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Many teams need the ability to collaborate on a variety of documents across multiple devices, especially with people who work remotely or travel a lot for work. SharePoint is a document management and storage solution that lets employees using Microsoft Office do just this.
But with many similar tools out there, is SharePoint worthy of consideration for your company, and which version would be the best fit for your budget and needs?
Visit Microsoft SharePoint’s Website
Article Overview
- Pros & Cons
- Key Features
- Price
- Customer Reviews
- How Does SharePoint Libraries Work? (Video)
- How Does SharePoint Compare?
Microsoft SharePoint
Pros
- Microsoft brand recognition, support, and easy MS Office integration
- First established in 2001
- Integration with Yammer for inter-office social networking
Cons
- Can be expensive if you have multiple licenses
- Requires a lot of training and setup
10 Key Features
There are two main versions of SharePoint, SharePoint Server and SharePoint Online. Server is installed on a company’s internal IT infrastructure, while Online is web-based. Server gives businesses much more feature customization than Online. Here are some of the key features of both versions, unless otherwise noted.
- For PCs, Macs and mobile devices
- Integrates with many Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools and applications like DocuSign
- Organize and manage content in libraries and lists with metadata, records management and other capabilities
- Co-author in real-time in Microsoft Office apps, like Word, Excel and PowerPoint
- Connect with fellow employees through intranets and portals
- Use team sites to connect teams to content, expertise and processes
- Ability to create workflows
- Capability to explore, search and manage content using Web pages, apps, workflow or content types
- Online Plan 1 gives you 1TB of OneDrive storage per person; Plan 2 gives you unlimited cloud storage
- 24/7 customer support via phone and web
SharePoint vs Google Drive
You may be wondering if SharePoint is worth the added price when you have the affordable Google Drive at your disposal. SharePoint gives larger businesses the ability to create workflows, dedicated team pages and much more than Google Drive can offer. But if you’re looking for simple document collaboration, Google Drive is a solidly affordable option.
Pricing
SharePoint Server
You must contact Microsoft to get Server pricing. There are 3 editions: Foundation, Standard and Enterprise.
SharePoint Online
All plans include SharePoint and OneDrive. Enterprise E3 also includes Microsoft apps (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher and Access).
- Online Plan 1: $5/user/month
- Online Plan 2: $10/user/month
- Enterprise E3: $20/user/month (annual commitment)
- View all options
Consumer Reviews
Praise
My favorite thing about sharepoint is that everything is in one place, it is user friendly and almost any time a colleague asks me about something I can say, it is on SharePoint…Sharepoint is a good simple way to keep your company all on the same page. You can customize it so that it suits your company. – Kayla R., G2 Crowd 8/22/2019
It’s great that most big companies use Sharepoint as well. We have been able to use Sharepoint with multiple companies with integrating new softwares and products. It has definitely been the best product for working with teams inside and outside of the company. – Bobby S., GetApp 8/21/2019
Complaints
It rarely worked well and it would often take 10-15 minutes to open simple word documents. If you were trying to move a file, expect to be sitting there awhile. I would look into alternative solutions. I would say relying on sharepoint significantly slowed our workflows and limited employees’ efficiency. – User, G2 Crowd 8/22/2019
Occasional integration issues with Microsoft’s other apps such as OneNote. I had the hardest time moving a OneNote from one SharePoint to another and wound up having to do so one page at a time. SharePoint lists are our only recourse within my company for external user request tracking, and they are clunky at best. Users do not like the front-end form no matter how much tinkering we do in the provided form design tools SharePoint Design and Infopath. Poor visibility of who has access to what. The permissions hierarchy and inheritance is just not clear, and clean-up of any SharePoint you take ownership of will be a hassle. – Evan S., GetApp 4/3/2019
How Does SharePoint Libraries Work?
Learn more about how to manage large pools of content in Microsoft 365 using SharePoint Libraries with this video demo about indexing, filters pane and bulk editing metadata.
How Does SharePoint Compare?
Visit Microsoft SharePoint’s Website
Sharepoint is a feature-packed system with many faithful followers who take full advantage of its multiple capabilities. Server is probably best for large businesses, while Sharepoint Online is best suited for small to medium-sized companies.
If you think SharePoint has more features than you’d ever use, see how it compares to other document and collaboration tools in our project management software comparison, where we review 15 tools for everything from team and document collaboration, project management, virtual team communication and much more.
How does your company currently manage document collaboration? Let us know in the comments!
Tagged With: Project Management, Reviews
