Microsoft SharePoint

What it is

SharePoint is the document, list and intranet layer of Microsoft 365. Every Teams channel stores its files in a SharePoint site, OneDrive runs on the same storage, and Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio agents and most third-party knowledge tools read company documents through it. If your organisation runs on Microsoft 365, you already own SharePoint. The question is whether it is good enough as your system of record for documents and as the knowledge source your AI reads, or whether you need a specialist DMS or a separate search layer on top.

The AI layer inside SharePoint has had three names. It launched as Knowledge Agent in 2025, became “AI in SharePoint” in early 2026, and is now Copilot in SharePoint. Microsoft’s admin documentation (updated 28 September 2026) says general availability began rolling out on 30 September 2026. It answers questions over a site, builds pages, lists, libraries and Office files from site content, runs simple rules and approvals, and fills metadata columns automatically. It runs on a Microsoft-managed OpenAI reasoning model. It is not yet available in GCC, GCC High or DoD tenants.

The question it answers

Is SharePoint enough for our documents and our AI, or do we need iManage, NetDocuments or Glean? For most RevOps, recruiting and in-house legal teams in a Microsoft tenant, SharePoint is enough. The case is cost and permissions: storage and sites come with the licence, and every Copilot answer inherits the same access control that already decides who can open the file. The case against is narrower. Law firms and large legal departments need matter-centric filing and ethical walls, and SharePoint has neither natively. Teams whose knowledge lives mostly in Slack, Salesforce, Jira or Google Drive need search across those apps, and SharePoint does not provide it.

Pricing reality

SharePoint is no longer sold on its own to new customers. Microsoft stopped selling the standalone SharePoint Online Plan 1 and Plan 2 to new tenants after 31 May 2026, and renewals end in January 2027. You buy it inside a suite. US list prices after Microsoft’s 1 July 2026 increase, per user per month on annual billing:

• Microsoft 365 Business Basic: $7 (was $6). Business Standard: $14. Business Premium: $22, unchanged.
• Office 365 E3: $26. Microsoft 365 E3: $39 (was $36).
• Storage: each tenant gets a pooled 1 TB plus 10 GB per licensed user. Extra file storage is commonly reported at $0.20-0.25 per GB per month. Archiving inactive sites to Microsoft 365 Archive is roughly a quarter of that.
• Copilot in SharePoint: the everyday features are included with the Microsoft 365 Copilot seat ($30 per user per month on enterprise plans). “Advanced work” bills in Copilot Credits at $0.01 each. That covers whole-site creation, document review across large libraries, scheduled AI automations and real-time metadata autofill across a site.
• SharePoint agents for unlicensed users: available only through pay-as-you-go billing to an Azure subscription.

A worked band for 200 users on Microsoft 365 E3: the storage pool is 1 TB + 2 TB = 3 TB. A 5 TB document estate adds about 2,048 GB × $0.20 = roughly $410 a month, or $4,900 a year. Licensing Copilot for the 40 knowledge managers and contract owners who would use it adds 40 × $30 × 12 = $14,400 a year. Compare a 50-seat legal DMS: iManage at a reported $50-75 per user per month is $30,000-45,000 a year before a five-figure implementation.

Best for

An ops, legal-ops or recruiting leader at a Microsoft 365 organisation of 50-5,000 employees who needs one governed place for contracts, playbooks, candidate packs and deal documents, and wants Copilot or a Copilot Studio agent to answer from them without a new vendor. It wins outright for in-house legal teams handling a few hundred contracts a year, where a library with content types, retention labels and Copilot answers covers what a DMS would.

Not for

Law firms and legal departments that bill or file by matter and must prove need-to-know access. Google Workspace shops. Teams whose working knowledge lives outside Microsoft. Anyone still on SharePoint Server 2019 or older who expects Copilot features on-premises. SharePoint Server 2019 left extended support on 14 July 2026, the same day SharePoint Designer 2013 and InfoPath 2013 retired. Copilot in SharePoint is Online-only.

Versus the alternatives

• iManage: the legal DMS market leader. Pick it when you work by matter and need enforced ethical walls, email filing into matters, and a DMS your outside counsel already use.
• NetDocuments: the other legal DMS leader, cloud-native, reported at $40-65 per user per month. Pick it over iManage when you have no on-prem estate to carry.
• Box: the main cross-industry alternative, with Box AI and a remote MCP server over permissioned files. Pick it when files must be shared heavily with outside parties or your company is not on Microsoft 365.
• Glean: pick it when the problem is search across 50+ non-Microsoft apps. At about $40-50 per seat with a 100-seat minimum it adds at least $48,000 a year, so it only pays off when SharePoint holds well under half your knowledge.
• Notion: the fastest-growing entrant in team knowledge, past $500M in annual revenue in 2025. Pick it for a small team’s operating docs. Keep signed contracts and regulated records in SharePoint, where retention and eDiscovery apply.

Watch-outs

• Copilot finds what permissions already expose. “Everyone except external users” sites and stale sharing links become AI search results the day Copilot is licensed. Guard: run SharePoint Advanced Management data-access governance reports and turn on Restricted Content Discovery for the worst sites before rollout. The SAM features Copilot deployment needs are included once the tenant has at least one Copilot licence.
• Your preview opt-outs stop working on 1 November 2026. Sites excluded from the Knowledge Agent through the KnowledgeAgentScope PowerShell setting are only honoured until that date. Guard: move every exclusion to Restricted Content Discovery or the site’s Settings > Site AI panel before 1 November.
• Advanced work spends credits, and existing policies can include it silently. Spending policies with “Allow new agents and services as they become available” turned on pick up advanced SharePoint work automatically. Guard: in Copilot > Cost management, limit the “Advanced work in SharePoint” policy to a security group of content and site managers, and set a monthly cap with alerts.
• SharePoint is not a matter-centric DMS. Legal teams that build matter folders by hand end up with inconsistent permissions and no ethical walls. Guard: if more than a handful of matters need restricted access, buy iManage or NetDocuments. Otherwise use one site per sensitive matter, with Purview sensitivity labels and quarterly access reviews.

Related: Microsoft 365 Copilot covers the seat that unlocks Copilot in SharePoint. The legal knowledge management entry covers when a DMS becomes necessary, and retrieval-augmented generation explains why document hygiene decides answer quality.