Alternative to SharePoint for building enterprise applications
Introduction
SharePoint is undoubtedly one of the most popular solutions in the .NET world. Companies use it as a corporate portal, document storage, CRM, employee management tool and what not. And they all face the same issues. Having analyzed them we came up with DWKit—a decent alternative to SharePoint and a product that is designed to create enterprise applications and solve the following problems:
- Improving time-to-market
- Eliminating budget overrun
DWKit allows you to release a proof of concept of your application within a few weeks without requiring any special skills from your developers.
Functionality comparison
We compared DWKit and SharePoint’s key features, which are required when developing enterprise applications:
| # | Features | DWKit | SharePoint |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Workflow | Yes | Yes |
| 2 | Additional workflow features | Yes, rich functionality out of the box. | Addition of third-party modules is required for each feature. |
| 3 | Form builder | Yes, HTML drag & drop | No, integration of a third-party form builder is required. |
| 4 | Source code available | Yes | No |
| 5 | Content management | No | Yes |
| 6 | User interface | React/Redux, JavaScript, HTML, CSS | JavaScript, HTML, CSS |
| 7 | Development process | Simple; starting with DWKit take only a few clicks; everything is in a single project | Complicated; starting with SharePoint takes at least a week of studying documentation; you'll have to upload separate modules to SharePoint |
| 8 | Data model | Fully dynamic | Dynamic for dictionaries based on XML, static for module models. |
| 9 | Security | Role-based or permission-based access control; Active Directory/LDAP support; Integrated into the Form Builder | Role-based access control; Active Directory/LDAP support |
| 10 | Metadata format | JSON | XML |
| 11 | Development equipment | MS Visual Studio 2017+ or JetBrains Rider, .NET Core 2, Webpack | MS Visual Studio, .NET Framework (C#/VB), SharePoint SDK |
| 12 | OS support | Windows/Linux/MacOS | Windows |
| 13 | Database support | MS SQL, PostgreSQL | MS SQL |
SharePoint might be a decent tool for content management and editing within an organization, but it is extremely complicated when it comes to adding custom functionality.
DWKit allows you to create cross-platform applications using contemporary approaches to UI development. The ‘all-in-one project’ concept simplifies development and lowers budget overrun risks and delivery terms.
Form Builder and Workflow Designer help a non-developer make changes to forms and workflows, whereas a dynamic data model and an in-built security model allow to introduce changes without a rebuild.
DWKit—a decent alternative to SharePoint
DWKit is a unique product of its kind in the market. It is the only .NET Core-based BPM system capable of being run on Windows, Linux and macOS. DWKit comes with all the necessary tools: Form Builder, Workflow Designer and Security. We follow the ‘vendor unlocked’ principle. This is why our licenses are perpetual and our source code is available to our customers as an extra option.
DWKit ensures minimal proof of concept delivery period and reduces budget overrun risks due to a drag-&-drop approach to form and process modeling and a logical, yet simple concept of system objects.