Lower-Cost Restores for M365 Archive

The Microsoft 365 Archive service has eliminated reactivation fees for SharePoint Online storage. The change will reduce some costs of responding to data subject requests and other tasks that pull archived data. However, some customers will pay more.

 With Archive, a customers can move SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business data into low-cost, slow, cold storage, and delete the data online. This practice helps avoid downtime due to running out of space. It is also less expensive per GB, per month than Microsoft 365 Extra Storage, which increases normal storage capacity. However, Archive customers pay a “reactivation” fee each time they bring archived data back online.  

The new Microsoft 365 Archive fee schedule, to begin in Apr. 1, 2025, eliminates reactivation fees for SharePoint Online data. The change will pay off for many customers, but not all. For example, customers still pay activation fees for OneDrive data, and a typical customer will have several hundred times more storage in OneDrive than in SharePoint Online (fig 1).