ArchiveBridge vs Buying More SharePoint Storage: Stop Renting Premium Space for Digital Dust

The SharePoint storage add-on is designed to be frictionless. Tenant’s over quota, add storage, done. That frictionlessness is exactly the problem: it’s so easy to say yes that nobody stops to ask what’s actually in there.

Here’s what’s in there. In most organisations, the large majority of SharePoint data is cold — finished projects, closed tenders, prior-year finance exports, superseded CAD and design files, archived team sites from people who left. It’s not being read. It’s not being edited. It’s digital dust, and you are renting premium real estate to store it at around AUD $0.20 per GB per month, indefinitely.

And the add-on never self-corrects. It’s a recurring charge that only ever goes up, because SharePoint keeps filling. Buying more storage doesn’t solve the storage problem — it subscribes to it.

Let’s put real numbers on it. Using approximate rates — SharePoint add-on ≈ AUD $0.20/GB/month, Wasabi object storage ≈ AUD $0.01/GB/month — here’s the storage cost of cold data over three years. (Illustrative; your exact figure comes from a scan.)

1 TB of cold data

• SharePoint add-on: ≈ $204.80/month → ≈ $7,370 over 3 years
• Object storage: ≈ $10/month → ≈ $360 over 3 years
• You stop paying for roughly $7,000 of storage you didn’t need to keep buying.

5 TB of cold data

• SharePoint add-on: ≈ $1,024/month → ≈ $36,860 over 3 years
• Object storage: ≈ $50/month → ≈ $1,800 over 3 years

10 TB of cold data

• SharePoint add-on: ≈ $2,048/month → ≈ $73,730 over 3 years
• Object storage: ≈ $100/month → ≈ $3,600 over 3 years

The object-storage rate is roughly a twentieth of the SharePoint rate, so the saving scales linearly with how much cold data you’re carrying. Add ArchiveBridge’s own cost — priced per terabyte archived, not per seat — and even after the tool, the maths lands so far apart that the tool typically pays for itself in months, not years. Wasabi’s no-egress-fee pricing means reading data back later doesn’t claw the saving back either.

The reason this hasn’t already been done in most organisations is fear of deleting the wrong thing. ArchiveBridge is built to remove that fear. Every file follows the same fixed sequence:

1. Download from SharePoint. 2. Hash with SHA-256. 3. Upload to your object storage. 4. Verify the stored copy matches the hash. 5. Only then delete the SharePoint original, leaving a one-click restore stub.

“We delete nothing we haven’t verified.” The moment the original is deleted, the SharePoint quota it occupied is reclaimed — so the reduction in your Microsoft storage bill is immediate, not deferred.

Nothing is truly gone. “Every file leaves a forwarding address.” The restore stub sits where the file was; a user clicks it and self-service restore pulls the file back, re-verifies the SHA-256 hash, and re-uploads it to the original path. Compliance is respected on the way through: Microsoft Purview retention labels, legal holds and eDiscovery holds are detected and excluded, a permission snapshot is captured per file, and every action is written to an append-only, exportable audit log.

A one-off cleanup buys you breathing room, then the quota fills back up and you’re back at the add-on order screen. ArchiveBridge is designed to stop that cycle.

A continuous archive policy re-scans on a schedule and automatically archives newly-qualifying cold files, so archiving becomes an ongoing managed service instead of a one-time migration. You control the policy:

• Age threshold — days since last modified.
• Minimum file size — don’t bother with tiny files.
• Include / exclude extensions — e.g. archive old PSTs and video, leave live document types.
• Path filters — target specific sites or libraries.
• Skip checked-out / retention-locked files automatically.

Set it once and your SharePoint quota stays flat while your data keeps growing — because the cold tail is continuously drained to storage that costs a twentieth of the price. That’s the difference between a spring-clean and a plumbing fix.

ArchiveBridge is Cloud Ready Solutions’ own product, built and supported in Australia — so CRS controls the roadmap, the pricing and the partner programme.

You don’t have to take the TCO on faith. Grant a read-only Microsoft Entra app (Sites.Read.All only) and the free self-service scan returns your exact reclaimable GB and dollar figure in minutes — no sales call, nothing moved. That number, against your current add-on spend, is the whole business case. Consent is two-stage and least-privilege: the read-only scan app first, a separate write-access app only if you decide to archive.

CRS then supplies:

• The tool, priced per terabyte archived (volume-based, not per seat), in early access with no long contracts.
• The storage via Wasabi — Sydney and Melbourne regions, Australian data residency, no egress fees — or your own AWS / Backblaze / R2 bucket.
• Local Australian support and, for MSPs, the partner programme with per-client margin billing.

See also: ArchiveBridge vs Microsoft 365 Archive.