Phone Number
877.832.4180Email
info@techmedics.comPasadena, CA
45 S. Arroyo Pkwy. Ste. 104
Pasadena, CA 91105
Pasadena, CA 91105
Denver, CO
383 Corona St. Ste. 100 Denver, CO 80218
Dallas, TX
2451 W. Grapevine Mills Cir. #541 Grapevine, TX 76051
Most businesses have moved their email and calendars to the cloud. Files are often the last piece, and the hardest one, because years of folders, client documents, and project archives have to land somewhere new without breaking how people work.
For many firms, the choice comes down to two names: SharePoint and Egnyte. The short answer: SharePoint is the file platform built into Microsoft 365, so most businesses already pay for it. Egnyte is a separate file platform you subscribe to on its own, and it is built with large files and offices that mix cloud and local storage in mind. For a typical office working in Word, Excel, and Outlook, SharePoint usually covers the need. For a firm that opens large design files every day, such as an architecture or engineering practice working in big CAD (computer-aided design) models, Egnyte is worth a serious look.
The better fit depends on the size of your files, where your people work, and how often you share with clients and partners.
In this blog post, we will explain what each platform is, compare five key differences from large files to cost, and walk through an architecture firm as a worked example. We will also explain how Techmedics’ cloud services can help you choose and set up the right one.
SharePoint is Microsoft’s file storage and collaboration service. It comes with Microsoft 365 business plans and sits behind the “Files” tab in Microsoft Teams. Many businesses already use it as a replacement for the office file server, an approach we covered in why you should replace your file server with SharePoint.
Egnyte is a separate cloud file platform. It works alongside Microsoft 365 rather than replacing it, and it adds an optional in-office device for faster access to large files.
This is where the two differ most. SharePoint accepts files up to 250 GB each. On each computer, the OneDrive app shows every file but downloads a file only when someone opens it. That works well for everyday documents. With very large files, opening them depends heavily on your internet connection. Microsoft also recommends syncing no more than 300,000 files in a single library (a shared folder area within SharePoint) for best performance. Long-running project archives can reach that number.
Egnyte’s per-file upload limits depend on the plan: 100 GB on Team and Business plans, and 150 GB on Enterprise Lite and Enterprise plans. Its bigger difference is Smart Cache, an optional device in your office that keeps frequently used files on the local network. Egnyte describes it as combining local performance with “global file locking”, which stops two people from overwriting each other’s changes to the same file. That design aims to make opening a large file in the office feel like opening it from the old file server.
SharePoint permissions follow sites, libraries, and Microsoft 365 groups (shared membership lists that grant access to a team’s site, mailbox, and files). A team created in Microsoft Teams, for example, comes with its own SharePoint site. This fits businesses that organize work by department or team.
Egnyte permissions follow folders, with four main access levels: Owner, Full, Editor, and Viewer. This often feels familiar to staff who grew up on a mapped network drive and think in terms of “who can open this project folder.”
Both platforms let you share files with people outside the company. In SharePoint, guests can view and edit documents in a web browser, with rights based on the permission level you give them. One setting worth knowing: Microsoft notes that external sharing is turned on by default for the organization as a whole, and recommends keeping confidential files in a site with external sharing turned off.
Egnyte offers shared folders and upload links, which let someone outside the company send files into a chosen folder. Upload links are allowed by default, and an administrator or folder owner can turn them off for a specific folder.
SharePoint is part of Microsoft 365, so Teams, Outlook, and the Office apps work with it out of the box. That tight connection is one reason many businesses stay on Microsoft rather than switching platforms, a choice we compared in Google Workspace vs. Microsoft 365.
Egnyte connects to Microsoft 365 too. Its Teams integration lets people share and co-edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files saved in Egnyte without leaving Teams. That co-editing still requires a Microsoft 365 subscription, and an administrator has to turn the integration on.
SharePoint storage is shared across the whole company: 1 TB plus 10 GB for each license. A 30-person firm, for example, starts with about 1.3 TB. More storage can be bought in 1 GB increments. Microsoft warns that a business that keeps running over its limit risks read-only mode. In that mode, people can open files but can’t add or change them until the business frees up space or buys more.
Egnyte is a separate subscription that varies by plan, plus a local device if you choose Smart Cache. It does not replace your Microsoft 365 licenses, so the honest comparison is “Microsoft 365 alone” versus “Microsoft 365 plus Egnyte.”
Consider a 30-person architecture firm with one main office, a few staff working from home, and a habit of sending drawings to engineers and contractors. Egnyte’s own guidance for this industry names the pain points directly: slow opening and saving of CAD files, and the effort of shipping hard drives from job sites. It also notes that Smart Cache lets several designers work on the same Revit model (Revit is a common building-design program) at once only when they work from the same office.
Say this firm’s Revit models run to several gigabytes, two designers often edit the same model, and the home-based staff wait minutes for drawings to open. If the firm also has someone to look after a device in the office, Egnyte deserves a trial. If its files were mostly documents and PDFs instead, SharePoint would likely be enough, and it is already paid for. Storing project files in one central place, instead of emailing them back and forth, is something SharePoint has offered architecture, engineering, and construction firms for years.
Firms that support architecture or engineering projects across several offices face the same trade-off, with one more variable: whether staff in different offices edit the same files.
If you’re weighing where your firm’s files should live next, request a consultation today with Techmedics.
Technology challenges rarely have one-size-fits-all solutions. A consultation with Techmedics can help you better understand your options and identify practical next steps for your organization. Start with a conversation about what you're trying to accomplish and where technology may be getting in the way.
