Understanding SharePoint Archiving Costs: What to Expect and How to Save

Breaking Down the Costs of SharePoint Storage and Archiving

If you’re looking into SharePoint archiving solutions, chances are one of your first questions is: How much is this going to cost? The answer? Well, it depends.

Costs vary based on the provider, licensing model, and how much data you’re dealing with. But one thing’s for sure, without a proper strategy, your Microsoft 365 storage bills can spiral out of control.

How Much Does SharePoint Storage Actually Cost?

Before we dive into third-party solutions, let’s talk about what Microsoft charges for SharePoint storage ‘overage’:

If your data is growing fast, this can quickly rack up thousands (or even millions) in extra fees.

• Microsoft gives you 1TB of pooled SharePoint storage per organisation, plus 10GB per licensed user.
• If you go over your allocation, extra SharePoint storage (overage) costs £0.18 per GB per month.
• If your data is growing fast, this can quickly rack up thousands (or even millions) in extra fees.

That’s why many businesses start looking at archiving solutions, to cut down on storage usage and keep costs under control.

Third party solutions can save you up to 50% on current storage bills, and offer a host of other benefits to help manage sprawl and governance for the longer term. 

It’s an important decision to get right; we know of a couple of organisations who’ve had challenges with one vendor or another, and we’re helping them move data out. It can be done, but there are costs.

Pricing comparison of different SharePoint archiving solutions

Every archiving solution comes with its own pricing model. Here’s a rundown of the most common ones:

TechArrow

• How it’s priced: Subscription-based with tiered pricing.
• Where your data lives: Supports full-text search capabilities, making it a solid Microsoft-native archiving alternative.
• Best for: Companies looking for deep search capabilities within their archived SharePoint data.
• Expected cost: Still an emerging player, so pricing varies based on storage needs and indexing features.To reduce the number of versions SharePoint saves, you can apply a limit.

Microsoft Archive

• How it’s priced: Integrated within Microsoft 365, additional costs depend on storage usage.
• Where your data lives: Stays within your Microsoft tenant, offering seamless integration with existing tools.
• Best for: Organisations who have a well organised SharePoint environment, who are able to archive SharePoint sites, and are confident that restores will be rarely required/ have helpdesk capabilities and processes to handle restores when needed.
• Expected cost: Can be a cost-effective option if you’re already working to Microsoft best practices, and don’t mind the user experience, which requires IT Admin interaction to restore. Could be expensive if you misjudge, and frequent restores are required, as Microsoft Archive will restore the whole site. File level archiving and restores are coming down the road.

AvePoint Opus

• How it’s priced: Subscription-based, per TB.
• Where your data lives: Either in your own Microsoft tenant, or AvePoint hosted.
• Best for: Organisations looking to trim down SharePoint storage without losing control of their archived data.
• Expected cost: More cost-effective than paying Microsoft for extra storage, especially if you’re dealing with large volumes of data.

Veritas Alta SaaS Protect

• How it’s priced: User-based pricing, subscription based.
• Where your data lives: Vendor-hosted only (i.e., you don’t own the storage).
• Best for: Companies that need top-notch eDiscovery and compliance features.
• Expected cost: On the more costly side, mainly because it includes full-text indexing and advanced legal discovery tools.

Archive 360

• How it’s priced: Pay-per-TB storage model.
• Where your data lives: Cloud-based, with a strong focus on compliance-driven archiving.
• Best for: Businesses with strict regulatory requirements.
• Expected cost: Can be higher due to its specialist compliance features.

Keepit

• How it’s priced: More of a backup solution than a true archiving tool.
• Where your data lives: Cloud-based backup, with fixed retention periods.
• Best for: Companies that want disaster recovery more than storage reduction.
• Expected cost: Probably not the best choice if your main goal is cutting SharePoint storage costs.

How much can you actually save?

The good news is, with the right archiving approach, you can significantly cut SharePoint storage costs. Here’s how:

• Ditching excessive versions: SharePoint hoards old document versions, eating up storage space. Archiving outdated versions can slash storage use by 20-40%.
• Having a good clean up: Inactive OneDrive accounts can stick around forever, silently eating up space. Archiving these accounts can free up terabytes.
• Moving data to cheaper storage: Microsoft charges £0.18 per GB per month, but many third-party solutions offer lower cost options that can cut costs by 50% or more.
• Applying proper governance: There are some great solutions out there to help you stop the storage problem before it starts by setting rules on what gets stored, and for how long.

Final Thoughts: Don’t waste money on unnecessary storage

Without a proper archiving strategy, your SharePoint costs will only keep climbing. The right solution can help you cut costs, improve compliance, and future-proof your Microsoft 365 setup.

At Essential, we can take the hassle out of choosing a SharePoint archiving solution. We help you:

• Handle the onboarding and setup so you don’t have to stress about it.
• Compare the real costs of different solutions; no hidden fees, no sales fluff.
• Implement smart archiving strategies to keep your storage needs in check. 
• Find the right licensing model to match your budget and business goals.

Want to find out more? Let’s have a chat. We’ll help you figure out your best archiving options.