Microsoft SharePoint vs. SharePoint Designer (discontinued)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
SharePoint
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's SharePoint is an Intranet solution that enables users to share and manage content, knowledge, and applications to empower teamwork, quickly find information, and collaborate across the organization.
$5
Per User Per Month
SharePoint Designer (discontinued)
Score 3.0 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's SharePoint Designer was a tool for developing SharePoint applications that has been discontinued.N/A
Pricing
Microsoft SharePointSharePoint Designer (discontinued)
Editions & Modules
Plan 1
$5.00
Per User Per Month
Plan 2
$10.00
Per User Per Month
Office 365 E3
$20.00
Per User Per Month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SharePointSharePoint Designer (discontinued)
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Microsoft SharePointSharePoint Designer (discontinued)
Considered Both Products
SharePoint

No answer on this topic

SharePoint Designer (discontinued)
Chose SharePoint Designer (discontinued)
I haven't used anything else like this. I use different products for workflows and forms, but they aren't listed in the listings for this page. Instead of using it for workflows or forms (deprecated 2 years ago), I use Nintex. For everything else, I have what I need in the …
Chose SharePoint Designer (discontinued)
Nintex Forms and Workflow are both very robust tools, but cost for some clients can be prohibitive. Nintex does not provide tools to manage SharePoint sites, lists and libraries.
Chose SharePoint Designer (discontinued)
I have not used any other products. SharePoint Designer is what I use on a daily basis.
Best Alternatives
Microsoft SharePointSharePoint Designer (discontinued)
Small Businesses
HCL Connections
HCL Connections
Score 9.0 out of 10
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprises
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Microsoft SharePointSharePoint Designer (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
7.9
(269 ratings)
4.9
(17 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.8
(26 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.2
(31 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(13 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
In-Person Training
4.5
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
6.4
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
6.0
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Microsoft SharePointSharePoint Designer (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
SharePoint Document Management excels as a central repository for storing, organising, and retrieving documents. It supports version control, metadata tagging, secure access, and integration with tools like Power Automate. At our organisation, it's used for managing contracts, policies, and supplier documents. SharePoint Workflow Automation integrates with Power Automate to streamline approvals, gather feedback, and automate recurring tasks. This reduces reliance on email chains and manual trackers.
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Discontinued Products
SharePoint does not provide, out of the box, a tool to create / update workflows from web. You have to use SharePoint Designer in order to create them. If you need to implement custom workflows for specific business processes, then SharePoint Designer is well suited. SharePoint Designer allows you to create workflows with task approval, email notifications, assign variables and update SharePoint Lists / Documents properties. In our company, we have created specific workflows for : - Purchase order - RH forms validation like annual employee review - Dematerialized existing forms and validation
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Pros
Microsoft
  • We track employees' performance sheets, which are accessible to the employee, his manager, and HR, and this helps with transparency.
  • We maintain technical process documents and SOPs, which help us quickly provide relevant documents during audits.
  • We maintain incident documents change request forms in SharePoint, which helps us in tracking the changes.
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Discontinued Products
  • 2013 Workflows - Loops: You can build loops to work while a value (not) equals something, or N number of times. You can insert Parallel Blocks to do multiple things at once, or to watch for multiple things, and when 1 thing finishes, cancels the others and moves to the next step or stage.
  • 2013 Workflows - Stages: Previously all we had were steps, which worked sequentially. With the Concept of Stages, we can create blocks of steps and based on the data collected during those functions, we can tell the workflow to go to a different Stage in the workflow based on a set of 1, or multiple, Conditionals in a transition area after each Stage. Giving you the power to develop multiple entire processes and skipping to the correct part of the workflow, rather than going through 20 conditionals to find out you needed to do action 31.
  • 2013 Workflows - REST API: the "Call HTTP Web Service" is a very powerful tool, but hard to understand if you have never seen it done, or have a guideline. It works very similar to the requirements in PowerShell to connect and get and post data to SharePoint using the Rest API. You can also use this to manage permissions on List Items, Lists, Sites, and Site Collections. Best part is when developed correctly, it is SUPER FAST!
  • Intentionally Building Infinite Loops: I have built multiple review process from Managing Certifications to Updating Published Documentation, that monitors when an Item, based on provided approved metadata, when the "Author" needs to review the document within the given amount of time. They will get e-mails with links asking if changes are needed. If not, it is routed to the Approving Executive, and the Workflow Automatically updates the Metadata to push out the review dates to the next date, based on metadata provided on how how often the document should be reviews. By using conditionals in the transition of stages, it basically starts over, and goes into a parallel block to allow the monitoring of multiple values of metadata to move to the next stage. Very Powerful when you want to automate these types of process. It truly is a "Set It and Forget It" process.
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Cons
Microsoft
  • Windows Explorer users have some difficulty having to constantly UPLOAD / DOWNLOAD files. Specifically on the DOWNLOAD when they are used to Drag & Drop in & out of LOCAL folders via Window's explorer.
  • Microsoft SharePoint supports multiple "library" types. When implementing our "image" library the search function is done via "tags" and boolean logic. This is challenging to most end users. I'd like our users to be able to search our Microsoft SharePoint image library without having to enter KEYWORD or other BOOLEAN logic.
  • Microsoft SharePoint can also be an internal website for each department or company wide communication tool but I believe these features are geared for much larger organizations. Since we are a SMB we really aren't using these features. So maybe something more useful to SMBs would be nice.
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Discontinued Products
  • In the newest version of SharePoint Designer, they have gotten rid of the Design view which makes what used to be quick and easy changes much more code-intensive. This makes it harder for non-IT users and is more risker for all SharePoint Designer users.
  • SharePoint Designer workflows have a lot of functionality, but there are also some crucial limitations, such as not being able to put lookup fields in email subjects or using parenthesis to separate/group logical conditions.
  • Although this goes along with the Design view, there really isn't a good user interface anymore for adding conditional formatting and styles in views/pages.
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Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft
It's integral to our business. It's already included with most of the Office 365 licensing we buy, so the cost is effectively zero. It stores our files, it is the foundation for custom applications, and Microsoft only continues to enhance its functionality and its connections to other Microsoft tools. SharePoint just keeps getting better and better.
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Discontinued Products
It is a helpful tool that we use every day.
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Usability
Microsoft
No usability issues reported. Individual teams also have allocated areas which replace legacy shared drives on local LANs. Access to Sharepoint resources is fully integrated with corporate Active Directory with additional two-factor authentication required for administrative users. Users have access to Microsoft Services Hub which allows you to create, manage, and track support requests while staying current on Microsoft technologies with access to select self-paced learning paths
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Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Microsoft
Support for SharePoint is quite good. Microsoft provides good support. Microsoft offers
  • Quick turnaround time for issues
  • A range of support services
  • Access to a network of resources
  • Escalation of issues
  • Ongoing development and commitment to produce enhancement
The majority of support is required for initial installation. Once complete and the system is operating we have had very few support issues.
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Discontinued Products
Support is good from Microsoft. They are quite responsive when we raise a ticket but SP Designer support will be ended by Microsoft in the near future as they have got new techs like PowerApps and Flow to achieve the same functionality SP Designer does and even more than that.
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In-Person Training
Microsoft
The face to face training I received was on SharePoint Administration. It was rushed as there was a lot of information to cover and the application of the labs weren't that great either. I like to be able to relate what I am learning to what I am currently doing.
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Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Microsoft
I like to learn at my own pace and online training allows for that. Additionally, you can skip through pieces of content that you already know or are already comfortable with. Microsoft actually offers great videos on their website for basic fundamental SharePoint Training. I have used these training videos in some of my own training sessions with end users.
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Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Microsoft
Planning to the last detail would be advised. SharePoint is a very large application that takes a lot of finesse to get operational
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Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
The reasons for selecting MS SharePoint are: SharePoint provides ease of use and web design assistance and support SharePoint helps you schedule your content for publishing. enables users to share documents with external parties and offers a better internal structure of the content and better indexing and searching capabilities.
Read full review
Discontinued Products
I haven't used anything else like this. I use different products for workflows and forms, but they aren't listed in the listings for this page. Instead of using it for workflows or forms (deprecated 2 years ago), I use Nintex. For everything else, I have what I need in the Modern version of SharePoint online
Read full review
Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • It comes with Office 365. It won't cost you any additional charges.
  • It will help you to streamline your communication and work as a central hub for all tasks, files[,] and events[.]
  • Setting it up will need a bit [of] planning. If you jump blindly it will become a confusing place for your team members and make them frustrated[.]
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Discontinued Products
  • For my needs, I have not found SharePoint Designer useful for my day to day maintenance of SharePoint. It is useful for viewing all the objects that make up the SharePoint site.
  • It is not as intuitive in regard to setting up Workflows. I have yet to use it to set up workflows in SharePoint. Maybe if I needed more complex workflows, it would be beneficial.
  • I like to use SharePoint Designer for moving around files within SharePoint sites.
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ScreenShots