What does Microsoft 365 backup cost an MSP per user?
Ronan Behymer ·
Yes, you should back up your clients' Microsoft 365 tenants with a separate product, and in October 2026 the published prices start at about $3 to $4 per user per month: Afi lists $3, CrashPlan charges $44 per user per year ($3.67 a month) on annual billing, and Microsoft's own Microsoft 365 Backup is $0.15 per GB per month of protected data. Most of the MSP-focused products we list (Datto, Keepit, Barracuda, NinjaOne's former Dropsuite) don't publish a price at all, so you'll be getting a quote through a distributor.
What Microsoft keeps if you buy nothing
Microsoft's own documentation is clear on this. For Exchange Online, a deleted item sits in the Recoverable Items folder for 14 days by default, and you can raise that to a maximum of 30 days per mailbox (Microsoft Learn, Recoverable Items folder). After that the item is gone unless the mailbox is on a hold or a retention policy.
SharePoint and OneDrive are better. Deleted files stay in the site recycle bin and then the site collection recycle bin for 93 days in total, counted from the moment of deletion (Microsoft Support, SharePoint recycle bin).
So the gap is easy to describe to a client. If someone deletes a folder of email and nobody notices for a month, Exchange won't give it back. If a leaver's OneDrive was cleared out in March and the finance director asks for a spreadsheet in August, it's long past the 93 days. Retention policies and litigation hold can stretch Exchange retention, but they're compliance features; restoring a whole mailbox or a SharePoint library to how it looked last Tuesday is a backup job, and that's what you're paying a backup vendor for.
What the published prices look like
Only a handful of vendors in our Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace backup category put a number on their website. These are the ones I could check, in US dollars, as of October 2026:
| Product | Published price | What the price includes | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Afi | $3 per user per month | Up to three backups a day, unlimited retention, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace | Our Afi listing, vendor price checked September 2026 |
| CrashPlan | $44 per user per year ($3.67 a month), or $79 per user for two years ($3.29 a month) | Exchange Online, SharePoint and OneDrive, 50 GB pooled storage per user | CrashPlan SMB pricing |
| Microsoft 365 Backup | $0.15 per GB per month of protected content | Pay as you go through the Microsoft 365 admin centre | Microsoft Learn, Microsoft 365 Backup pricing |
CrashPlan's prices are for up to 249 users. If a client's data goes over the pooled 50 GB per user, CrashPlan adds another 250 GB automatically at $7.50 a month (or $90 a year), so watch that on clients with big shared mailboxes.
Microsoft's per-GB model is the odd one out, and it's the one I'd check most carefully before quoting it. You pay for the live size of each protected mailbox, OneDrive and site, plus the deleted and versioned content the backup is holding. Microsoft's own example: protect a 1 GB site with 0.5 GB in its second-stage recycle bin and a 1 GB mailbox with a 1 GB online archive, and you're billed for 3.5 GB. Deleted content keeps costing you until it ages out of the backup, which is a year later on a 365-day recovery window.
A worked sum for a 20-seat client
Take a made-up but ordinary client: 20 users, and about 500 GB of mailboxes, archives, OneDrive and SharePoint once you add up the usage reports and recycle bins (Microsoft's pricing page explains that the admin centre reports leave out the second-stage recycle bin and online archives, so you need PowerShell for an honest figure).
| Option | Sum | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Afi | 20 users x $3 | $60 |
| CrashPlan, annual | 20 users x $44 / 12 | $73.33 |
| Microsoft 365 Backup | 500 GB x $0.15 | $75 |
On those numbers the per-user products win, and the gap widens as data grows, because a per-user price doesn't move when the client's marketing team starts dumping video into SharePoint. Flip it round and Microsoft 365 Backup gets cheaper for a tenant with lots of users and very little data. I'd still be wary of quoting a fixed monthly price to a client on top of a per-GB cost I can't control; you end up absorbing the growth or having an awkward conversation about a bill that changes every month.
One thing the table can't show: Microsoft's backup lives inside the same Microsoft 365 service it's protecting. That may be acceptable for some clients. I prefer a copy held by a different company, so a compromised global admin or a tenant-level problem doesn't touch the backup as well.
Vendors that only quote
Most of the products built for MSPs don't publish prices, partly because they're sold wholesale and the MSP sets the retail price. From our listings:
- Datto SaaS Protection is priced per licence with volume discounts across all your clients, backs up three times a day, and bills automatically into Autotask PSA. There's a 14-day free trial.
- NinjaOne SaaS Backup (Dropsuite until NinjaOne bought it in June 2025) is per protected user, sold through distributors and partners, and has a white-label portal.
- Keepit is per seat on a quote; its pricing page lists 5 years of retention on the Core Continuity tier and 10 years on the higher tiers (Keepit pricing).
- Barracuda Cloud-to-Cloud Backup is per user per month by quote and covers Microsoft 365 only, so you'd need something else for Google Workspace clients.
- Cove Data Protection from N-able licenses per device or per Microsoft 365 seat, with usage-based cloud storage on top, which suits shops that want servers, workstations and 365 in one console.
When I ask for a quote, I want answers to four things in writing: the per-user price at my current seat count and at double it, whether shared mailboxes and leavers' archived accounts are charged, whether retention is unlimited or capped, and whether restores or exports carry any fee. Those last two are where the published per-user prices above can turn out to be less simple than they look.
If you already know which two you're choosing between, the side-by-side pages help: Afi vs Keepit, Afi vs Datto SaaS Protection and CrashPlan vs NinjaOne SaaS Backup. There's also the full list of Afi alternatives.
Questions MSPs ask
Does Microsoft back up Microsoft 365 data?
Microsoft keeps deleted email for 14 days by default (30 at most) and deleted SharePoint and OneDrive files for 93 days. That's recovery from recent deletion, and anything older is gone unless a hold or retention policy kept it, or you had a backup. Microsoft does sell its own Microsoft 365 Backup at $0.15 per GB per month.
How much should an MSP charge clients for Microsoft 365 backup?
There's no published standard, and wholesale prices for the MSP-focused products are mostly quote-only. Start from your actual cost per user, add the time you'll spend on restore requests and monthly checks, and price per user so the line on the invoice moves with seat count. If your vendor charges per GB, build in headroom for data growth.
Is per-user or per-GB pricing cheaper?
It depends on how much data each user holds. In the 20-user example above, 500 GB at Microsoft's $0.15 per GB costs $75 a month against $60 for Afi at $3 per user; a tenant with very small mailboxes would tip the other way. Per-user pricing is easier to resell at a fixed price.
Do I need separate backup for Google Workspace clients?
Not always. Afi, CrashPlan, Datto SaaS Protection, Keepit and NinjaOne SaaS Backup all cover Google Workspace as well as Microsoft 365, so one console can handle both. Barracuda Cloud-to-Cloud Backup is Microsoft 365 only.
Is server and workstation backup the same purchase?
No. Microsoft 365 backup protects cloud mailboxes and files, while servers and laptops need an image-based product from the backup and disaster recovery category. A few vendors, such as N-able with Cove Data Protection and CrashPlan, sell both.