SharePoint digital asset management: can SharePoint work as a DAM?

If your brand has loads of images and videos, it's easy to feel overwhelmed with content chaos. Perhaps you need a graphic for a campaign that only exists on an ex-colleague's desktop. Maybe you need an image for social media, but it's buried in a labyrinth of folders on your company's network drive.

If that rings true, it's no wonder you want to make sure your content is managed properly, and are considering SharePoint to do just that.

But hold on a second. Whilst SharePoint is great for managing documents, and especially handy if your business already runs on Microsoft 365, it's not built for managing your visual content. That's what a digital asset management system (DAM) is for.

In this article, we’ll have a proper look at the differences between SharePoint and DAM software. We’ll also show you our DAM solution, Dash, so you can make the best pick for your team. 

TL;DR about SharePoint digital asset management 

• SharePoint is Microsoft's file management and intranet tool. It's brilliant for documents and team sites, and now has a brand center and basic image tagging. But it's set up by IT, priced per user, and isn't built for browsing, resizing or sharing visual content with partners.
• Digital asset management (DAM) is built for managing images and video. With a good DAM (like Dash) you get AI search, custom fields like SKU and campaign, branded portals for retailers, resizing on download and a Shopify integration, from £79 / $109 a month with unlimited users.

In summary: Keep SharePoint for your documents, and give your visual content a proper home in a DAM. Dash can import your SharePoint files and keep your folder structure, so you don't start from scratch. 😉

Does Microsoft have a digital asset management tool?

Sort of, but not really. Microsoft has a SharePoint brand center, which can be used to store brand fonts, colours, logos and images. Here’s what it does well:

• Keeps Microsoft 365 on brand: Brand colours, fonts and themes flow through to SharePoint sites and Office templates, so internal pages and documents stay consistent.
• Stores approved brand images: Logos, icons and backgrounds live in an organization asset library, and your team can pull them into PowerPoint, or ask Copilot to find them.
• Gives brand managers control: Site owners of the brand center site can upload and manage assets, so brand updates don’t all have to go through IT.

It’s a useful step for keeping internal comms on brand. But a Global Administrator has to set it up, you only get one brand center for your whole organisation, and some features depend on your licence (for example brand fonts in PowerPoint for the web need E3 or E5). Most importantly, it’s built for people inside your organisation working in Microsoft 365. There’s no self-serve portal for retailers, no resizing images for different channels, and no Shopify integration, so it isn’t designed to be the home for your product photography and campaign content.

That’s why many brands use SharePoint alongside a dedicated DAM like Dash. Scoot down this article to see how the two work together.

What’s SharePoint?

SharePoint is part of Microsoft 365. It’s a file management tool that lets you create internal workspaces and websites for your team. You can upload news items, post updates and create individual department sites, all linked by one main site.

Think of it as your company intranet, a place for teams to share documents and find the information they need to do their jobs.

One area SharePoint isn’t so great at, however, is visual content management. That’s where a digital asset management system comes into its own. Scoot down to learn more about DAM, or check out tips for using SharePoint as a digital asset management solution below. 

How to use SharePoint for digital asset management

If you want to try SharePoint as your DAM first, here’s how to get the most out of it:

• Set up the brand center: Your global admin can turn on the SharePoint brand center and an Organization Assets Library for logos, fonts and approved images. Your team can then pull those images straight into PowerPoint.
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• Switch on image tags: SharePoint can add an Image Tags column that tags image files automatically when they’re uploaded. The free version uses a basic set of 37 terms, and richer AI tagging is a paid add-on that only covers new uploads.
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• Add your own columns: Create columns for things like product, campaign or season so you can filter your library. Agree on the values upfront, or you’ll end up with “SS26”, “Spring 26” and “spring-summer” all meaning the same thing.
  
  
• Use a tiles view: Switch your image libraries to tiles so you can see thumbnails rather than a list of file names.
  
  
• Build approvals with Power Automate: If you need sign-off on new content, Power Automate can send approval requests, though someone will need to set up the flow.

Where it stops: Even with all that set up, SharePoint can’t resize images for different channels on download, give retailers a branded portal to help themselves, or push product images to Shopify. And every step above needs someone with admin rights and a bit of time. If that sounds like more work than you’d hoped, that’s usually the moment brands start looking at a dedicated DAM. 😅

What’s digital asset management?

Tools like SharePoint (and Drive and Dropbox, for that matter) excel at file management. Digital asset management platforms are built for visual content. Put simply, they let you organise, manage and share your brand’s images, videos, marketing assets and brand guidelines with ease.

Think about how you’re currently storing your visual content and managing digital assets. Rather than wasting hours trawling through shared drives for campaign assets, wouldn’t you rather get on with your job? If yes, then a DAM could be just the solution you’re looking for. 

(If no, then… are you alright? Because I’m worried about you.)

What makes a DAM so useful is how quickly you can find the assets you need. With AI search in Dash, you can type what’s in the image, like “red dress on a beach”, and find it even if nobody tagged it that way. You can also connect to your Shopify store and assign live SKU codes to your assets. 

Read more in our introduction to digital asset management.

DAM vs SharePoint: weighing up your options

Now you know a bit more about the two contenders, let’s dig into their similarities and differences. We’ll start with their pros and cons.

DAM vs SharePoint: pros and cons

What are the benefits of SharePoint for file management?

• Collaboration: SharePoint gives your teams a single place to view and work on documents, PDFs and spreadsheets.
• It’s part of Microsoft 365: If you already use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams, SharePoint slots right in, with OneDrive and co-authoring built in.
• Productivity: SharePoint helps you keep track of projects within your teams. You can keep an eye on deadlines, see who’s working on what and give feedback, all within the system.

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What are the cons of SharePoint for digital asset management?

• It’s hard to browse your images: SharePoint is built around lists of files, not visual libraries. It’s an issue we often hear from brands moving from SharePoint to Dash. Clicking through file after file to find the right product shot gets old fast.
• Basic image search: SharePoint automatically tags images on upload, but with a basic set of 37 terms like “drawing” or “indoor”. Richer AI tagging is a paid add-on, and it only tags new uploads, not your existing library.
• Sharing with external teams depends on IT: You can share files with people outside your organisation, but it depends on how your admin has set things up, and there’s no branded portal for retailers or distributors to help themselves.
• It gets messy at scale: SharePoint can cope with a small number of images. As your brand grows and you’re managing thousands of product shots and videos, folder structures start to fall apart. This was the case for Mel at Silentnight. She told us:
  
  “Our SharePoint couldn't handle the amount of images and videos we had. It didn't have the capabilities to easily store and search for creative across teams, and it took up a lot of memory and space on the drive.”
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What are the benefits of digital asset management?

• Save time and money: One of the biggest benefits of a DAM (and one your boss will thank you for) is the time you’ll save. If you’re on a salary, your boss is basically paying you to search for the latest product shots. A good DAM pays for itself in no time.
• Protect your brand: If your audience sees old, poor-quality or off-brand content, they may start to question your brand. Keeping fresh, approved content in a DAM means your team is far less likely to share outdated assets.
• Get your visuals to market faster: The quicker you can find and resize your visual assets, the quicker your campaigns go live and the sooner you see those all-important conversions. 🤑
• Manage the full life cycle of your assets: A DAM lets you manage assets from creation in tools like Canva, through to delivering content to your agencies, partners and social channels.
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What are the cons of a DAM for general file management?

• You can’t edit documents: DAM tools are built for image and video organisation. Whilst you can store documents in Dash, you can’t edit them inside it.
• You can’t create intranets: A DAM doesn’t do SharePoint’s job when it comes to company intranets and workspaces. You can create collections and comment on assets, but you can’t build a full-scale intranet.

In summary, SharePoint is a good choice for documents and if you already use Microsoft 365. But if you and your partners need access to images and videos, you’re better off with DAM software like Dash that’s built for exactly that.

You might be able to get away with using SharePoint as your DAM. But it’s a file management system first and foremost, and it’s not built for visual content workflows unless you have a technical whizz on standby to set up automations for you.

Put simply, if you’re creating and using hundreds of marketing assets, SharePoint is going to slow you down.

💡 Read our article that goes into detail about all of Dash’s digital asset management features.

DAM vs SharePoint: what type of companies use them?

The companies that use SharePoint

Companies of all sizes use Microsoft products, from enterprises like AXA and Carlsberg to growing ecommerce brands like Needle and Thread. They use SharePoint as their company intranet and file management system. The problem is it’s just not built for digital asset management.

Because of this, many of these companies end up using a mix of Google Drive and Dropbox on top of SharePoint to manage images and video. Can you imagine how chaotic that gets? 😣

‍What types of companies use digital asset management?‍

Any brand that uses images and videos for marketing will benefit from a DAM. But there are lots of DAM vendors out there, each suited to different types of companies.

Dash, for example, is built for fast-moving ecommerce and DTC brands. Take a look at a few:

• Silentnight: A leading UK sleep brand that moved from SharePoint to Dash because SharePoint couldn’t handle the sheer amount of content they needed to manage. Read the Silentnight case study. 
• Forthglade: A dog food brand who moved from SharePoint to Dash because teams were struggling to find approved imagery. Read the Forthglade case study. 

DAM vs SharePoint: which teams will benefit?

All your teams will benefit from one or the other. It depends on what they’re using it for.

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Marketing teams

Your marketing team might be managing videos and product shots for your website and social media, or audio files for your brand’s podcast. A DAM gives them the freedom to manage and share those assets with other teams, freelancers and agencies. They can use guest upload links to collect content from influencers, and set up approvals to manage new content from designers and agencies.

SharePoint, on the other hand, is useful for sharing written content in Microsoft 365 documents.

👉 Here’s more on how to use Dash as your marketing asset management tool.

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Design teams

Creative teams will love a DAM, because it’s built for exactly the kind of files they work with.

In Dash, designers can sort through their graphics, give everyone access to the latest designs, and filter by file type like JPG, PNG or SVG. Integrations with Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe Express and Figma let them drop Dash images straight into their designs. Read my post all about DAM for designers if you want to delve into more benefits. 🧑‍🎨

SharePoint is great for documents, but it’s not ideal for creative assets.

🤓 Read more on how your team can benefit from design digital asset management software.

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Sales teams

SharePoint is a great home for sales documents, from reports and quotes to proposals and price lists.

But when your sales team needs the latest product shots and branding to send to customers, a DAM should be their asset library of choice. And with Dash’s Microsoft Office integration, they can drop approved images from Dash straight into their PowerPoint decks and Word proposals. 🙌

🤓 Read how the sales team at The History and Heraldry Group use Dash to show new product lines to their customers.

Whichever team you’re in, you can set up approvals in Dash. So if you’re a marketing manager and want to approve graphics uploaded by your designer, simply accept the designs you like or give feedback on the ones that need more work.

DAM vs SharePoint: ease of use

Whatever tools you settle on, you’ll spend a lot of time in them, so it’s important to think about how easy they are to use.

SharePoint looks like most file management systems out there. Its interface is pretty standard and feels similar to Google Drive, so there shouldn’t be much of a learning curve.

Digital asset management software can really vary. Some feel outdated, and others are built for enterprises and feel ridiculously over-complicated.

And then you get DAMs like our very own Dash. It’s clean, easy to understand and does your visual content justice, with images displayed properly rather than as a list of files. Here’s a look at ecommerce brand Haws. They have a gorgeous Dash homepage that reflects their brand and gives them quick access to assets. 😍

DAM vs SharePoint: pricing

If you’re a small business or a growing brand, every penny counts, especially when you need to convince senior management. Here’s how the two compare.

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Digital asset management pricing

Enterprise DAMs are often priced on custom quotes, with implementation fees and long contracts, and many don’t publish their pricing at all. If you’re looking for an affordable DAM that doesn’t sacrifice on quality, Dash is the one for you. Take a look at our post on enterprise digital asset management for more info.

Dash’s pricing starts at £79 / $109 a month, with unlimited users and every feature on every plan. You can save 10% by paying annually, migration is free, and you only need to give 30 days’ notice to leave.

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SharePoint pricing

Microsoft no longer sells SharePoint on its own to new customers, so you’ll get it as part of a Microsoft 365 plan. Prices went up in July 2026, and Microsoft 365 Business Basic now starts at $7 / £5.40 per user a month, with Business Standard at $14 / £10.80, both on an annual plan.

Because you pay per user, costs grow with your team. A 20-person team on Business Standard pays around $280 a month. That said, most brands already pay for Microsoft 365 for email and Office, so the real question isn’t which is cheaper. It’s whether SharePoint is doing a good job of looking after your visual content.

How Dash and SharePoint work together

You don’t have to choose one or the other. Plenty of Dash customers keep SharePoint for documents and use Dash for their images and video.

Moving across is simple. Dash’s SharePoint integration imports your files and keeps your existing folder structure, so your team still knows where everything is on day one. And if you’re coming from a bigger setup, our team will help with migration for free.

Once you’re in, the two keep working side by side. With Dash’s Microsoft Office integration, your team can drop approved images from Dash straight into PowerPoint and Word, so presentations and proposals always use the latest on-brand visuals. ✨

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SharePoint vs DAM: which is better for my digital assets?

DAM tools and SharePoint serve different purposes, so it’s worth deciding what you need each one to do.

Our recommendation? Budget for a DAM to manage your visual content, and use a tool like SharePoint to collaborate on documents and presentations. Asking SharePoint to do everything is just going to cause you pain in the long run.

💡 If you’re looking for a different home for your documents, check out our article on SharePoint alternatives.

 FAQs about SharePoint digital asset management 

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Can SharePoint be used as a DAM?

It can for a small number of images, but it isn’t built for it. SharePoint is a document management tool, so it’s missing things like resizing on download, branded portals for partners and ecommerce integrations. Most growing brands find it slows them down once they’re managing hundreds of product shots and videos.

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Does Microsoft have a digital asset management tool?

Not a full one. Microsoft’s SharePoint brand center lets admins store brand fonts, colours and images for use across Microsoft 365, especially PowerPoint. But it’s set up by a global admin, focuses on internal use and restricts external access, so it doesn’t replace a DAM for sharing content with agencies, retailers or your online store.

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What’s the best DAM for SharePoint users?

Look for a DAM that imports from SharePoint and works with Microsoft Office. Dash imports your SharePoint files and keeps your folder structure, and its Office integration lets your team drop approved images into PowerPoint and Word. It costs from £79 / $109 a month with unlimited users, so you’re not paying per seat on top of your Microsoft 365 licences.

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Does Dash integrate with SharePoint?

Yes. Dash’s SharePoint integration imports your files and keeps your folder structure, so moving across doesn’t mean starting from scratch. Dash also integrates with Microsoft Office, so your team can drop images from Dash into PowerPoint and Word.

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How much does SharePoint cost?

SharePoint comes as part of Microsoft 365, starting at $7 / £5.40 per user a month for Business Basic on an annual plan. Microsoft stopped selling standalone SharePoint plans to new customers in 2026, and Microsoft 365 prices rose in July 2026.

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Is a DAM worth it if we already pay for Microsoft 365?

Usually, yes, if your team works with a lot of images and video. Microsoft 365 is brilliant for documents and email, but a DAM saves the hours lost hunting for, resizing and sending visual content. Dash costs from £79 / $109 a month with unlimited users, so the price doesn’t grow as you add your team, freelancers and agencies.

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Can I share SharePoint images with agencies and retailers?

You can, but it depends on how your IT team has set up external sharing, and there’s no self-serve portal. In Dash, you can share by link or email, or give retailers and distributors their own branded portal to download approved assets themselves.

Try Dash free for 14 days or book a demo with our team.