Drupal vs. SharePoint

By tomlaw on 12 May 2005 at 04:39 UTC

Hi all,

I have a client who is looking seriously at SharePoint for an intranet option. While making a pitch to overhaul this company's web site, I mentioned that the Drupal CMS could do the job equally as well as any b.s. Microsoft app. They were quite intrigued to say the least. No one likes to pay for licensing before they even start the process and we all know just how well Microsoft products hold up over time :-).

I'm relatively new to Drupal and I'm still trying to figure out the odds and ends of this CMS. I know what Drupal is capable of but I would love to march into our next meeting and throw down a thorough, well-defined list of just how Drupal can do anything/everything SharePoint can do and do it better. Can someone out there help me out with the details? This company is looking for standard intranet options, basically event tracking and document posting. But if there are some hidden big-time functions out there, I just don't want to overlook it.

Thanks,

Tom

Comments

I would sure like to have a copy of such a document

Gunnar Langemark@www.langemark.com commented 12 May 2005 at 05:56

I have a client which chose Microsoft Sharepoint Portal and Content Management Server with Biztalk, Active Directory and loads of other stuff on a number of servers - plus Microsoft Axapta as the ERP solution with our (my companys) Association Administration System which is build into Axapta.

If anybody can build a case for Drupal as a part of such a solution I'd be VERY interested in hearing from you.

You can always go to http://www.cmsmatrix.org/matrix and compare the CMS'es, but being able to match the systems for real is another story.

SharePoint portal is a portal system and part of that is Sharepoint Services. The Sharepoint Services (Which I guess is what you're talking about) is the Collaboration Suite of Sharepoint Portal, and comes with for instance the "Small Business Server" product which is a low end product.

I suspect that Drupal would be able to do what Sharepoint can do - and then some. There would be a few places (personal choice of visual design/content objects - and their placement on the screen) where sharepoint is better/cooler, but in general - if a client considers the business it is trying to conduct it may well be better suited by the Open Source solution.

Sharepoint is based on .net web services which is a big deal buzz word in the market. So there should be comparable technological incentives to choose OSS and not M$, and not just money.

When clients buys licenced software - as opposed to downloading and installing by themselves - it often has to do with feeling safe/secure/well taken care of.
Open Source feels insecure to a person who does not get Open Source as a philosophy (and believe me - most people don't).

Part of the answer would most definitely be to propose a practical system integration approach. You would need to be able to login securely on your network - from both sides of the firewall - and not need to login again on the Drupal system. Also you should share user profile data real time - preferably not by datareplication.

Sorry for hijacking your thread with my own stuff. :-)

Basicly I'd love a copy of a document comparing Sharepoint and Drupal. I simply don't have time right now to do it myself, and I fear I have too little hands on experience with Sharepoint myself to do it fairly.

Dropping in from Langemarks Cafe.

Thanks for the link...

tomlaw commented 13 May 2005 at 02:08

I was unaware of cmsmatrix.org, that basically told me all I needed to know. It's pretty ridiculous when you start putting software head to head and see results like that. Drupal beats SharePoint without breaking a sweat. Hopefully we can use this to implement a very robust copy of Drupal, and as dedicated Drupalers, we will keep score on how this goes and most likely start building a comparison document like you've described.

Thanks again,
T

Comparision Documentation

Jahnavi commented 5 March 2008 at 06:47

Hi,

Iam in the starting stage of learning drupal as iam into sharepoint now, i want the camparision document if u have already prepared it.or if u can suggest me some links which takes me to a clear comparision of the same.

I got http://www.cmsmatrix.org/matrix/cms-matrix link but i want it more detailed about each sothat i can go through drupal.

Thanks in advance

Regards,
Anujahnavi S

Another thank you for the

izmeez commented 13 November 2013 at 22:33

Another thank you for the link

Integration

kbahey commented 13 May 2005 at 02:39

I am an Open Source advocate like most of people here, and I am not specially fond of Microsoft in anyway.

I have not used Sharepoint myself, but I have discussed it with a friend who administers it where he works, when discussing Drupal and other open source CMS.

However, you have to know what you are up against. SharePoint is proprietary, closed source, expensive, ...etc. It has many drawbacks.

The one glaring exception is Integration with other Microsoft products. Users can easily publish from Word as well as other MS stuff.

For a certain type of users (non technical, used to GUIs, ...etc.) no amount of Drupal + HTMLArea/TinyMCE can be a substitute for an all Microsoft solution.

Perhaps you can use w.bloggar and xmlrpc, but still ...
--
Consulting: 2bits.com
Personal: Baheyeldin.com

--
Drupal performance tuning and optimization, hosting, development, and consulting: 2bits.com, Inc. and Twitter at: @2bits
Personal blog: Ba

Drupal can have the Eyecandy too

saml commented 17 January 2009 at 02:47

kbahey wrote:
For a certain type of users (non technical, used to GUIs, ...etc.) no amount of Drupal + HTMLArea/TinyMCE can be a substitute for an all Microsoft solution.

You have a point there.
Though, as MS depends heavily on eyecandy - being stylish, and making people feel at home - it might be somewhat easier if you give them a Sharepoint/MS-looking GUI - upon Drupal! I used this strategy for a project, and subsequently made the skin/theme available here. (MediaWiki version too!).

This example also shows that Drupal can actually quite easily be modified to look like sharepoint (or any way you want). I bet it's harder to go the other way around(?).

Regards
// Samuel Lampa

Portal Manager :: Drupal management Assembly

ebhakt commented 8 May 2010 at 09:28

I have written this utility that simplifies the management of a drupal based web portal
managing users and nodes becomes easy with this
you can give it a look at :< http://ebhakt.com/content/portal-manager-drupal-management-assembly >

Hope this can add to features on the drupal end
You can setup a team of writers that can add data to your drupal portal using keys authentication and XMLRPC services in the background

Drupal vs. SharePoint

wisdom327 commented 4 April 2009 at 20:58

At my office, two of us connect Access front-ends to SharePoint lists and give the front-ends to various users. We've automated a lot of the office functions that way. It's convenient because everyone already has Access as part of their MS Office suite. I'm not sure if you could replicate something like this with MS Office products and Drupal together. Although SharePoint isn't the greatest product, it was designed to work well with other Microsoft products and together, they can be used to make powerful solutions for the office.

Well, I think the main issue

greg57 commented 11 May 2009 at 09:11

Well, I think the main issue for Drupal is its document management capabilities - or more especially its lack thereof. From what I've read in the forum KTI integration is dubious at best. We don't want to reinvent the wheel and I am a bit concerned about using Drupal in the frame of the intranet project that we are going to implement in my workplace. Keeping on searching, our IT engineer will proceed to some test with KTI... found out about Xinco... trying to see if third party DMS applications can successfully be integrated with an Acquia Drupal installation...

I don't know why everyone in

jvieille commented 30 July 2009 at 13:34

I don't know why everyone in the Drupal community complains about the lack of document management capability.
File Framework is amazing, but this project seriously lack of interest and support.
As if Document Management was a side issue, not an important feature for a CMS.

This was really surprising to me to discover that no appropriate file handling was available in Drupal until I discovered the discrete FF modules...

Great article by Jay

Francewhoa

he/him

French

Sept-Îles, Québec, 🇨🇦

commented 6 October 2009 at 05:28

Great article by Jay at http://www.mediacurrent.com/blogs/drupal-vs-sharepoint

In short Jay list 6 major downsides to SharePoint.

1. Setting up a local development environment is difficult and expensive.
2. Setting up an efficient development/deployment process is cumbersome.
3. Theming SharePoint is extremely difficult.
4. Many SharePoint modules (aka webparts) are quirky and don't work as expected.
5. Lists and libraries are quirky and also often do not work as expected.
6. SharePoint is slow and does not give you real access to the database that powers it.

Loving back your Drupal community result in multiple benefits for you

Atrium

tregeagle commented 7 October 2009 at 04:42

I am currently using Open Atrium which I think is a great drupal based 'Team Portal'.
Having worked as a server admin and tech support for many Sharepoint servers and the accompanying users I can see that most Sharepoint users will miss the MS Office integration if they shift away to Drupal/Atrium/Basecamp. Sharepoint has all kinds of ugly hacks to enable users to edit documents within the interface. So I suppose the question is, do the developers try to:

Make stuff work with the MS Office Suite.
Tell users they are dumb for relying on dumb products.
Make something with shinier bells and whistles than Sharepoint?

I think Atrium has taken a definite step towards the shiny approach.

A "crowd-sourced" comparison

Anonymous (not verified) commented 10 October 2009 at 12:00

A "crowd-sourced" comparison table:
http://www.cmsmatch.com/compare/content-management-systems/11+986

(Although the scores are not weighted.)

My summary would be: - if you

jvieille commented 8 May 2010 at 13:56

My summary would be:
- if you don't care about cost and functionalities, while requiring a tight integration with MS office, go Sharepoint.

But Sharepoint can certainly not compete technically against the Drupal (functionalities, infrastructure requirements), regardless the free vs extreme pricing unbalance.

Is that a fair comparison?

(May be Drupal Core insufficient file handling might influence the reviews - File Framework makes Drupal a Must, handling MS Office and many over documents with ease and smartness.

Being more experienced in

jvieille commented 6 December 2010 at 09:39

Being more experienced in using Sharepoint:
- File management in Drupal is killing vs Sharepoint - I can preview my office files manage versioning, handle hierarchical multiparental tagging in Drupal, not apparently in Sharepoint.
- Sharepoint sites only work in Internet Explorer - only partially in Firefox, Chrome...

Hadi Farnoud commented 4 December 2010 at 15:15

Msoft's Sharepoint VS Drupal's errr Drupal...

mikhaiel commented 24 February 2011 at 09:19

HOLY COW! I think Microsoft is aware of Drupal's threat and potential... I just found out they are making the sharepoint designer FREE! And this news was somewhere in 2009. Its like they have lost considerable amount from the opensource societies all arounds. From PHP vs ASP(x) to Sharepoint vs Drupal/Joomla/Wordpress etc. I never have thought that this would change the Msoft face!

Did i miss anything? Anyone have anything else to add?

Rgrds.

New to Drupal

lawlin commented 26 February 2011 at 16:26

Hi,

I'm just getting started with Drupal and thought I'd make a comment from that viewpoint. I have many years of experience as a professional developer working with SharePoint and I do notice som simplifications in the comments here. I can't give a good comparison between drupal and SharePoint either since I'm lacking on the Drupal side. However, from the little things I know at the moment I'd say that Drupal is a great product and has many benefits compared to SharePoint. It allows you to quickly setup for instance a public web or and intranet/extranet with very nice functionality. It seems easy to customize as well.

When it comes to SharePoint I'd say it's not fully comparable since SharePoint does pretty much everything. All types of solutions including ECM/WCM, Business Intelligence, Search (both SP and FAST), Integration, etc etc. I do not agree with the person who claims that the webparts and lists in SharePoint don't do what you want. They do the job very well but they don't solve every possible requirement. There will always be features you want that the platform doesn't offer out-of-the-box, just like Drupal. But there is a quite large community for costumized free SharePoint add-ons aswell. Is that community as good as the Drupal community? Don't ask, 'cause I don't know. But it's good.

When it come's to developing for SharePoint, it's like every other platform, you need to know what you're doing. I'm sure you can screw up Drupal aswell. On the other hand, since SharePoint is huge and does almost everything, the complexity that follows with it puts quite a demand on people developing for the platform.

I might be wrong but I don't think Drupal can substitute everything that SharePoint offers. On the other hand the majority of clients don't use the entire SharePoint platform. SharePoint is however great for medium/large companies going for the bigger picture when it comes to software strategy aimed at Microsoft software. If you are using AD, Dynamix, Lync, Office, Biztalk etc... SharePoint is hard to argue against since it integrates very well with these products.

The main question here of course was aimed towards a public web platform and even though I am very comfortable with SharePoint I'd say Drupal is very well positioned and it sounds as a good option for the client. Even though you can go with SharePoint Foundation as a "free" option I think Drupal offers more features out of the box that allow you to quickly setup a new public web for your client. Of course, it all depends on the clients requirements.

Sharepoint and Open-Source CMS Use Cases

almightyhelmet commented 16 July 2011 at 13:15

I agree with lawlin. Sharepoint does score with tight MS suite integration. So, if anyone planning on setting up an enterprise collaboration suite they might find exactly what they need.

Anyone thinking about setting up a website / real intranet publishing, community solution steer away from Sharepoint. Customization (both design and functionality, templates, etc.), the overall development process and, especially the 'quick fixes' clients usually demand with once the site goes online are a real pain and one cost driver. Drupal is a much better CMS. Theming is quite easy and due to the sh**loads of modules available highly extensible.

Here are two use cases for Sharepoint that worked well:

Intranet: Use Sharepoint as a collaboration tool, disable all social parts (wiki, blogs, etc.). Use a wiki-based solution on the publishing and interaction side of the intranet (Confluence comes to mind). The wiki-based intranet should come with a connector to Sharepoint that does two things: (1) get lists and doclib data out of Sharepoint to display on the intranet, and (2) make wiki page available as a Webpart in SP.
***I am not affiliated with Atlassian but Confluence and the SP connector are quite solid).***
As for Drupal I am quite sure with the right effort a user-friendly wiki, community, blog network and or something else entirely could be built. There’s even a Sharepoint project but I am not sure how far they have come http://drupal.org/project/sharepoint

Website: Use an open-source CMS for the website, create a single sign-on (this is crucial for user adoption) - there are ways to make Drupal work with LDAP, ActiveDirectory and others. Use Sharepoint as the DMS/collaboration suite, connect it to the CMS to allow publishing from the intranet, synchronize lists, calenders and documents.

When it comes to TCO I don’t agree with many sources on the web that try to defend M$ with lower support, administration and management costs. This is just a fairy tale. The deployment path alone takes forever, much more testing is required, development is more expensive and don’t even get me started on adoption rates. The fact alone that customization of Sharepoint is such a pain and Drupal being open gives the system architect a stronger handle thus creating a pleasing user experience. Two final examples: (1) try finding a social plugin for Sharepoint that is free! and (2) media sharing/uploading capabilities and corporate social business networks are becoming popular (and easier to be done with Drupal).

Drupal vs. Sharepoint

david@bluecoda.com commented 13 November 2013 at 21:42

All,

While the OP is approaching 8 years old, we have recently spoken to several companies that are looking at SharePoint 2013 as a potential option for their external website. Here is an article with some of the key considerations in regards to SharePoint vs. Drupal. Comparing Sharepoint to Drupal. In researching some online resources for the article, we found a very interesting blog post from a 13 year Sharepoint Developer written in the Fall of 2012 about 3 things not to do with SharePoint. #1 on the not to do list: Build public facing websites.

We created a Fact Sheet to help compare some of the key attributes in Drupal and SharePoint:

Drupal vs. SharePoint

I had to chuckle at the three

Jaypan commented 21 November 2013 at 11:28

I had to chuckle at the three points that developer raised:

1) Build public facing Web sites
2) Customize the graphic design
3) Treat it as a database

You mean the three requirements I have for pretty much every single site I build?! With those three limitations, it essentially means Sharepoint isn't even worth considering.

_

WorldFallz commented 21 November 2013 at 20:20

Having struggled extensively trying to use sharepoint in just that way (it was one of the factors that caused me to find drupal in the first place), I can verify that. And that doesn't even address the enormity of the $$$ involved (never mind the base price, every single extension is insanely costly) or the inability to bug fix and have those fixes actually make it into the product.

Unless you have an army of MS certified professionals at your disposal, I can't imagine using sharepoint for anything but a fancy doc library. And even then, drupal + alfresco would be my first choice. I totally don't get how anyone is still using sharepoint any more.