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What happens when SharePoint Online subscription expires?

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SharePoint Online subscriptions are purchased for a specific period of time. In case, your company does not renew it, subscriptions "expire". When a subscription expires, it will go through two phases before it is removed:

  1. Warning Phase - grace period after a subscription expires. When a subscription enters the warning phase, service administrators and users assigned to that subscription begin to receive warning notifications in the Microsoft Online Services Sign In application and My Company Portal
  2. Disabled Phase - data retention period starting from the day that the warning phase ends. During the disabled phase, user accounts assigned to that subscription are disabled and users are unable to access the service; however, service administrators assigned to that subscription can still access the service

Its important to understand this concept as it effects the data stored in the SharePoint sites and user access to the data. You can read the About Expiration of Subscriptions page for more details on the process.

Options available

You have 2 options in case the subscription expires:

  1. Renew expired subscription - your company can renew the expired subscription during both Warning and Disabled phases
  2. Export data - If you do not renew the expired subscription, the expired subscription will be removed after the disabled phase ends. So, you would need to export the data stored on SharePoint online sites

When you renew a subscription, you can choose to decrease the number of licenses of the subscription. However, if the total number of licenses in use exceeds the total number of paid licenses, in the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center the service administrator will see the Out of compliance warning for this subscription, and will see that the number of Total in use is greater than the number of Total licenses.

Saving SharePoint Online information

Microsoft SharePoint Online can contain many different types of information. The methods used to save the information will vary depending on the information type. Before starting the process of saving your company's SharePoint Online information, you should review the methods given in the About Saving SharePoint Online Information article and the issues associated with saving each type of information.

Save SharePoint Online Information article describes the procedures to save Microsoft SharePoint Online information from Microsoft Online Services to a set of local files. SharePoint Online administrators can view, download, and save all document library content in their organization’s SharePoint Online sites. Site owners can view, download, and save all document library content from sites for which they have administrator permissions. Four methods are available and discussed in this article:

  • Use Windows Explorer
  • Export to Office Excel
  • Export to Office Access
  • Export to Office Outlook

Convert from Trial to Paid Subscription

You can convert from a trial to a paid subscription by contacting the company from which you received your trial subscription. Please refer to Convert from Trial to Paid Subscription article for more details. Important points to note here are:

  • If you decide not to convert from a trial to a paid subscription, you can export your data during the warning phase or disabled phase after your trial subscription expires
  • You cannot recover data after the subscription is removed
  • Any data not recovered by the end of the disabled phase will be permanently lost

Also refer to "Moving From Try to Buy" section in the Use Trial Subscriptions page in Microsoft Online Services Customer Portal Help website.