SharePoint vs OneDrive: Which Should Your Business Actually Use?

SharePoint vs OneDrive: Which Should Your Business Actually Use?

If your business uses Microsoft 365, there’s a good chance you use both SharePoint and OneDrive. You might even use them every day without being entirely sure what the difference is.

That’s understandable. Both platforms are designed for storing, accessing and sharing files, both work closely with Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365, and the experience can sometimes feel remarkably similar.

So, when should your business use SharePoint, and when is OneDrive the better choice?

The simplest way to think about it is this: OneDrive is primarily for your individual work, while SharePoint is designed for shared business information and collaboration.

That sounds straightforward, but there’s more to it than that. Choosing the right platform for your files can make a significant difference to how easily your teams collaborate, how securely information is managed and what happens when employees join or leave your organisation.

What is OneDrive?

Microsoft OneDrive is a cloud storage service that gives each Microsoft 365 user their own personal workspace for business files.

Think of it as your business file storage area. You can save documents, spreadsheets, presentations and other files there, access them from different devices and share individual files or folders with colleagues when necessary.

OneDrive is particularly useful for files that you are actively working on yourself. For example, you might use OneDrive to store a presentation you're preparing, a spreadsheet you're working on or draft documents that aren't ready to be shared with the wider business.

It also provides the convenience of automatic synchronisation, meaning you can work with files from your computer while keeping them securely stored in the cloud.

However, the fact that OneDrive allows you to share files doesn't necessarily mean it's the right place for your team's permanent documents.

That's where SharePoint comes in.

What is SharePoint?

Microsoft SharePoint is a platform for managing and collaborating on information across an organisation.

While SharePoint can certainly be used for document storage, it is much more than a shared folder in the cloud. It provides the foundations for team sites, document libraries, intranets, business processes, permissions, metadata and structured information management.

A SharePoint site might contain the documents belonging to a particular department, project or business function. For example, your HR team could have a SharePoint site containing policies, procedures and employee resources, while a project team could have another site containing project documentation, meeting notes and working files.

SharePoint can also form the foundation of a modern company intranet, giving employees a central place to find important information, news, policies and resources.

For a deeper look at what SharePoint can do as an intranet platform, see our guide to SharePoint intranets.

The important distinction is that SharePoint content belongs to the organisation or team, rather than being tied to one individual's personal storage.

SharePoint vs OneDrive: What's the actual difference?

The easiest way to decide between SharePoint and OneDrive is to consider who owns the information and who needs to work with it.

If a document is primarily yours and you're working on it independently, OneDrive is usually the appropriate choice.

If a document belongs to a team, department or business function and needs to remain available regardless of who is working on it, SharePoint is generally the better option.

For example, imagine a sales manager creates a spreadsheet containing their own notes and early-stage ideas for a new sales strategy. Keeping that file in OneDrive makes sense.

Once the strategy becomes an agreed business document that the sales team needs to maintain and access, it would be better placed in an appropriate SharePoint site.

This distinction becomes particularly important when employees leave the organisation.

If important business information is stored exclusively in someone's OneDrive, it can create unnecessary complications when that person leaves. Organisations can recover or transfer access to OneDrive data, but it is far better to avoid making an individual's personal storage the unofficial home for important business information in the first place.

What about Microsoft Teams?

This is where things can get confusing.

Microsoft Teams and SharePoint are closely connected. In fact, files uploaded to a standard Teams channel are stored in SharePoint.

That means your users may already be using SharePoint without ever opening SharePoint directly.

A Teams team typically has an associated SharePoint site, with the files in its channels stored in SharePoint document libraries. This allows Teams to provide the familiar collaboration experience while SharePoint handles the underlying document management.

OneDrive also integrates with Teams, particularly when files are shared directly with individuals or through chat.

The important thing is not to think of Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive as three completely separate storage systems. They're interconnected parts of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, each designed around slightly different ways of working.

Common SharePoint and OneDrive mistakes

One of the most common problems we see is businesses treating OneDrive as a replacement for a proper shared document management system.

Someone creates a folder in their OneDrive, shares it with their colleagues and gradually that folder becomes the team's unofficial document repository.

It works… until it doesn't.

Permissions can become difficult to understand, ownership becomes unclear and important documents can end up being tied to one employee's account.

Another common issue is creating a SharePoint site for every possible purpose without considering how information should actually be structured. SharePoint is powerful, but simply moving every existing network folder into SharePoint doesn't automatically create a good document management system.

The goal should be to create a structure that reflects how your organisation actually works.

That might mean departmental SharePoint sites, project sites, communication sites or a combination of different approaches.

So, which should your business use?

The answer is usually both.

OneDrive and SharePoint aren't competing products where you need to choose one and abandon the other. They solve different problems and work best when they're used together.

Use OneDrive for your own working documents, drafts and files that don't yet have a natural shared home.

Use SharePoint for documents and information that belong to a team, department, project or the organisation as a whole.

And use Teams where it makes sense to give people a familiar workspace for collaboration, knowing that SharePoint is often managing the underlying files.

The bigger question isn't really "SharePoint vs OneDrive". It's whether your organisation has a clear approach to where information should live, who should have access to it and how it should be managed.

Getting more from Microsoft 365

For many businesses, the problem isn't a lack of Microsoft 365 functionality. It's that the tools have grown organically without anyone stepping back to consider how they should fit together.

A well-designed SharePoint environment can make information easier to find, improve collaboration and provide a much stronger foundation for document management. Combined with OneDrive, Teams, Power Automate and the wider Microsoft 365 platform, it can support a much more efficient way of working.

If you're not sure whether your current Microsoft 365 environment is working as well as it could, we offer a free Microsoft environment assessment to help identify opportunities to improve your setup.

Sometimes the answer isn't another tool. It's simply making better use of the ones you already have.