Microsoft 365 Backup for MSPs

Microsoft 365 Backup is billed at $0.15 per GB of protected content per month, not per user. For an MSP that means the same seat count can cost wildly different amounts from one client to another. The opportunity is in scoping the policy properly; the risk is quoting per seat without checking the per-GB number first.

Why per-user resale breaks on per-GB backup

Most third-party backup products charge per user per month, typically between $2.63 and $7.00. That is predictable for the customer and easy to invoice. Microsoft's native backup does not work that way: it charges by protected gigabyte, and the total includes mailboxes, archives, OneDrive accounts, SharePoint sites, file versions and recycle-bin content.

A 40-seat client with a decade of project archives can therefore cost more than a 200-seat client running lean mailboxes. If you quote both at the same per-user price, one of them quietly loses money. The MSP portfolio calculator lets you cost every client on the same assumptions and apply your own markup to each.

What to include in an MSP backup policy

• Primary Exchange mailboxes and online archives, if the client actually restores from them.
• OneDrive accounts, including version history and recycle bin.
• SharePoint site collections that hold live project or document work.
• Team channel files, because they live in SharePoint and are covered.

What to consider leaving out

• Stale SharePoint sites with no activity in the last 12 months.
• Online archives for leavers or mailboxes the client would never restore.
• Non-production Teams or test sites.

Excluding those three categories often reduces the bill by 20-40% without changing what the client would actually recover. That margin belongs to the MSP if you design the policy, not to the backup vendor.

Margin and pricing models

The simplest model is cost-plus: take the calculated Azure bill, add your markup percentage, and bill the client a fixed monthly fee. The calculator shows blended margin across the whole book, so you can see whether your markup holds up once the heavy tenants are included.

A more advanced model tiered by protected storage per user. Light, standard and heavy tiers let you keep per-user invoices while matching price to cost. Either way, start with the per-GB number, not the per-user headline.

What Microsoft 365 Backup does not cover

Native backup covers Exchange Online, OneDrive and SharePoint. It does not cover Teams chat messages, it retains data for only one year, and it offers no export outside Microsoft's cloud. Those limits are the same at any price point, so they should be in your client conversations before you quote. See the limitations page for the full list.

Build a client portfolio estimate

Open the MSP portfolio calculator How the per-GB meter works

Frequently asked questions