Companies often start using SharePoint because it’s part of Microsoft 365 — it’s the easy option that ends up holding documents, intranet pages, team sites, and eventually the brand and creative assets which have nowhere else to go.
Over time, SharePoint becomes harder to navigate and update, requiring significant IT involvement and overhead. Adoption drops so it gets updated less frequently, then it becomes less useful and trusted as a document and information source. That’s when companies start looking at other options.
But when you’re looking for an alternative to SharePoint, the best option depends on what’s not working for your company. For some teams, the intranet is the problem, while for others its document collaboration. And for creative and marketing teams, their biggest challenge is trying to govern a brand using a document library. This guide helps you work out which problem you have, then matches it to the best option(s) for that job.
Which SharePoint use case are you trying to replace?
Most teams searching for a SharePoint replacement have one of three problems. Work out which is your priority before comparing any tools, because your shortlist will look completely different depending on what you need.
The intranet problem
The company intranet is meant to be a centralized source of information that all employees can access. But often it gets neglected if updating it is complex. The information becomes out-of-date, so people stop checking it as they don’t trust it as a reliable source. Some signs you have an intranet problem include:
- Nobody reads the news feed. Announcements are duplicated across email and chat, so the intranet becomes a record of what was already communicated elsewhere.
- Publishing runs through IT. You need to file a ticket with IT if you want to add a page, restructure a site, or spin up a team site.
- Employees route around it. They ask a colleague for the link or search Slack instead of navigating a portal they find confusing.
If these issues sound familiar, here are some things to look for in a SharePoint alternative:
- Ease of publishing: Your comms team should be able to build and update pages without IT.
- Adoption by non-technical staff: If an employee who logs in once a week can’t find what they need, you’ll struggle to improve adoption across the organization.
- Low administration: Someone still has to maintain permissions and site structure, so look for a tool that doesn’t need a dedicated specialist.
In this list, Claromentis is the closest fit. It’s a purpose-built digital workplace designed to need minimal admin. Bitrix24 is also worth checking out, as it suits teams that want an intranet bundled with task management and CRM at a lower cost.
The documents and knowledge problem
When SharePoint isn’t being used effectively across your organization, documentation ends up spread across team sites, personal OneDrive folders, and shared drives. When someone needs a process doc from last quarter, they search, scroll through loosely related results, and usually end up messaging the person who wrote it. You probably recognize some of these scenarios that suggest you have a problem with documentation and knowledge sharing:
- Scattered documentation. The same process is written up in two or three places, and nobody is sure which version is current.
- Search that doesn’t deliver the right results. People know the document exists but can’t find it without the exact title or author.
- Structure only its creator understands. Folder hierarchies reflect one person’s logic, but are unclear to everyone else.
If these are your biggest problem with SharePoint, look for these things in a replacement:
- Fast capture: Writing something down should take less effort than explaining it in a chat message, or the knowledge never gets recorded.
- Findability: Search should return the right page, and people shouldn’t need to know where something is filed or its exact file name to find it.
- Structure teams can edit and maintain themselves: Reorganizing a space shouldn’t require a specialist admin or a vendor support ticket.
Confluence is the strongest fit on our list for structured wikis, especially for engineering and product teams already working in Jira. Notion is another option, and suits teams wanting flexible pages and databases and a tool that’s quick to adopt.
The brand and creative asset problem
Logos, product photography, and campaign templates end up in a SharePoint document library because it was already there, which made it the easiest place to store them. In SharePoint, files are organized in folders, and IT sets the permissions. When a regional marketer needs the current logo, they browse the folder tree, search by file name, or email the brand team. They typically run into these problems:
- No way to tell which file is approved. Five versions of the same sales deck sit in one library, with nothing to differentiate the current one from the outdated or draft versions.
- Agencies and partners ask for files by email. They don’t have access to the library, so someone on the brand team sends assets manually.
- IT permissions stand in for brand governance. Access is set at folder level, but nothing tracks how an asset is used, when a license expires, or whether the guidelines were followed.
This is a different kind of problem from the first two. A document library stores files, arranges them in a hierarchy, and gives some control over who can open them. A brand team needs people to find the right asset and use it correctly. If you replace SharePoint with another document storage tool, you will run into the same problem somewhere else. Instead, look for this functionality in an alternative:
- Findability by asset: Search should work on metadata and tags, so people don’t need to know which folder a file lives in.
- Governance built in: Approvals, usage rights, and expiry dates should attach to the asset itself.
- Guidelines next to the assets: People should see the usage rules where they download the file.
Frontify is the best fit for brand and creative assets in this guide. It’s an enterprise DAM built for governing brand assets, and it runs alongside Microsoft 365 rather than replacing it.
What to ask when comparing vendors
Whichever problem you’re trying to solve, ask each vendor the same four questions before you shortlist your alternatives:
- Who administers this day to day? Ask for a demo in which a non-technical person sets up a new space, changes permissions, and publishes a page. If any of that needs IT or a certified admin, factor that cost into your comparison.
- Will occasional users adopt it? The people who use the tool once or twice a month, such as sales reps, regional marketers, and agency contacts, decide whether it works. Have a few of them try the demo and find something without help.
- Does it coexist with Microsoft 365 or replace it? When they switch away from SharePoint, many teams keep Microsoft 365 for email, Teams, and Office files. Check whether the tool connects to it, or whether you’d be asking people to work in two disconnected systems.
- How does cost scale with users and content? Pricing models vary, from per-seat to per-active-user to storage-based. Ask for a quote at your current headcount and at double it, and check what happens when your library grows.
The best SharePoint alternatives at a glance
Editor’s note: Frontify publishes this guide and makes a platform for the brand and creative asset use case covered below. We assessed every tool on the same criteria.
SharePoint alternatives by use case
Frontify: Best for governing brand and creative assets
Frontify is an enterprise DAM that keeps brand guidelines, assets, and templates in one governed system, and acts as the brand context your AI tools work from. It’s built for the team whose logos, photography, and campaign files ended up in SharePoint libraries, and it runs alongside Microsoft 365 rather than replacing it.
- Who should use it: Brand and marketing teams at enterprises that manage several brands, regions, or agencies and need control over which assets people use and how.
- Compared to SharePoint: SharePoint stores files and controls who can open them. Frontify adds what brand teams are missing: approval workflows and version history so people know which file is current, rights and expiry alerts, and interactive guidelines that sit next to the assets. For example, Alfa Laval used it to replace static PDF guidelines with an interactive brand hub.
- Standout features:
- Frontify MCP: Connects compatible AI tools such as Claude, ChatGPT, and Cursor to your approved brand knowledge, so their output has that context from the beginning, rather than being added in as a redraft.
- Brand Assistant: Answers brand questions in natural language, in more than 100 languages.
- AI tagging and smart search: Helps people find assets without knowing the file name or folder.
- Locked templates: Lets non-designers edit approved layouts. This helped Spring Health cut template production time from three weeks down to about 10 minutes, saving the team 16+ hours per template.
- One consideration: Frontify is purpose-built for governing brand and creative assets. If you’re primarily evaluating employee communications, general-purpose documentation, or team wikis, look at the dedicated tools below as well.
Confluence: Best for team documentation and knowledge
Confluence is Atlassian’s wiki and documentation platform. It’s built for teams that have a lot of written docs and processes such as specs, runbooks, and decision records, and need others to be able to find and update them later.
- Who should use it: Engineering and product organizations, especially teams that already track work in Jira and want their documentation linked to it.
- Compared to SharePoint: Confluence organizes writing into spaces and page trees with ready-made templates, which suits documentation better than files in a document library. But it’s not built for brand asset governance, so it solves the documents and knowledge problem, rather than the brand one.
- Standout features:
- Jira integration: Link pages to Jira issues, epics, and dashboards, so the plan and the work stay connected.
- Templates: Ready-made templates, including product requirements documents, postmortems, and decision logs.
- Rovo AI: Atlassian’s AI-powered search and chat that pull answers from Confluence, Jira, and connected apps such as Slack and Google Drive.
- One consideration: Much of the value of Confluence is concentrated inside the Atlassian ecosystem. Teams that don’t use Jira or other Atlassian tools will get less out of it.
Notion: Best for flexible, fast-moving docs
Notion is a flexible workspace where documents, wikis, and databases live together. Teams start with a blank page and build the structure they need as they go.
- Who should use it: Teams inside larger organizations that want their docs, wiki, and project tracking in one linked workspace and are happy to build the structure themselves.
- Compared to SharePoint: Teams can set up and reshape their own workspace without waiting on IT. The trade-off is that Notion gives you less brand asset control than a dedicated platform, so it solves the documents and knowledge problem rather than the brand one.
- Standout features:
- Databases: Collections of pages you can view as a table, board, timeline, calendar, or gallery.
- Notion AI: Search and agents that work across Notion, Slack, Google Drive, and Jira. The full AI functionality sits on the higher-priced plans.
- Entry pricing: A free plan and a low-cost paid tier, which makes it easy for a single team to try without a long procurement process.
- Consideration: Notion’s governance, permissions, and structure are lighter than dedicated enterprise platforms. Teams that need granular access control or detailed audit trails will outgrow it relatively quickly.
Bitrix24: Best budget all-in-one intranet
Bitrix24 bundles an intranet, team collaboration, task management, and CRM into one platform. It offers a free plan for 1-2 users, but enterprise teams will quickly outgrow the storage, user, and feature limitations on that free plan.
- Who should use it: Cost-conscious teams that want one tool for internal communication, tasks, and customer relationships, instead of paying for each separately.
- Compared to SharePoint: Bitrix24 gives you the intranet, chat, tasks, and CRM in a single place, rather than assembling them from separate Microsoft tools. You can start on a free plan and upgrade as you grow.
- Standout features:
- Social intranet: An activity stream and groups you can set up for the whole company or for a single team.
- Tasks and projects: Deadlines, reports, and KPI tracking in the same workspace.
- CRM, chat, calls, and files: All in one platform, so teams don’t switch between tools.
- Limited free plan: Lets you try it out, though it has limits on storage, users, and customization.
- Consideration: Bitrix24 favors breadth over depth, and its interface can be overwhelming for teams that don’t need the full platform functionality.
Claromentis: Best dedicated intranet with low IT burden
Claromentis is a purpose-built digital workplace platform. It brings the intranet, document management, and internal workflows together on a single no-code platform.
- Who should use it: HR, operations, and internal comms teams that want a dedicated intranet without relying on developers or IT to build and maintain it.
- Compared to SharePoint: Claromentis is designed as an intranet from the start, with document management and workflows included. Authorized users can build forms and workflows without code, which speaks directly to SharePoint’s IT overhead.
- Standout features:
- No-code forms and workflows: Teams build and run their own processes, such as approvals and requests, without developers.
- Policy workflows: Policies can be tracked through review, acceptance, and retention.
- Audit trails: User activity is tracked, and users can be populated automatically from Active Directory.
- Consideration: At its heart, Claromentis is an intranet platform. It doesn’t govern brand and creative assets, so it won’t fix the asset problem described earlier.
Google Workspace: Best for leaving the Microsoft ecosystem
Google Workspace is Google’s suite of productivity tools, including Drive for file storage, Docs for writing, and Sites for building internal web pages. It’s the natural choice for organizations standardizing on Google instead of Microsoft.
- Who should use it: Organizations moving off Microsoft 365 or running mixed stacks, especially where teams already work in Google’s tools every day.
- Compared to SharePoint: Drive shared drives replace SharePoint’s document libraries and Sites replace team sites. You get less structure in return, and Workspace doesn’t provide purpose-built DAM governance or asset discovery for asset-heavy teams.
- Standout features:
- Real-time collaboration: Multiple people can edit Docs, Sheets, and Slides at the same time.
- Shared drives: Team-owned storage with permissions set at the drive level.
- Google Sites: A simple page builder included in a Workspace subscription, which is enough for a basic intranet.
- Consideration: Sites is a lighter intranet than SharePoint, and moving to Google trades one ecosystem commitment for another.
Choosing the right alternative for you
When you’re looking for a SharePoint alternative, you don’t necessarily need a direct replacement. By now you should have a clearer idea of what part of SharePoint, or what process, isn’t working for your organization. This will help you narrow down your shortlist to the best-fit tools:
- Intranet: Choose Claromentis if you want a dedicated intranet that doesn’t need IT to run. Choose Bitrix24 if you need an intranet, tasks, and CRM on a tight budget.
- Documents and knowledge: Choose Confluence if your teams work in Jira and need structured documentation. Choose Notion if you want a flexible workspace and don’t need heavy governance.
- Leaving Microsoft: Choose Google Workspace if you’re standardizing on Google and a lighter intranet is enough.
- Brand and creative asset management: Choose Frontify if your logos, photography, and templates need governing, not just storing.
If managing your assets is the problem, another document tool will only duplicate that problem in a different tool. A digital asset management tool will be a better fit. Frontify governs the brand layer and runs alongside Microsoft 365, so you can fix it without replacing your existing stack. Book a demo to see how it would work with your assets and guidelines.
All product information, features, and customer data verified against vendor pages and third-party review sources as of October 2026.
