SharePoint is Microsoft’s web-based platform for document management, collaboration, and building intranets — one tool covering what used to take several separate systems.
In this post: What it actually covers · Online vs on-premises · How it relates to Teams and OneDrive · Licensing: what’s included · When would you actually use this? · Where to go from here
What it actually covers
- Document management: version control, check-in/check-out, and approval workflows — not just file storage.
- Team collaboration: team sites, discussion boards, task lists, shared libraries.
- Intranets and portals: customizable sites for company news, policies, and resources.
- Workflow automation: a workflow engine (plus Power Automate) for approvals, reviews, and publishing.
- Enterprise search: full-text and metadata-driven search across the org, not just one site.
- Business intelligence: Power BI and Excel Services integration for dashboards and reports.
Online vs on-premises
Most new deployments are SharePoint Online — part of Microsoft 365, Microsoft-hosted and updated continuously, no server to maintain. SharePoint Server (on-premises) still exists for organizations that need to keep data on their own infrastructure, usually for regulatory or data-residency reasons, but it’s a separate product with its own release cycle, missing some of the newer Online-only features. If you’re starting from scratch today with no specific on-prem requirement, Online is the default, not a choice you need to deliberate over.
How it relates to Teams and OneDrive
This is the most common point of confusion for anyone new to Microsoft 365. Short version: OneDrive is personal storage — files that belong to one person until they’re explicitly shared. SharePoint is shared, team/org-level storage with real document management on top (versioning, metadata, permissions structure). Microsoft Teams doesn’t have its own file storage at all — every “Files” tab inside a Team channel is a SharePoint document library, just displayed through the Teams interface. Upload a file in a Teams channel and it’s sitting in that team’s SharePoint site whether you ever open SharePoint directly or not. See SharePoint and OneDrive: Everything You Need to Know for the deeper version of this distinction.
Licensing: what’s actually included
For most organizations, SharePoint isn’t something you buy separately — it’s bundled into Microsoft 365 Business and Enterprise plans alongside Teams, Exchange, and the Office apps. Standalone SharePoint Online Plan 1 and Plan 2 licenses do still exist for the rare case of needing SharePoint without the rest of the suite, but Microsoft has confirmed these standalone plans are being phased out — new sales stop during 2026, with service continuing for existing subscribers until 2029. If you’re licensing SharePoint today, buying it as part of a Microsoft 365 suite is both the simpler and the more future-proof path.
SharePoint consolidates document management, collaboration, and workflow automation into one platform, at the cost of some depth compared to a best-of-breed tool for any single piece.
When would you actually use this?
- You’re managing documents across a team via shared drives and email attachments, and version conflicts keep happening — SharePoint’s version control and check-in/out fixes exactly this.
- You need a company intranet for news, policies, and resources that isn’t a static page nobody visits — SharePoint’s Communication Sites are built for this specifically.
- You’re stitching together separate tools for storage, discussion, tasks, and workflow approvals — SharePoint consolidates most of that into one platform, at the cost of some depth compared to a dedicated best-of-breed tool for any one piece.
Where to go from here
A few natural next reads once the basics make sense: Choosing the right SharePoint Online site type before creating your first site, SharePoint Permissions: A Comprehensive Guide before inviting anyone into it, and Understanding SharePoint List Types once you’re ready to actually store structured data.
Good to go. Comment if anything doesn’t line up.
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