Keepit vs Veeam for Microsoft 365 Backup (2026)

Microsoft does not back up your Microsoft 365 data. The Microsoft Services Agreement says it plainly: customers are responsible for protecting their own content against accidental deletion, compromised credentials, malicious insiders, and retention beyond the service defaults. Microsoft provides high availability for the platform. That is not the same thing as backup.

For Australian organisations subject to the ACSC Essential Eight, APRA CPS 234, or the Privacy Act, this gap must be filled. Keepit and Veeam both fill it. The question is architecture and operational model.

The core argument for Keepit is a question: if Microsoft 365 is the thing you need to recover from, should your backup depend on Microsoft infrastructure?

Consider a cyber incident where an attacker compromises your Entra ID, gains access to Azure storage accounts via service principals, and moves laterally through your tenant. Any backup stored inside that same Azure subscription is potentially reachable. Veeam lets you put backups outside Azure, but it is a configuration choice, and configuration-based protections fail when people get them wrong.

Keepit removes the question entirely. Backup data sits on Keepit-owned infrastructure in Equinix facilities, on a separate cloud with separate billing. The Merkle tree storage architecture makes immutability structural. There is no toggle to disable it because the system cannot rewrite its own history. IDC recognised this architecture specifically when naming Keepit a Leader in the 2025 MarketScape for SaaS Data Protection.

The Keepit 2026 Data Insight Report found that 90% of restores are single-file downloads, not full-system recovery events. For that dominant use case, Keepit's per-item restore workflow is designed to be fast and straightforward. Veeam's bulk restore throughput (3-5 TB/hour) is stronger for large-scale recovery scenarios, but those represent a small fraction of real-world restore activity.

Veeam's pitch is the opposite side: you own the backup infrastructure, so you own the keys to recovery. For organisations already running Veeam Backup & Replication for VMs and databases, adding Microsoft 365 as a second workload in the same product keeps the stack unified. Same vendor, same management plane, same runbook.

Veeam gives you more flexibility:

• Run backups to on-premises disk for zero-egress restores.
• Tier old backups to S3 Object Lock storage (Wasabi, AWS, StoneFly SCV).
• Script any retention policy via the REST API.
• Export individual items to PST or other formats for legal discovery.

Veeam's eDiscovery is the best in the category. If your organisation regularly runs litigation holds or content searches across thousands of mailboxes, this is a genuine advantage Keepit cannot match today.

The trade-off is operational. You patch the Windows Server, you size the repository, you monitor jobs, you handle upgrades. G2 reviewers consistently flag Veeam's setup complexity and job management as friction points, particularly for smaller teams. Keepit removes that entire column of work.

The ACSC Essential Eight maturity model requires backups that are daily, off-site, immutable, and regularly tested. At Maturity Level 2, backups must be stored immutably and separately from the primary system for at least 3 months. At Maturity Level 3, backups must be stored immutably, tested regularly, and access restricted to break-glass accounts.

Keepit maps to both levels as the default configuration. Immutability is structural (Merkle tree), storage is a completely separate cloud, and role-based access follows break-glass patterns. You do not configure your way to ML3. It ships that way.

Veeam maps to both levels if configured correctly. Hardened Linux repositories provide immutability. Offsite S3 Object Lock provides geographic separation. Break-glass access is an RBAC setting you configure. All supported, all well documented, all things that need to be set up right and maintained. When an auditor asks you to describe your immutability architecture, the Keepit answer is a contract. The Veeam answer is a 12-page runbook.

For financial services, health, and government organisations where audit simplicity matters, Keepit's compliance story is easier to defend. For mature IT teams with deep Veeam expertise and solid change-control processes, the Veeam story holds up equally well.

Microsoft 365 is no longer just Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams. Entra ID holds your identity configuration. Power Platform holds low-code business applications. Dynamics 365 holds CRM and ERP records. Each has a different native retention story, and each is a separate recovery problem.

Keepit backs up all of them in the same product: Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, Entra ID, Power Platform (flows, apps, environments), and Dynamics 365. One portal, one subscription. The Keepit 2026 Data Insight Report found that identity systems are tested 4x less frequently than productivity systems, which means Entra ID backup is exactly the kind of thing organisations neglect until it is too late.

Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 covers Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams. Entra ID, Power Platform, and Dynamics 365 are not covered. If those workloads matter to your organisation, you accept the gap or buy a second product.

Keepit's Australian list price for Business Essentials ranges from AUD $2.63 to $4.47/user/month depending on seat count and contract length, with unlimited retention, unlimited storage, and no egress fees. A 200-user tenant on a 3-year term costs roughly AUD $8,688/year. A 1,000-user tenant on the same term runs approximately AUD $43,440/year. The number is predictable from day one.

Veeam's total cost is harder to calculate because it splits across four line items: VB365 per-user licences (annual), a Windows Server to run the software, object storage for the repository (Wasabi, AWS S3, StoneFly SCV), and admin time to operate the system. For a 200-user tenant with 1-year retention, the fully loaded cost is typically within 10-20% of Keepit. For 5-10 year retention (common in legal, health, and financial services), Veeam's storage bill grows linearly while Keepit's subscription stays flat. At long retention horizons, Keepit is usually significantly cheaper.

For organisations that already run Veeam B&R infrastructure and need short retention, adding VB365 to the existing stack is often the more economical choice. For greenfield deployments with compliance-driven retention requirements, Keepit wins on total cost of ownership.

CRS can run a specific cost comparison for your tenant size, retention period, and compliance posture. We distribute both products and have no incentive to push one over the other.

See also: Keepit vs Veeam Data Cloud | Keepit vs AvePoint