"Office 365 Extra File Storage" pricing is criminal

Question

"Office 365 Extra File Storage" pricing is criminal

Ash Prince 20

Maybe I'm missing something. My wife's small business is running out of storage on her company's sharepoint. She has purchased 16 Microsoft 365 Business Standard licenses and only gets 1 TB of sharepoint storage.

Looking at this link from Microsoft, it appears she needs to purchase the "Office 365 Extra File Storage" add-on. Microsoft wants to charge $0.25 per gigabyte per month. This is ludicrously expensive and borderline predatory. That's $250 for an additional terabyte. PER MONTH.

There must be another option to increasing sharepoint storage, right? That's more than she pays for all other licenses and services combined.

Vishal Gujrathi 6 Reputation points

2023-06-23T20:07:27.12+00:00

Compared to other websites it is reasonable.
Arnaud Combes - AGIRWEB 15 Reputation points

2023-11-19T07:19:41.12+00:00

I agree with you Ash, for Sharepoint we need NCE licenses from 1TB to 5TB at a price identical to OneDrive, and allow companies that use this system to stay on this system and not engage in complications and combinations of several solutions which require more complex skills.
Keith O'Neill 20 Reputation points

2024-02-09T18:06:32.0166667+00:00

I couldn't agree more Ash! It's shocking! My small business just ran into this same storage issue today and to say I was shocked at the pricing is a massive understatement. Predatory is the only word for it. They have you locked into the ecosystem and are exploiting that. I'm so shocked that I would consider switching platforms - any suggestions from the group on alternatives.
Cameron Taylor 5 Reputation points

2024-06-23T12:13:18.44+00:00

OMG! Thats $0.25 x 1000 x 12 = $3000 per TB per year. What idiot pays that?

A 1TB disc costs $15

Explain yourself Microsoft!
Veronique Palmer 5 Reputation points

2024-08-07T06:27:58.0066667+00:00

I could not agree more. Microsoft is not playing fair in this on any level. The storage is clearly available to us, as it demonstrated by the fact we can assign 5TB to each user, and up that to 25TB per user with a support call. Yet in SharePoint, we are given a measley 1TB. We need to stand together and demand that Microsoft make all our space available to us in SharePoint and allow us to decide where it will be allocated across SharePoint and OneDrive. The price of extra storage is absolutely reprehensible! I've got a client now, whose had SharePoint for years, that has moved over 200 000 documents back to Dropbox because they refuse to pay ZAR55 500 a year for an extra Terabyte storage! And I don't blame them. And yes we can move stuff to OneDrive too, but then what is the point of SharePoint at all anymore! I am SO frustrated by this. Why are we allowing them to push us around like this?? They have made MORE than enough money off mankind. It's time they did something for us!
Guillermo Delgadillo 1 Reputation point

2024-11-13T17:53:41.8033333+00:00

Microsoft having the default storage size for SharePoint as 1tb is a steal, they should be giving more hence the pricing for their user licenses, as usual Criminal from Microsoft to offer this.
Cord Thomas 5 Reputation points

2025-01-04T17:33:50.4033333+00:00

It's all very silly. Indeed many people are adding licenses to ghost or archive users so that they can use their OneDrive storage. I have never seen a reasonable defense of Microsoft's licensing strategy for storage where 1 TB of extra storage in SharePoint costs 20.5 that of an Office 365 business account that gets you OneDrive storage (or over 40x if you just get the most basic plan which also gets you 1TB OneDrive).

To address the "why SharePoint anymore" question, we have a "strategy" where we create shared folders in OneDrive that are accessible to teams and then link those folders from SharePoint menus as needed. Tedious but saves us tens of thousand of dollars a year.
Andy Babinszki 0 Reputation points

2025-01-21T00:35:31.4433333+00:00

Clearly I've just stumbled into this thread very late in the game. Is the "license" which needs to be purchased in the admin portal 1GB?

4 answers

Your answer

Vishal Gujrathi 6 Reputation points

2023-06-23T20:07:27.12+00:00

Compared to other websites it is reasonable.
Arnaud Combes - AGIRWEB 15 Reputation points

2023-11-19T07:19:41.12+00:00

I agree with you Ash, for Sharepoint we need NCE licenses from 1TB to 5TB at a price identical to OneDrive, and allow companies that use this system to stay on this system and not engage in complications and combinations of several solutions which require more complex skills.
Keith O'Neill 20 Reputation points

2024-02-09T18:06:32.0166667+00:00

I couldn't agree more Ash! It's shocking! My small business just ran into this same storage issue today and to say I was shocked at the pricing is a massive understatement. Predatory is the only word for it. They have you locked into the ecosystem and are exploiting that. I'm so shocked that I would consider switching platforms - any suggestions from the group on alternatives.
Cameron Taylor 5 Reputation points

2024-06-23T12:13:18.44+00:00

OMG! Thats $0.25 x 1000 x 12 = $3000 per TB per year. What idiot pays that?

A 1TB disc costs $15

Explain yourself Microsoft!
Veronique Palmer 5 Reputation points

2024-08-07T06:27:58.0066667+00:00

I could not agree more. Microsoft is not playing fair in this on any level. The storage is clearly available to us, as it demonstrated by the fact we can assign 5TB to each user, and up that to 25TB per user with a support call. Yet in SharePoint, we are given a measley 1TB. We need to stand together and demand that Microsoft make all our space available to us in SharePoint and allow us to decide where it will be allocated across SharePoint and OneDrive. The price of extra storage is absolutely reprehensible! I've got a client now, whose had SharePoint for years, that has moved over 200 000 documents back to Dropbox because they refuse to pay ZAR55 500 a year for an extra Terabyte storage! And I don't blame them. And yes we can move stuff to OneDrive too, but then what is the point of SharePoint at all anymore! I am SO frustrated by this. Why are we allowing them to push us around like this?? They have made MORE than enough money off mankind. It's time they did something for us!
Guillermo Delgadillo 1 Reputation point

2024-11-13T17:53:41.8033333+00:00

Microsoft having the default storage size for SharePoint as 1tb is a steal, they should be giving more hence the pricing for their user licenses, as usual Criminal from Microsoft to offer this.
Cord Thomas 5 Reputation points

2025-01-04T17:33:50.4033333+00:00

It's all very silly. Indeed many people are adding licenses to ghost or archive users so that they can use their OneDrive storage. I have never seen a reasonable defense of Microsoft's licensing strategy for storage where 1 TB of extra storage in SharePoint costs 20.5 that of an Office 365 business account that gets you OneDrive storage (or over 40x if you just get the most basic plan which also gets you 1TB OneDrive).

To address the "why SharePoint anymore" question, we have a "strategy" where we create shared folders in OneDrive that are accessible to teams and then link those folders from SharePoint menus as needed. Tedious but saves us tens of thousand of dollars a year.
Andy Babinszki 0 Reputation points

2025-01-21T00:35:31.4433333+00:00

Clearly I've just stumbled into this thread very late in the game. Is the "license" which needs to be purchased in the admin portal 1GB?

Answer 1

Joost van der Linden 126

@Ash Prince a couple of weeks ago a representative of Microsoft told me that there is an alternative route.

You could purchase five licenses of OneDrive for Business (Plan 2). This way, you could setup an archive user account in Microsoft 365 and assign the OneDrive for Business (Plan 2) license to it. It allows you to upgrade the storage limit for this account to 5 TB. At 90% you can submit a service request with Microsoft to raise the limit to 25 TB.

Downside of this is that you need to move the data to the OneDrive account. But it's still SharePoint under the hood. I'd use it for static data, and leave the active data in SharePoint/Teams.

Five times OneDrive for Business (Plan 2) is still a lot cheaper than 1 TB of licenses of "Office 365 Extra File Storage".

Jack W 0 Reputation points

2023-09-21T08:24:38.8566667+00:00

Thanks Joost, this is a great workaround! Do you know if the OneDrive account can still be shown within the original Sharepoint workspace? Or do I have to use the OneDrive app alongside the Sharepoint?
JD 0 Reputation points

2023-10-10T19:42:39.64+00:00

Looks like Microsoft just killed this option.

https://www.techradar.com/pro/exclusive-microsoft-quietly-ends-unlimited-cloud-storage-option-on-onedrive

Answer 2

Hi Ash,

Unfortunately, you don't have the choice. This page explain well how these licences works : [https://lazyadmin.nl/office-365/sharepoint-storage-limits/

My advice is to check the Sharepoint Storage Metrics.

In a first step in the SharePoint Admin Center :

Open the SharePoint Admin Center
Select Sites > Active Sites
Sort the sites on the Storage used (GB) column

Second step in the Storage Metrics of the sharepoint site :

Open the site self
Select Site Content
Select Settings Settings
Choose Storage Metrics

So, As you said, if you get a warning that your SharePoint storage is almost full, then you have two options. Buy additional storage space, which will cost $0.20 per GB per month or cleanup your SharePoint sites.

My last advice is to check if there is no "personnal" files on the SharePoint. Indeed, each user have 1To of Onedrive, so they can maybe store "working files" and "personnal" on their own OneDrive, and keep definitve files on SharePoint to optimize the storage.

I hope you will find a solution, the least worse as you understand.

Steph Pugh 0 Reputation points

2023-06-23T16:06:57.4033333+00:00

This answer is helpful, but extremely frustrating. This policy seems designed to drive users to simply share OneDrive folders, despite all of the documentation's suggestions to the contrary. WTH? And also, if I see one more reference to 25TB of Sharepoint capacity, I'm gonna scream.

Answer 3

TrevorL 56

I appreciate this is an old post but you should look at the versions used for each file, by default MS sets a 500 version limit for EACH file. you can change this in the SP site settings down to 50 BUT this won't clear existing versions. We created a Powershell script to clear all versions of a file that had not been edited for 6 months. We have also developed a script to move large files from SP to a storage account just leaving a place holder in SP, these two scripts have saved us large quantities of SP space.

also check out MS's archiving options, not used myself but may be of use https://adoption.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365-archive/

Unfortunately these scripts are not in a state to be published yet

Johnsen, Ulf Eirik 0 Reputation points

2024-08-01T10:23:28.0333333+00:00

Nice, thank you Trevor for sharing your experience and actions on this.

Answer 4

Marco Dalic 0

Because we found the pricing aswell really expensive, we have developed a tool called "ShArc" that

identifies cold data in SharePoint,
moves it into your Azure Blob Storage (Cool), saving you more than 50% in comparison to the expensive Office 365 Extra File Storage.
End-users can still interact with the offloade files in SharePoint

Here´s the link: https://www.layer2-sharc.com/

Nuraddin Malikov 1 Reputation point

2025-06-30T14:01:40.91+00:00

Hi Everyone,

Do you have any idea what happens once the Office 365 Extra File Storage add-on license gets expired? Does it have a Grace period like other licenses, or does it decrease the storage once it expires? I can't find any documentation regarding this point. I'm not sure if it has a grace period like usual licenses, regarding it is an add-on license.

Thanks in advance.
Marco Dalic 0 Reputation points

2025-06-30T14:15:16.4266667+00:00

Hi Nuraddin,

According to Microsoft: "For nonuser based subscriptions, like Office 365 Extra File Storage for SharePoint, a reduction in the license quantity immediately results in reduced storage."
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/commerce/subscriptions/what-if-my-subscription-expires?view=o365-worldwide

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"Office 365 Extra File Storage" pricing is criminal

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