Comparison
Dossiers vs SharePoint
The enterprise document backbone — versus a lightweight spec site your engineers will actually read.
SharePoint is the backbone of document management in Microsoft-centric enterprises: document libraries with versioning and approval flows, retention and compliance policies, intranet portals, and deep Office integration. When governance is the requirement, SharePoint delivers it.
That machinery has a footprint. Sites need administrators, libraries need curation, and engineers routinely can’t find last quarter’s design doc among the folders. Dossiers takes the opposite bet for technical documents: no admin console, no site templates — a Git repository of Markdown files rendered as a clean, searchable website, with pull requests as the approval flow your engineers already know.
At a glance
| Dossiers | SharePoint | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | CLI: free (MIT). Hosted service: TBD — free tier planned | Included in Microsoft 365 from ~$7/user/mo (Business Basic); standalone SharePoint plans were retired in 2026 |
| Open source | Yes — MIT | No — proprietary |
| Where content lives | Markdown files in your Git repository | SharePoint sites and document libraries (Office files, pages) |
| Authoring | Any editor or IDE; plain Markdown with YAML frontmatter | Word/Office with co-authoring; SharePoint page editor |
| Review & approval | Pull requests — drafts appear automatically next to published specs | Content approval and Power Automate flows — powerful, admin-configured |
| Version history | Full Git history of every document | Document versioning per library |
| Full-text search | Full-text search in the hosted service; static builds use browser search | Microsoft Search across sites and files |
| Access control | Google Workspace domain or GitHub org (hosted); static sites can sit behind your own auth | Enterprise-grade permissions, retention, and compliance (Entra ID) |
| Self-hosting | Yes — static output hosts anywhere, or run the CLI server | SharePoint Server exists — heavyweight enterprise licensing |
| Lock-in | None — plain Markdown files stay in your repo | High — content and workflows are deeply tied to the platform |
Prices are rounded list prices as of July 2026 and change often — always check the vendor’s pricing page. Dossiers hosted-service pricing will be announced at launch.
Which one is for you?
Choose SharePoint if…
- Compliance, retention, and records management are hard requirements
- Your organization runs on Microsoft 365 and Office documents
- Non-technical departments own most of the content
- You have admins to run it — and that’s fine
Choose Dossiers if…
- Engineering specs are drowning in document libraries
- You want approval flows without a workflow designer — just pull requests
- Plain text beats .docx for diffing, reviewing, and longevity
- Zero administration is the feature
The bottom line
Don’t try to replace SharePoint — complement it. Contracts, HR records, and anything under retention policy stay where governance lives. Engineering specs, ADRs, and runbooks get a faster home in Git, published by Dossiers, findable by the people who need them.
Frequently asked questions
Our compliance team requires SharePoint. Can we still use Dossiers?
Yes — scope Dossiers to engineering documents that aren’t under records-management policy. Many teams link from a SharePoint intranet page to their Dossiers spec site.
Can Word documents move into Dossiers?
Via conversion — tools like Pandoc turn .docx into Markdown well. Complex layouts (embedded objects, tracked changes) need manual cleanup.
See it with your own specs
Point Dossiers at a folder of Markdown files — you'll have a site before the kettle boils.