You already pay for SharePoint. That is the real question

Start with the honest part

If your firm is on Microsoft 365, you are already paying for SharePoint, and any tool you add is an additional cost on top of something you own. That argument is real and it deserves a straight answer rather than a rhetorical one.

SharePoint can genuinely do this. Microsoft publishes guidance for using SharePoint as a business-to-business extranet, where partners connect to a members-only site, guests are restricted to the site they were invited to, and activity is audited. That is a supported pattern, not a workaround.

And external guests are cheap. They do not need a paid Microsoft 365 licence to view or edit files shared with them, and Entra External ID bills by monthly active users above a large free allowance - for a professional firm with a few hundred clients, the guest cost is effectively nothing.

So the case against SharePoint is not licence cost. It is what you have to build and maintain, and one design decision about identity.

---

Side-by-side

	SharePoint Online	Droplana
Category	Content platform with external sharing	Client document portal, two-way
Client identity	Guest object created in your directory (UserType=Guest)	None - no account, no directory entry
Client authentication	One-time email passcode, or an existing Microsoft or federated account	Email magic link, or existing Google/Microsoft sign-in; device remembered 90 days
Anonymous option	"Anyone" links - no authentication, not auditable	Relaxed level permits permanent links; Strict is the default
Per-client isolation	Site-level; a site per client if you build it that way	One portal per client, always
Document checklist visible to client	Via Lists or Power Automate	Built in
Per-file comments and status	Not native; Lists, Power Automate or third party	Built in
PDF signing	Not native; third-party integration	In-browser, with a public verification page
Storage	1 TB + 10 GB per licence; 25 TB per site; 250 GB per file	2 GB free to 1 TB on Studio; 500 GB add-ons
Admin controls	Extensive - domain allow/block lists, link expiry, disable Anyone links, site-level overrides	Three portal security levels
API and integrations	Extensive	None
Data location	EU Data Boundary (EU/EFTA) if eligible; Multi-Geo takes a tenant out of scope	Hetzner, Germany only
Best for	Firms with M365 admin capacity that want one platform	Firms that want the client layer working this week

Microsoft's limits, licensing and boundary terms change. Check learn.microsoft.com rather than relying on this page.

---

The identity difference

This is the sharpest factual distinction, and it is a design decision rather than a gap.

When you share a document with someone outside your organisation using a "Specific people" link, the recipient verifies with a one-time passcode sent to their email. With Entra B2B integration enabled - the default - that creates a guest user object in your tenant directory, carrying the #EXT# identifier. The guest persists. It can be added to groups, audited, and managed like any other directory object.

For many organisations that is exactly right. Auditability and lifecycle management are the point of having identities.

For a small professional practice with four hundred clients, it means four hundred guest objects in your directory, each of which is now something to govern: who reviews them, who removes them when an engagement ends, what happens to the ones that go dormant. Guest lifecycle is a real administrative discipline, and it is one that small firms adopt in principle and abandon in practice.

Droplana takes the other approach. Clients have no account and appear in no directory. There is a client record inside your business account and nothing else - no credential to provision, no object to govern, no offboarding step beyond revoking that client's access, which is immediate.

The alternative inside SharePoint is an "Anyone" link, which requires no authentication and creates no guest - and, per Microsoft's own documentation, cannot be audited and can be forwarded. That is a meaningfully weaker position than either of the above for client documents.

---

What you would have to build

The extranet pattern gives you a site guests can reach. It does not give you the things that make a client portal useful day to day.

• A per-client structure. You decide: a site per client, or one site with folders and carefully maintained permissions. Both work and both are yours to design and keep correct.
• A checklist the client can see. Not native. Microsoft Lists or Power Automate.
• Per-file status and approvals. Not native. Power Automate, or a third-party product.
• Per-file comments as a client conversation. Not a native feature in the way a portal means it.
• PDF signing. Not native; a third-party integration.
• External sharing policy. Tenant and site level settings: domain allow or block lists, "Anyone" link expiry between 30 and 730 days, whether Anyone links exist at all. The most restrictive setting wins, which is good design and means someone has to understand the interaction.

None of this is hard for a competent Microsoft 365 administrator. All of it is a project, and the honest question is not whether it can be done but whether it will be - because a half-built extranet with inconsistent permissions is worse than either finished alternative.

If you have that administrator and they have time, build it. You will end up with something more capable than we sell.

---

Where Droplana is the better fit

You want the client layer working this week. One portal per client, a checklist they can see, per-file comments and status, and in-browser signing, assembled. No Lists, no flows, no site architecture decisions.

You do not want four hundred guests in your directory. Covered above. If guest lifecycle governance is a discipline your firm will not sustain, not creating the identities is a defensible answer.

Your clients will not manage a Microsoft sign-in. A one-time passcode is a decent experience, and it is still an authentication flow inside somebody else's identity system. Droplana clients open one permanent link, confirm by email magic link or with a Google or Microsoft account they already have, and the device is remembered for 90 days.

You want one country, not a boundary. The EU Data Boundary is a genuine commitment covering EU and EFTA countries, and it is the right answer for many firms. It is also multi-country, and Microsoft states that purchasing Multi-Geo capabilities takes a tenant out of its scope. Droplana stores files, comments and metadata only on Hetzner infrastructure in Germany, with no other region available, under Ubique d.o.o., registered in Croatia. Whether "Germany, full stop" is worth more to you than "EU and EFTA" is a real question rather than a rhetorical one - our post on what EU-hosted actually means sets out how to compare claims like these.

---

Where SharePoint wins outright

• Storage. 1 TB plus 10 GB per licence, 25 TB per site, 250 GB per file. We are not in the same range.
• Everything else it does. Intranet, search, co-authoring, Teams, retention labels, DLP, eDiscovery. Droplana holds client documents and nothing else.
• Integrations and API. Extensive on one side, absent on ours.
• Administrative control. Domain restrictions, link expiry, conditional access, audit logs across the tenant. Our controls are three portal security levels, plus an owner-exportable activity trail per business, not tenant-wide.
• You already own it. Genuinely the strongest argument, and the reason to try the extranet pattern before buying anything.

---

What Droplana does not do

• It does not edit or co-author documents, and it has no intranet, search or Teams features.
• It has no tenant-wide controls such as conditional access, retention labels or DLP. Its controls are three portal security levels and an activity trail the owner can export.
• Its storage tops out at 1 TB on Studio, plus 500 GB per storage add-on.
• It has no integrations and no public API, so it does not connect to Microsoft 365.

---

The realistic recommendation

If you have Microsoft 365 and an administrator with capacity, follow Microsoft's extranet guidance first. It is documented, supported, and free at the margin. Give it a month with a few real clients.

Two things tend to decide it after that. Whether the checklist and status layer gets built or stays on a list of intentions. And whether anyone is governing the guest objects that accumulate.

If both hold up, stay where you are. If either does not, a dedicated portal is the smaller answer - considerably less capable, and already assembled.

The accounting practices page and the legal page show what that per-client layer looks like in use, and the client portal guide is the broader evaluation framework. There is also a comparison with general cloud drives, which covers the simpler "just share a OneDrive folder" version of this question.

---

Check our simple pricing (or start free)

Storage levels and team seats scale with your plan.
Security, per-client encryption, isolation, in-browser PDF signing, and data export are the same on every plan.
No per-client fees. Tax calculated by Creem at checkout.

Related comparisons

Firms comparing hosted document platforms can read Droplana vs ShareFile and Droplana vs Onehub. If you would rather host storage yourself, see Droplana vs Nextcloud.