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Kiteworks vs Office 365 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

Kiteworks
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Content Management (17th), Email Security (26th), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (8th), Secure Email Gateway (SEG) (9th)
Office 365
Ranking in Content Collaboration Platforms
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
152
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Content Collaboration Platforms category, the mindshare of Kiteworks is 2.7%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Office 365 is 8.2%, up from 7.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Content Collaboration Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Office 3658.2%
Kiteworks2.7%
Other89.1%
Content Collaboration Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

KT
Associate Consultant at a tech consulting company with 10,001+ employees
Streamlined global file sharing with user-friendly interface and self-service capabilities
I'm not a network expert, however, there must be some room for improvement. Perhaps there could be a notification to users about their bandwidth or network packet loss. If users receive such notifications, they can understand any disruptions are due to issues with their network or bandwidth rather than the site or Kiteworks. Additionally, I work from offshore India, and I told my client manager to communicate with the Kiteworks forum salesman regarding one feature. I noticed the Kiteworks login UI is very basic, lacking customization. Allowing more HTML tags to add hyperlinks or user-friendly information on the home page would be very useful.
BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
System engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Collaboration has transformed how our teams work and Copilot now drives faster daily decisions
The interface for the security and compliance center could be simplified. It changes frequently, which can make it somewhat difficult for admins to stay up-to-date on where specific settings are located. The compliance center modification or improvement of Office 365 needs to be introduced. The rest of the features feel acceptable to me. The reason it is not a ten is because of the complexity of managing the vast array of admin settings, which requires a specialized IT team. Even though it meets industry standards for decent security compliance such as SOC and HIPAA, the complexity of managing the admin settings needs to improve.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I can identify from which region our users are uploading or downloading files."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to allow end-users to manage their own information and data with minimal administration. That's the best feature from my perspective."
"The solution removes the limitations with file attachment size that is found with regular email."
"Kiteworks is easy to manage and maintain with a user-friendly interface and I recommend it to anyone that requires a file-sharing system that supports SFTP."
"The most useful feature of this solution is to share files with external parties and we can use this functionality to share files internally too."
"Scalability is impressive."
"I like Kiteworks or Accellion because it's continuously upgraded. I also know that it probably works with a lot of clients."
"We can see when people are sending things. We can definitely see who is sending to whom. From the administrative logs, we can see who is sending to an outside entity, and those logs are retained for quite a while."
"It is excellent for any organization's business productivity."
"It has everything one would need to run a modern office, providing every solution we require."
"I find the extensive list of features in Office 365 tremendously valuable, including Teams, Exchange, Outlook, SharePoint, Power Application, and Power Apps."
"Most of the work that seems not to work offline works perfectly with Microsoft Office 2013, like converting a Word document to a PDF file."
"The integrations with Teams and SharePoint are beneficial as we use Teams for sharing and editing documents, which helps with document collaboration."
"Cost to value is much better than on premise SharePoint."
"The ease of access, basically, to have almost everything in a one-stop shop, is definitely a good return on the investment as well."
"It's very stable."
 

Cons

"There is one particular thing that is a nuisance."
"There is no offboarding process for end-users in Kiteworks. It's a manual process. There is no automated syncing with LDAP and checking to see if the account is still active. It's a manual process to get people out of here, which isn't the best way."
"I noticed the Kiteworks login UI is very basic, lacking customization. Allowing more HTML tags to add hyperlinks or user-friendly information on the home page would be very useful."
"The system is extremely stable, but because it is a "COTS" system access is restricted and you must use the solution's support to make even simple changes, which increases the downtime."
"I would like to see immediate releases of fixes because now it takes at least a week. If that time span can be reduced to one day or two days, that would be very helpful for users so that things are sorted and transactions work smoothly."
"We mainly had stability issues with kiteworks, where we were pushing the limits of its capability."
"File location could be improved."
"There are always issues when there are bugs or upgrades. The challenge with upgrading is getting more storage from the customer. Every time we have a new version, it requires additional storage. This means that the customer would need to procure more storage for their server, which they don't like because it means additional cost to them. So, I think my request would be that the version upgrades don't require any significant storage requirement."
"Performance-wise, Office 365 needs a lot of bandwidth. The problem is, the solution requires very high bandwidth and internet usage. Meaning, the desktop application consumes a lot of internet data. Sometimes, when the connection is slow, it won't work and it won't load. This is an area for improvement for Office 365."
"In terms of improvement, a better help bar would be good. I find it's generally not very helpful and I have to search online."
"The scalability is okay. However, we have such a large organization, and because IT has to enact it, it takes a while to do each one by one."
"The ability to work with SharePoint from within the Office applications is limited. (There is still a need for third party tools like Harmon.ie)."
"The version we are using is very generic. It requires that you perform a lot of customizations."
"They should do more testing before product releases."
"In terms of improvements for Office 365, I don't think there is much that needs to be enhanced, but it might take some time to reload sometimes."
"I think it would be better if Office 365 enhanced communication about update policies."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They changed it midstream. We were being charged a certain flat rate for SFTP traffic. For whatever reason, at the beginning of the year, our pricing changed, and we are now being charged more for using a feature of the product than we were when we first bought it. That has been our experience with billing. It turned out to be more expensive than when we started with it."
"It is not really expensive. I mean, to me it's obviously expensive, but it's worth it."
"The license management is changing and confusing. If I could make one change to it, it would be better license management through the API."
"The solution is very expensive because we are buying with Malaysian Ringgit and it's sold in US dollars."
"I believe it's a little costly, but given the faith that we put into it from a security perspective to maintain the integrity of our patient information that is being transferred through this system, that's a small price to pay. So, on the surface, it might look like a lot of money, but depending on the need for security, which is where we feel it shines, it's okay price-wise."
"The price of Kiteworks is reasonable."
"​The pricing/licensing is easy to manage."
"The pricing is good for all the features that we receive, e.g., Skype for Business."
"Licensing, billing, and accounting are available from the management interface."
"We have a license to use this solution. We have an E3 license which covers many different solutions."
"Most of the time, we purchase Microsoft Exchange licenses, which are less expensive and provide only an email platform and 50 gigabytes of email storage for free."
"I would rate the solution 3 out of 5 for the price. I think Microsoft presents a good solution concerning the price."
"For the moment, we are paying on a monthly basis because we are still adapting the support and how we want to proceed. I think we will move to paying for the annual license."
"The price of Office 365 is very expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise31
Large Enterprise70
 

Questions from the Community

What is Kiteworks?
Kiteworks is a secured file sharing platform that enables users to collaborate with different parties across a robust offering of secured protected channels. Users have the option of virtual privat...
What needs improvement with Kiteworks?
I'm not a network expert, however, there must be some room for improvement. Perhaps there could be a notification to users about their bandwidth or network packet loss. If users receive such notifi...
What advice do you have for others considering Kiteworks?
Scalability is impressive. It can be highly available, resilient, and scalable infrastructure. I can confidently give it a nine. It suits any level of organization, whether a small setup with two a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Office 365?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Office 365 is that it is moderate.
What needs improvement with Office 365?
Office 365 could be improved or enhanced in some ways. It would be better if it were more simple to find the points, or sometimes there are so many possible configurations that it makes you confuse...
What is your primary use case for Office 365?
Teams and Outlook are important for us, and Teams is central to our operations. I utilize Power Automate for streamlining repetitive tasks in our organization, but not for large tasks. For tasks su...
 

Also Known As

Accellion
Microsoft Office 365, Office 365 Enterprise, Office 365 Enterprise E1, Office 365 Enterprise E3, Office 365 Enterprise E5, Office 365 ProPlus, Office 365 Business, Office 365 Business Essentials, Office 365 Business Premium, Office 365 F1
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

United States Securities and Exchange Commission, National Health Service, Husch Blackwell LLP, NYC Health + Hospitals, Viatris, MITRE Corporation, Chubb, Kraft Heinz, KPMG, Kohler, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Purdue Pharma, AVL
Me & the Bees Lemonade
Find out what your peers are saying about Kiteworks vs. Office 365 and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.