quite affordable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server?

My expectation when I start using a Microsoft product is that it would be easy to incorporate diagrams and such from other Microsoft Office products. Incorporating a diagram I've embedded in a slid...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server?

I produce content about the work I'm doing inside the company, making information about IT architecture, work processes within IT architecture, and security reviews of applications or infrastructur...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 18% of the time

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Compared 14% of the time

Liferay Digital Experience Platform vs HCL Connections

Compared 12% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft OneDrive for Business vs Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HCL Connections

January 2026

Download HCL Connections product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

January 2026

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server report

Download Microsoft Office SharePoint Server product report

Also Known As

IBM Connections, Lotus Connections

Office SharePoint Server, MS Office SharePoint Server

Overview

IBM Connections™ is a leading unified collaboration and social networking solution that helps you filter out the noise to get work done. Connections empowers your teams and organization to engage with the right experts, accelerate innovation, and deliver results. All the collaboration tools you need to be productive are united under a single sign-on so you can reduce time spent switching between disparate tools and focus on the people and work that matters most. Experience a security-rich and business-compliant environment sanctioned by IT. Confidently share knowledge within your teams and your organization, and extend collaboration beyond traditional boundaries. Connections can enable you to improve decision-making, increase productivity, and accelerate time-to-market. Shift from being merely productive, to truly effective with Connections today.

IBM Connections can help you: Engage experts. People-centric platform enables you to easily locate the expertise you need, right now. Accelerate innovation. Illuminate and promote new ideas within a thriving social network of teams and communities. Empower teams. Get work done together and take action; anywhere—from any device. Deliver results. Leverage cognitive insights to prioritize results and arrive at better outcomes. Extend collaboration. Safely collaborate with customers and partners, bringing them into the conversation.

HCLSoftware

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) is a Microsoft software portal based on the ASP.NET framework. MOSS facilitates file sharing and collaboration, social networking, Web databases and Web publishing. It is hosted by Microsoft Windows Server and is accessible through Microsoft Office or the Web.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Yamato Financial Co. Ltd., University of Zurich, Gwinnett County Public Schools, Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V., Telus, Rabobank, Christian Brothers Services, Grupo Financiero Banorte, The Loft Group, Dow Water & Process Solutions, JGC Corporation, College of Medicine, Swansea University, solvito GmbH, Loft Group, Hamm-Reno Group GmbH, Geno SA

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

Buyer's Guide

Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)

February 2026

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