SharePoint Office 365 is an amazing tool, there is a massive list of things you can accomplish with SharePoint and the rest of the Microsoft ecosystem, but what if you’re looking for SharePoint alternatives?
Introduction
SharePoint is a very under used tool within small business. You are combining multiple factors such as Cloud Storage, Dedicated and Secure websites and collaboration spaces all together which can work wonders for small businesses. With these functions you can create a SharePoint site for individual departments or projects and store the most current information for your organisation and expose it to the individuals that need it.
So why are these tools that are aimed towards collaboration and productivity important? Because when you run a small business, you wear so many hats to get your dream off the ground, so automating those small tasks or organising your files and policies correctly can save time on your workload, leading to saving minutes over the hour, hours over the weeks and days over the year saved.
Integration within your work environment is another great help towards productivity. With the Microsoft ecosystem all of these tools connect in one way or another. SharePoint office 365 lets you combine SharePoint online and Microsoft Planner, so you can have a live Planner board on your SharePoint site for people to work from, that single pane of glass really works brilliantly.
If you’re not looking at the likes of Microsoft for your productivity and maybe like the idea of self hosted solutions, my favourite is NextCloud. It’s flexible, has tonnes of add ons available for it and is looked after by a dedicated team. There is even Enterprise options where you can fully customise the branding for your company on the web interface and the Mobile App. They’ve rolled everything into one, mirroring a majority of the collaboration tools that Microsoft has to offer:
| Nextcloud | Microsoft | Focus |
| Files | OneDrive | Nextcloud Files offers a self-hosted file storage and sync platform with powerful collaboration capabilities with desktop, mobile and web interfaces |
| Talk | Teams | Nextcloud Talk delivers on-premises, private audio/video conferencing and text chat through browser and mobile interfaces with integrated screen sharing and SIP integration. |
| Groupware | SharePoint / Azure Active Directory | Nextcloud Groupware integrates Calendar, Contacts, Mail and other productivity features to help teams get their work done faster, easier and on your terms. |
| Office | Officer 365 | Nextcloud Office is a powerful LibreOffice-based online office suite with collaborative editing, which supports all major document, spreadsheet and presentation file formats and works in all modern browsers. |
| Assistant | Copilot | The first local AI assistant that is built into the Nextcloud Hub collaboration platform. Integrated across apps, it can generate content, answer questions about your data, summarise emails, translate, and much more. |
SharePoint in the Microsoft Ecosystem
Microsoft Loop Integration
Consider Loop as Microsofts answer to Jiras Confluence. A collaboration tool for documentation, project planning, Meeting notes and it has plenty of templates to help. But this one is tucked away inside your Microsoft license, has connections to pretty much every tool such as Outlook, Teams etc.
You can create workspaces and add individuals to that workspace, so it’s already a Zero trust system. There is only one down side as far as I’m concerned where you are limited to the images and icons that Microsoft provides.
Adding Loop components to a SharePoint site is a simple process and it saves you the hassle of re-writing everything you’ve put together on your Loop page can be replicated on your SharePoint page. You don’t have to create another weak point for your data, processes or anything else personal to be breached.
find out more about Loop here: Microsoft Loop or get in touch to find out how I can help you get the most out of your Microsoft License.
Microsoft Planner Integration
Planner is Microsofts answer to Trello, a Kansan board for project management or job lists. You can create automations through it and even through Power automate, create actions and lists from an incoming email. Simply create a plan through the new item menu on your SharePoint page, and it will create a Planner workspace straight away. The two are mired so you don’t have to do twice the work.
Anything created in Planner and assigned to an individual is given to them as an alert and added to their calendar, so there’s no escaping it. That ecosystem is well interlinked so every team is connected no matter the application.
Integrating Microsoft Planner with Sharepoint Office 365 is best done through SharePoint itself. As I mentioned before, head to your SharePoint site and on the main page click New ( the home page gives us our top level commands ), and the click on Plan. Simple as that. The single pane of glass across multiple applications to increase productivity.
find out more about Planner here: Microsoft Planner or get in touch to find out how I can help you get the most out of your Microsoft License.
Across the Microverse…
There’s plenty more that SharePoint office 365 can integrate with including Microsoft Teams, OneDrive and the Power Platform. Everything is designed around synchronisation and productivity in that one ecosystem, but now onto the SharePoint alternatives.
SharePoint vs. Nextcloud: A Detailed Comparison
Deployment Options
SharePoint
SharePoint is mostly a cloud deployment, there are On-Prem options as well, so you can deploy SharePoint server on your local network. Flexible and scalable depending on your preferred environment.
I feel it’s best to make the most of SharePoint within the Microsoft Business Premium license as the cloud has it’s easy set up features, you can deploy easily through Intone as well.
If you’d like to know more about SharePoint and how to utilise it in your environment, then get in touch and I’ll be happy to help with your SharePoint migration and distribution: Contact
Nextcloud
Nextcloud is a probably the worlds most popular self hosted content collaboration platform spanning across the world. They boast of an ecosystem of the same or maybe more features than Microsoft and have gained popularity across Europe and is used by some government agencies in Germany. And they should be proud of that, what they’ve achieved as an open source collaboration suite is something to admire.
Where you have the self hosted, on premises options, you also have the option to host with a variety of service providers such as IONOS. The decision is totally up to you, they both come with their ups and downs which we’ll look at shortly.
Hardware requirements are going to be your largest investment. If you want to make the most of all of the features such as Nextcloud talk, messaging, file sharing etc, then realise you need to get some juicy hardware to cope with these requests and run smoothly.
Feature Comparison
Nextcloud also has the option to integrate with the Microsoft ecosystem through a series of plugins that require som setup, so the two can function as a Hybrid setup. Nextcloud Mail can integrate with Outlook, SharePoint can integrate with files and Teams can even be included in there. It’s so flexible in terms of productivity.
Lets take a look at some of the feature categories
Document Management
| SharePoint | Nextcloud |
| Integrated with Microsoft Office suite | Open-source file management |
| Advanced version control | Basic version control |
| Metadata tagging and content organisation | Simple metadata tagging |
| Robust permissions management | Granular user and group permissions |
| Compliance and retention policies | Basic compliance features |
| Real-time co-authoring | Co-authoring through third-party apps |
| Drag-and-drop file upload | Drag-and-drop file upload |
| Large file support (up to 250 GB) | Configurable file size limits |
| Advanced search capabilities | Basic search functionality |
Collaboration Features
| SharePoint | Nextcloud |
| Microsoft Teams integration | Built-in chat and communication tools |
| Microsoft Loop components | Talk app for video conferencing |
| Advanced task management via Planner | Simple task management |
| Enterprise social networking | Community-driven social features |
| External sharing with precise controls | Flexible sharing options |
| Rich communication sites | Basic discussion forums |
| Built-in discussion boards | Workflow apps available |
| Advanced workflow automation | Community-created integration plugins |
There’s plenty more to talk about, probably too much to list here, and Metis can help with all of it.
Making the Right Choice
Below is an overall layout of which to consider. You’ve seen they’ve got their own perks but essentially it’s a business orientated decision that you need to make.
Best for SharePoint
- Microsoft-centric organisations
- Need for deep Office integration
- Complex workflow requirements
- Enterprise compliance requirements
Best for Nextcloud
- Privacy-focused organisations
- Need for complete data control
- Budget-conscious companies
- Simple collaboration needs
