As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates M-Files 2.5/5 and Microsoft SharePoint 1.5/5 in Document Management (DMS). Weighted by what each judge cares about, 6 of the 6 judges pick M-Files and 0 pick Microsoft SharePoint. M-Files scores higher on 5 of 6 criteria (Capture, OCR & indexing, Document workflows & integrations, European sovereignty, plus 2 more). Microsoft SharePoint scores higher on 1 of 6 criteria (Audit-proof archiving & retention). Provenance — M-Files: EU-Made; Microsoft SharePoint: Rest of world. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
M-Files leads on five of the seven criteria by 6–0 judge leans: capture and indexing (5.2 to 2.0), versioning and permissions (6.0 to 3.5), document workflows (7.0 to 4.2), search and portability (4.7 to 3.3) and sovereignty (4.8 to 2.0). The lean flips on pricing transparency, 6–0 for SharePoint (5.8 to 4.0): SharePoint publishes 6,07 € for Business Basic, 20,36 € for Business Standard with Copilot and 27,73 € for Business Premium with Copilot, per user per month on annual billing, excluding VAT, while M-Files publishes a price only for Essentials, at €65 monthly per seat. Audit-proof archiving divides the judges: 2 lean SharePoint, 4 tie, means 3.3 to 3.0. The five persona totals that list numbers run M-Files 4.6–5.6 against SharePoint 3.1–3.5. Sovereignty attributes list M-Files subprocessor exposure as US Cloud Act and jurisdiction unknown; SharePoint a US legal entity, data residency unknown.
Choose M-Files if
You need graphical workflow automation with approval assignments documented down to the API — document workflows stands at 7.0 to 4.2, with 6 judges leaning M-Files.
Your intake relies on scanning, email capture or OCR — capture and indexing reads 5.2 to 2.0 with 6 judges leaning M-Files, and we found no public information on SharePoint scanning or email intake.
You need check-out versioning, an Event Log of vault changes and an exportable extended audit log — versioning and permissions, 6.0 to 3.5, 6–0.
Your data protection officer weighs the sovereignty row — 6 judges give it to M-Files at 4.8 to 2.0, and the provenance is listed as EU-made.
You move content between systems often — search and portability stands 4.7 to 3.3, 6–0.
Choose Microsoft SharePoint if
You need published per-user prices before signing: 6,07 € for Business Basic, 20,36 € for Business Standard with Copilot and 27,73 € for Business Premium with Copilot, per user per month on annual billing, excluding VAT — pricing transparency is 5.8 to 4.0, with 6 judges leaning SharePoint.
Your contracting requires a provider with a stated legal entity jurisdiction: SharePoint lists US; M-Files lists jurisdiction unknown.
Your developers build on Microsoft Graph REST APIs, SDKs, Teams bots or PowerShell automation — documented on the captured SharePoint pages.
You weight audit-proof archiving most: means sit at 3.3 to 3.0, with 2 judges leaning SharePoint and 4 tying.
You want Copilot in the published per-user price, as listed for Business Standard and Business Premium.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The GoBD Auditor
Has sat through tax audits on the company side and knows that "GoBD-konform" on a homepage proves nothing. Wants the auditor's Testat with its scope and date, archived documents that cannot change, retention per document type, and a Z3 export the tax office can read.
M-Files
This judge's pick
Microsoft SharePoint
Criterion by criterion
Capture, OCR & indexing
M-Files
Scanner import and drag-and-drop with conversion to searchable PDF are documented, tied to an OCR license and module, an Outlook add-on archives emails with metadata, and the metadata-driven architecture classifies documents automatically. We found no public information on XRechnung or ZUGFeRD being read as structured data, on a validation step for extracted fields, or on duplicate detection.
Microsoft SharePoint
The captured pages describe document libraries, version history and file management between OneDrive and SharePoint, so documents clearly can be stored there, but we found no public information on scanning or email intake, full-text OCR, classification with field extraction, or how XRechnung and ZUGFeRD invoices are read. The connectors shown ingest external items into Microsoft Graph for search and Copilot, which is not document capture into an archive.
Versioning, permissions & audit trail
M-Files
Check-out for objects, an Event Log of vault changes, and version control with lifecycle management are documented, and the Enterprise edition adds an extended audit log with exports plus federated authentication with enterprise key management. We found no public information on whether the trail covers reads and exports, whether administrators' own actions are logged, or how long the log is kept, and no tamper-evidence is described.
Microsoft SharePoint
Document libraries with version history and access control are documented, together with policy-based identity and access management through Microsoft Entra ID. We found no public information on restoring earlier versions, check-in and check-out, or an audit trail of who read, changed, exported or deleted a document.
Audit-proof archiving & retention
M-Files
Retention policies are named under integrated governance, objects can be marked for archiving under "full control of vault" rights, and a Compliance Kit produces PDF/A renditions, a long-term format that appears only in a support article about a signature fix. We found no public information on a GoBD or revisionssicher claim, an auditor's report, how immutability of archived documents is achieved, retention periods per document type, deletion after expiry, or a Z1–Z3 export for the tax office.
Microsoft SharePoint
Microsoft 365 Archive is described as compliant cold storage for inactive SharePoint content, with FAQs on legal hold and searchability of archived content, and policy enforcement automatable with alerts and scheduled deletions. We found no public information on GoBD-compliant revisionssichere archiving, how immutability of archived documents is achieved, retention configured per document type, an auditor's report with its scope, or a Z1–Z3 tax-audit export.
Document workflows & integrations
M-Files
Graphical workflow automation ships in both editions, approval assignments with signature settings exist down to the API, and connectors are documented with their scope for SAP (data import and content repository), Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Salesforce, plus an Adobe Acrobat Sign package without a separate Adobe service contract. We found no public information on DATEV handover, an invoice workflow into ERP, or a REST API with webhooks; the documented API is the COM API.
Microsoft SharePoint
A REST API with SDKs, code samples, a browser test environment and Microsoft Graph change notifications is well documented, alongside bundled apps such as Teams, Planner and Forms. We found no public information on approval or invoice workflows with tasks and deadlines, or on connectors to accounting systems such as DATEV.
Search, retrieval & exit
M-Files
Executed searches can be saved as views and renamed, and OCR produces searchable PDFs that support full-text retrieval. We found no public information on bulk export of documents with their metadata and versions, a documented exit structure, or the post-termination retrieval window; a Smart Migration tool is offered in the catalog, but the captured pages do not state its direction.
Microsoft SharePoint
Search is touched on — content can be found with SharePoint and Copilot Search, and an FAQ addresses whether archived content stays searchable. We found no public information on metadata filters, saved searches, or bulk export of documents with their metadata and versions; for the end of the contract the pages state only that all data is deleted upon cancellation.
European sovereignty
M-Files
The vendor presents itself as a Finnish company (Espoo), offers an on-premises edition alongside the cloud, publishes a DPA with language supplements and a qualified-subprocessor list, and states ISO- and SOC-certified management systems without naming the standards. Where the standard cloud edition stores documents is not stated in the captures, Microsoft Azure is named only for the optional Premium Cloud add-on, and a Data Residency add-on allows content to remain in the customer's Microsoft 365 environment.
Microsoft SharePoint
The German legal notice names Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, USA as provider and expressly states that Microsoft Deutschland GmbH is not the provider, while Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited, the entity EU customers contract with, appears in the same notice. Where documents and metadata are stored and which subprocessors, including any AI provider reading document content, are involved is not stated on the captured pages.
Pricing transparency
M-Files
Essentials is publicly priced at "€65 monthly / per seat" with the billing period stated and the plan inclusions listed, and a pricing page is linked from the homepage. We found no public price for Enterprise or for any named add-on such as storage, Premium Cloud or Outlook Pro, and no public information on storage limits, on-premises licensing and maintenance terms, or contract term and notice period.
Microsoft SharePoint
Per-user prices for the main editions are public with the billing period stated — Microsoft 365 Business Basic at 6,07 € per user per month with annual billing, prices excluding VAT — plus 1 TB of storage per user, a 300-user limit, a one-month trial that converts automatically, and cancellation at any time via the admin centre with a 7-day withdrawal right. We found no public information on storage overage charges, on-premises licensing, or implementation costs.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
M-Files
Microsoft SharePoint
Legal entity
Not determined
Not determined
Ownership
Not determined
Not determined
Data residency
Not determined
Not determined
Subprocessors
US CLOUD Act reach
Not determined
Questions about M-Files and Microsoft SharePoint
Which is better, M-Files or Microsoft SharePoint?
As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates M-Files higher: 2.5/5 against 1.5/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 6 of the 6 judges pick M-Files and 0 pick Microsoft SharePoint. Which one fits depends on the criteria that matter to you; the table on this page shows both side by side, and each judge’s reading has its own page. Both were scored by the same AI bench under the same rubric, from public evidence only, as the methodology describes.
Is M-Files or Microsoft SharePoint European?
M-Files is European (EU-Made). Microsoft SharePoint is not European by provenance (Rest of world). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.