If you’re managing Microsoft 365 for your organization, you’ve probably experienced that sinking feeling when you open your monthly cloud bill. SharePoint Online storage costs have a sneaky way of spiraling out of control, catching even experienced M365 admins off guard.
Modern businesses are drowning in data from multiple sources like Slack conversations, Salesforce records, email attachments, and countless SharePoint documents. All of this information needs to be backed up and stored securely, but the challenge is that the hidden cost becomes unimaginably unbearable.
They do offer built-in space quotas, but these limits have a way of disappearing faster than you’d expect while leaving SMBs facing unexpected overage charges that can devastate IT budgets.
Understanding SharePoint Storage Limits and Pricing
Microsoft’s SharePoint Online storage model starts with a baseline of 1TB, plus an additional 10GB for each licensed user in your organization. For a typical 100-user company, this means you get approximately 2TB of total SharePoint storage included in your subscription.
How Overage Pricing Works
But there aren’t only glitters. Once you exceed your allocated storage limit, Microsoft charges $0.20 per GB per month for additional storage. This might not sound like much, but it adds up incredibly fast.
For example, takeThere is a 100-user company that has generated around 8TB of data across all its systems. With only 2TB included in their SharePoint allocation, they’re looking at 8TB of overage storage.
Let’s do the math now:
8TB × 1,024GB × $0.20 = $1,638.40 per month, or nearly $19,700 per year in storage overage fees alone.
The True Cost of SharePoint Storage Overages
That $19,700 annual overage cost we calculated? It’s just the beginning. Most organizations don’t realize how quickly their storage consumption grows due to several hidden factors, such as:
- Version History: SharePoint automatically saves multiple versions of documents, potentially doubling or tripling your storage usage without you realizing it. We’ve seen this be a big problem in some companies, especially those that do videos. You can have multiple versions of a 3 GB video file with this.
- Backup Requirements: Your SharePoint data needs to be backed up, and those backups consume additional storage space. But since SharePoint itself is not a backup solution, therefore, ExchangeSavvy bridges this gap by offering a stubbing feature for space savings.
- Data Retention: Old emails, outdated documents, and archived projects continue to consume expensive SharePoint storage long after they’re actively needed.
These hidden storage consumers create a compounding effect. As your business grows and generates more data, not only does your primary storage increase, but your backups, versions, and retained data multiply accordingly. Sounds like a nightmare, right? But here’s the relief.
How ExchangeSavvy’s Model Cuts Storage Costs
ExchangeSavvy offers an innovative solution, which is basically an instance of the Alta SaaS Protetection (ASP) solution from Cohesity (previously Veritas). It addresses SharePoint storage costs head-on through its unique pointer/stub file technology.
For example, instead of storing large files directly in expensive SharePoint for business, ExchangeSavvy’s system creates a lightweight stub files model that acts as an intelligent pointer to the actual data stored in more cost-effective backend storage.
So, eventually, using the stubbing method, 70% of your inactive data is being replaced by a tiny 1k file link.
The Benefits of Pointer/Stub Files in SharePoint
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Better User Experience
Stub files aresystem is a transparent model that offers convenience to the users. For example, files appear exactly as they always have in SharePoint and with complete metadata, permissions, and search functionality.
So now users can open, edit, and share files just as they always have. The only difference is that the heavy data storage is handled more efficiently and cost-effectively at the backend.
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Preserved Access and Metadata
When a file is stubbed, all the important information remains in SharePoint, including:
- File names and folder structures
- Metadata and properties
- Permissions and sharing settings
- Search indexing and discoverability
It means no more digging through endless data when you have everything at your fingertips.
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On-Demand Restoration
When users need to access the full file content, ExchangeSavvy’s system easily retrieves it from the backend storage. This process is fast and transparent, ensuring productivity never suffers.
What Is Alta SaaS Protection (ASP)?
ExchangeSavvy’s Alta SaaS Protection tenant, powered by Cohesity, is the proprietary engine that makes this all possible. This unique multi-tenant protection solution provides enterprise-grade capabilities while maintaining the cost efficiency that SMBs desperately need. This model is especially beneficial for SMBs handling challenges like:
- Tight IT Budgets: Unexpected cloud storage overages can derail carefully planned IT spending.
- Unpredictable Costs: Traditional storage models make it difficult to forecast and control monthly expenses.
- Limited IT Resources: SMBs often lack dedicated personnel to constantly monitor and optimize storage usage.
However, ExchangeSavvy’s approach addresses these challenges directly by providing:
- Transparent lower storage costs
- Automated optimization that doesn’t require constant management
- Enterprise-grade backup and protection capabilities at SMB-friendly prices
- Automatically tier your backup data to optimize storage costs
- Data deduplication and compression in transit
- Consumption-based pricing lets you pay for what you use, so there is no need to account for user licensing
How the Pointer/Stub File System Works
Visual Concept:
Left: SharePoint with original files → Middle: Pointer/Stub File replaces large files → Right: Large files moved to lower-cost backend storage – with labeled arrows.
The process is elegantly simple:
- Original files are securely moved to optimized backend storage
- Lightweight stub files replace them in SharePoint
- Users continue working normally, unaware of the behind-the-scenes optimization
- Storage costs drop dramatically while functionality remains as expected
Take Control of Your SharePoint Costs with ExchangeSavvy
SharePoint storage pricing represents one of the most overlooked budget killers for SMBs using Microsoft 365. The combination of growing data volumes, hidden storage consumers like versioning and backups, and Microsoft’s overage pricing model creates a perfect storm of escalating costs.
ExchangeSavvy’s innovative stub file technology offers a way out of this expensive trap. It reduces SharePoint storage requirements while preserving the complete user experience, so organizations can redirect thousands of dollars from storage overages to more strategic IT investments.
FAQs
What is SharePoint used for?
It is a Microsoft platform that helps businesses store, share, and collaborate on documents and data in one secure place.
What are the benefits of SharePoint?
SharePoint centralizes document management, enhances team collaboration, automates workflows, secures data, and integrates well with Microsoft 365 apps.
How much does SharePoint cost?
SharePoint costs vary by plan, typically $5-$35 per user/month. It includes storage, but extra storage costs about $0.20 per GB/month if limits are exceeded.
What is SharePoint used for in business?
Businesses use SharePoint for document collaboration, intranet portals, project management, process automation, and secure data storage to boost efficiency and control.
