SharePoint vs OneDrive: what is the difference?


Which cloud storage platform is best for your business? Along with companies such as Google, IBM and Dropbox, Microsoft is an industry leader in cloud storage and document management. The two platforms are OneDrive and SharePoint.

OneDrive is available with Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions. It offers users personal and business cloud storage and some shared-storage features for small teams.

Microsoft SharePoint is a more advanced cloud storage platform. You can subscribe to it as a standalone service or set up your own hosted SharePoint as part of some Office 365 subscriptions.

In this article, we look at the features and benefits of SharePoint vs OneDrive. We explain the difference between OneDrive and SharePoint and how to determine which is right for you.

 

Table of contents
  1. What is Microsoft SharePoint used for?
  2. What is Microsoft OneDrive used for?
  3. Difference between SharePoint and OneDrive
  4. OneDrive vs SharePoint: Pros and Cons
  5. SharePoint or OneDrive: a 6-point guide to choosing
  6. Next steps

 

What is Microsoft SharePoint used for?

Microsoft SharePoint is a sophisticated collaboration platform. As well as always-available cloud storage, it offers advanced collaboration and document-management features. These include:

  • A secure intranet site on which to host your organisation’s documents and data
  • Encrypted document storage for individuals, teams and organisations
  • Collaborate on and co-author documents with advanced version control
  • Advanced document workflow automation for increased productivity
  • Use Microsoft Copilot AI to accelerate key tasks and workflows
  • Fast, accurate, intelligent search and document discovery for greater efficiency
  • Intelligent, permission- and role-based governance for compliance and security

Thanks to these features, SharePoint gives organisations the means to share and collaborate on documents and document-based workflows across all teams, business units and projects.

 

What is Microsoft OneDrive used for?

Microsoft OneDrive also offers cloud storage. But it’s designed to meet the needs of individuals, giving them secure, always-available document storage, integrated with Microsoft Office. Features of Microsoft OneDrive include:

  • A secure, always-available personal storage site for the user’s files
  • Automatic file syncing between devices, so users always have files on hand
  • Easy collaboration and sharing functions, with basic permission-based security
  • Seamless integration with Microsoft Office 365 applications, including Teams
  • Easily share files and folders by simply right-clicking and choosing ‘Share’
  • Automatically back up and protect files on your devices, for extra resilience
  • Keep personal or sensitive files secure with private, encrypted OneDrive Vault

OneDrive is used as always-on, always-accessible personal storage. When you use OneDrive, your documents are always accessible, no matter where you are working or how. And you can easily and securely share them with colleagues or clients.

 

Difference between SharePoint and OneDrive

What, then, is the difference between Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft OneDrive? Here’s an overview of some of the important differences between the two:

Feature OneDrive SharePoint
Personal cloud storage
Shared document workspaces -
Basic, secure file sharing
File syncing between devices
Encrypted personal storage
Browser accessible
Windows desktop integration -
Basic document sharing and co-authoring
Team & organisation-wide workspaces -
Hosted business-wide intranet -
Advanced indexing and searchability -
Integration with Office 365 apps
Integration with Microsoft Teams limited
Integration with third-party apps and services limited

OneDrive is an integral part of Office 365. It integrates with all of the suite’s applications and with a limited range of third-party applications. OneDrive provides Office 365 users with the ability to co-author documents with others, with built-in tracked changes.

SharePoint is not part of Office 365, but it integrates closely with the Office suite and all of its applications. SharePoint provides a far more advanced set of features than OneDrive. These include:

  • Access not only your personal files but also your team’s and organisation's documents anytime, anywhere
  • Create and manage shared document workspaces for departments, teams and projects rather than just for individual users
  • Integrate with Office 365, Teams, Outlook and an extensive range of third-party applications for intelligent, bespoke collaboration
  • Go beyond sharing individual files. Use SharePoint workspaces to give users access to enhanced collaboration and visibility features
  • SharePoint allows you to tag documents with unique IDs and metadata, then crawls your documents and data, giving you an easily searchable content index
  • Using SharePoint, you can create an intranet for your entire organisation, with different workspaces and modules accessible to each team or colleague

 

OneDrive vs SharePoint: Pros and Cons

So, what are the pros and cons of OneDrive and SharePoint. The answer really depends on the size and nature of your business and on your specific needs.

Microsoft OneDrive

Pros
  • Easy integration with Microsoft apps
  • Browser-based, cross-platform compatibility
  • Automatic file-syncing across devices
  • Built-in file version history and file restore
Cons
  • Depends on reliable, always-on internet access
  • Sometimes has syncing issues between devices and the cloud
  • Limited integration options with third-party apps and services
  • Increased storage needs will require incremental cost increases

Microsoft SharePoint

Pros
  • Advanced easy-to-use document management as standard
  • Built-in intelligent collaboration features and Office 365 integration
  • Extensive customization options for the full range of business use cases
  • Robust, enterprise-level security and compliance by default.
Cons
  • Set-up and management is more complex and requires specific expertise
  • An on-premises SharePoint implementation can involve extra costs and overheads
  • SharePoint provides only limited offline access in its default configuration
  • Reliance on Microsoft’s ecosystem of apps and services

 

SharePoint or OneDrive: a 6-point guide to choosing

Once you understand what SharePoint and OneDrive are used for, the next step is to decide how this relates to your business needs, and which platform is right for you.

Follow the 6-step guide to make your decision.

1. What are your company’s collaboration requirements?
  • Complex: for bespoke, automated and regulated collaboration, choose SharePoint
  • Simple: for ad-hoc file sharing and smaller-scale collaboration, OneDrive is sufficient
2. How much control do you need over permissions and access rights?
  • Complex permissions: for configurable, inheritable permissions, choose SharePoint
  • Simple permissions: for easy, quick, user-friendly permissions, choose OneDrive
3. Do you need business-process automation?
  • Yes, advanced automation: for customisable workflow-automation, choose SharePoint
  • No, just simple file management: for easy-to-use file management, choose OneDrive
4. Do you need an intranet or internal communication portal?
  • Yes: to create an intranet or centralized content hub, you need SharePoint
  • No: for personal, always-accessible cloud storage, OneDrive is enough
5. What level of customisation and scalability do you require?
  • Advanced: for scalable sites, customised to your specific needs, choose SharePoint
  • Basic: for simple sharing with incremental extra storage, choose OneDrive
6. What are your compliance and security requirements?
  • Complex and configurable: SharePoint offers the robust, granular governance you need
  • Simple & standardised: OneDrive delivers standardized security for storage and sharing

OneDrive offers businesses easy-to-use personal storage and simple document sharing. It’s great for teams that work across sites, with various devices and that have highly mobile workforces.

SharePoint, on the other hand, offers advanced collaboration and content-management capabilities for organisations with complex, enterprise-wide and document-dependent workflows.

For organisations that meet both criteria, it’s possible to use both SharePoint and OneDrive on conjunction with each other and integrated with other Microsoft Office 365 applications. 

Both SharePoint and OneDrive are included in Microsoft 365 subscriptions. Pricing starts at less than £10 per user per month.

 

Next steps

Many businesses will use both OneDrive and SharePoint. But how they use them, how best to configure them for their needs, which plans to choose, and so on, can all be difficult questions to answer.

In such circumstances, the best option is to seek advice from an accredited external expert. Texaport is a Microsoft Solutions Partner, specialising in cloud transformations for SMEs.

Our SharePoint and Microsoft 365 support engineers can help you choose the right option for you, then design and deploy an implementation tailored for your business needs.

Contact us today, to speak to one of our Microsoft cloud-collaboration experts.

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