The Eight Questions That Actually Decide a SharePoint Archiving Selection
Every SharePoint Online archiving vendor will tell you their solution reduces storage costs, preserves compliance, and keeps users happy. The marketing reads the same across the category. The real differences only emerge when buyers ask the right specific questions - the architecture questions that vendors don't lead with because the honest answers are not always flattering.
This is the buyer's checklist that surfaces those differences. Eight questions, the answers from the major SharePoint archiving solutions in 2026, and what each answer actually means for the long-term operational and compliance posture of your tenant.
The vendors covered here are the ones that genuinely offload SharePoint Online content to lower-cost storage with end-user accessibility preserved. ShareGate, Quest Metalogix and similar tools are governance or migration platforms - they identify inactive content but do not offload it to cheaper storage at scale, so they are not direct comparators.
The four solutions that are direct comparators:
- Microsoft 365 Archive - Microsoft's native option
- AvePoint Opus - the incumbent enterprise ILM platform
- Archive360 - the regulated-industries specialist
- Squirrel by SmiKar - the SharePoint Online specialist
Question 1: Does it archive sites or individual files?
Why it matters
A typical enterprise SharePoint site is not uniformly active or inactive. The same site can hold years of archived project documentation alongside current working files. A solution that only archives at the whole-site level forces an all-or-nothing decision. A solution that archives at the file or document level lets archiving rules match actual content usage patterns.
For organisations with petabyte-scale SharePoint estates, the answer to this question alone determines whether archiving is a viable continuous operation or a periodic clean-up exercise.
How each vendor answers
| Solution | File-level or site-level? |
|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Archive | Both - site-level was the original GA behaviour; file-level archiving was announced in March 2026 and is rolling to general availability between late June and late July 2026 |
| AvePoint Opus | File-level - documented at item-level archiving with policy automation |
| Archive360 | Both - policy-driven file-level and broader scope archiving |
| Squirrel | File-level - documents are archived individually based on lifecycle policies, with a stub left in SharePoint preserving the file name and path |
What this means for buyers
File-level granularity is now table-stakes. The site-only constraint that historically held Microsoft 365 Archive back is largely closed by the 2026 file-level GA. Any vendor still pitching site-level-only archiving in 2026 is selling stale capability.
Question 2: Where is archived data physically stored?
Why it matters
This is the single most important architecture question. The answer determines data residency, regulatory compliance posture, vendor lock-in, and your long-term operational relationship with the vendor. It is also the question vendors are most likely to obscure with marketing language like "flexible storage tiering" or "cloud-native architecture."
The two architectural patterns:
- Vendor-hosted storage - archived data sits in storage the vendor owns and operates. The customer's relationship with the data depends on continued payment to the vendor and the vendor's continued operation.
- Customer-owned storage - archived data sits in an Azure Blob Storage account in the customer's own Azure tenant. The customer retains the storage relationship directly with Microsoft. The archiving vendor is a software-layer relationship that can be terminated without losing access to the underlying data.
How each vendor answers
| Solution | Where the archived data lives |
|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Archive | Inside Microsoft 365 - archived content remains in Microsoft's storage tier, accessible to the customer through their Microsoft 365 commercial relationship |
| AvePoint Opus | Configurable - AvePoint Opus documentation describes a "Flexible Cloud Storage" model where storage destinations are aligned per deployment; confirm specifically how this is configured in your tenancy with AvePoint |
| Archive360 | Customer-controlled Azure - Archive360 documents a "dedicated tenant" model with customer-held encryption keys |
| Squirrel | Customer-owned Azure Blob Storage as standard - archived data is written into the customer's own Azure tenant in the customer's chosen region, encrypted before upload, and accessible to the customer independent of SmiKar |
What this means for buyers
If archived data lives in the customer's own Azure tenant, the customer keeps the data even if the archiving vendor relationship ends. If archived data lives in vendor-controlled storage, the data relationship is dependent on the vendor. For regulated industries and any organisation with data residency requirements, the customer-owned model is almost always the defensible choice.
Question 3: Can we use our own Azure storage account?
Why it matters
This is the practical, contractual version of question 2. Many vendors offer customer-owned storage only as a premium-priced upgrade, or restrict it to specific tiers. The standard configuration determines what most customers actually deploy.
How each vendor answers
| Solution | Customer's own Azure storage as standard? |
|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Archive | No - data stays in Microsoft's M365 storage layer |
| AvePoint Opus | Configurable per AvePoint's storage model - confirm the specific arrangement for your contract |
| Archive360 | Yes - dedicated tenant under customer control with customer encryption keys |
| Squirrel | Yes - standard architecture writes to the customer's own Azure tenant |
What this means for buyers
Treat this as a procurement question. The standard configuration in the contract is what you will actually deploy. Premium-priced "bring your own storage" options that are only chosen by 10 to 20% of customers tell you what the vendor's actual architectural preference is.
Question 4: How are archived files restored?
Why it matters
End users do not care that their content has been archived. They care that they can find it and open it when they need it. If restoration requires opening an external portal, finding the file again, requesting a restore, and waiting for it to land back in SharePoint, end users will avoid archiving entirely and the volume of inactive content that ever actually gets archived stays low. If restoration is a single click from inside SharePoint, archiving becomes a continuous operational pattern rather than a project.
How each vendor answers
| Solution | Restore experience |
|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Archive | Admin-initiated reactivation; Microsoft documents file-level restore as taking up to 24 hours for files archived 7 days or more, with a 120-day re-archive lockout once restored |
| AvePoint Opus | Via the ReCenter portal - a separate AvePoint-provided web interface where users search for and restore archived content |
| Archive360 | Native format access from within SharePoint, with the Archive360 platform providing the search and retrieval layer |
| Squirrel | Native SharePoint - the stub file in SharePoint is the access point; one click on the stub triggers rehydration of the actual file in seconds, no portal, no ticket |
What this means for buyers
The closer the restore experience is to "click the file, it opens," the higher the actual end-user adoption of archived content. Portal-based and admin-mediated restore models work for compliance scenarios but rarely become daily-driver patterns.
Question 5: Is archived content searchable and discoverable by Microsoft Copilot?
Why it matters
This is the question that has changed the most since 2024. Every enterprise that has deployed Microsoft 365 Copilot has discovered that Copilot quality is directly tied to the breadth and depth of content available in the SharePoint index. Content that is archived in a way that removes it from the SharePoint index is invisible to Copilot. For organisations where Copilot is now a strategic productivity investment, breaking Copilot's access to historical knowledge is no longer an acceptable side-effect of archiving.
How each vendor answers
| Solution | Search and Copilot impact |
|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Archive | Archived content is deliberately excluded from the SharePoint search index, which means it is also invisible to Microsoft Copilot grounding. This is documented Microsoft behaviour, not an accident. |
| AvePoint Opus | Archived content is accessible via the ReCenter portal search; explicit Microsoft Copilot grounding for archived content is not documented on AvePoint Opus product pages |
| Archive360 | Faceted search across archived content is provided through the Archive360 platform; explicit Microsoft Copilot grounding integration is not documented on Archive360's product pages |
| Squirrel | Archived content remains in the SharePoint search index because the stub file containing an AI-generated summary stays in the SharePoint library. With the Nutshell AI module, the embedded summary keeps the document's substantive content available to Microsoft Copilot grounding even after the file itself has been archived to Azure Blob Storage |
What this means for buyers
For organisations running Microsoft 365 Copilot, archiving solutions that exclude content from the SharePoint index are actively undermining the Copilot investment. The technical detail of how each vendor handles this matters more in 2026 than it did in 2024. See Microsoft Copilot and archived SharePoint content - the visibility gap for the full breakdown.
Question 6: Are sensitivity labels, retention labels, and legal holds preserved through the archive cycle?
Why it matters
Microsoft Purview governance constructs - sensitivity labels (MIP), retention labels and policies, eDiscovery legal holds - are the operational backbone of compliance for any regulated SharePoint estate. An archiving solution that strips or breaks these constructs creates compliance failure modes that may not be visible until an audit or eDiscovery request surfaces them, often years later.
This is also a question where vendor documentation is the most variable. Some vendors document their handling of labels precisely; others handwave it.
How each vendor answers
| Solution | Label and hold preservation |
|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Archive | Native integration - retention labels, sensitivity labels and legal holds continue to apply to archived sites |
| AvePoint Opus | AvePoint Opus documentation explicitly states that content protected by an active Microsoft 365 retention policy or retention label requires the retention policy or label to be removed or disabled before the content can be managed by Opus. This is a material constraint for organisations running active Purview retention. |
| Archive360 | Sensitivity label and retention label preservation is not explicitly addressed on Archive360's public SharePoint archiving pages; confirm directly with Archive360 for your specific compliance requirements |
| Squirrel | Preserves both sensitivity labels and retention labels through the archive and restore cycle, with retention configurations continuing to apply to the archived content |
For the broader context on how the two label types differ and what each one actually does in SharePoint, see sensitivity labels vs retention labels in SharePoint and retention policies vs retention labels in SharePoint.
What this means for buyers
The AvePoint Opus constraint around active retention policies is the one most likely to surprise enterprise buyers. If your organisation has active Microsoft Purview retention policies on substantial volumes of SharePoint content - which most regulated organisations do - this is a material configuration decision that needs to be understood before selection, not after.
Question 7: What happens to our archived data if we stop using the vendor?
Why it matters
This is the lock-in question. If archived data sits in vendor-controlled storage, terminating the vendor relationship is non-trivial: data may need to be exported, retransformed to a standard format, and re-ingested into a successor system. For organisations with petabytes of archived content accumulated over years, the cost and risk of a vendor change can be prohibitive enough to keep them in a contract they would otherwise leave.
If archived data sits in the customer's own Azure tenant, terminating the vendor relationship is a software contract decision rather than a data migration project. The data stays. Only the management layer changes.
How each vendor answers
| Solution | What happens at vendor exit |
|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Archive | Data is tied to the Microsoft 365 commercial relationship. As long as Microsoft 365 is in use, archived data remains accessible. Exit from Microsoft 365 requires export of archived content as part of broader tenant migration. |
| AvePoint Opus | Depends on the configured storage model. Confirm with AvePoint how customer data exit is handled in your specific deployment. |
| Archive360 | Customer retains data in their own Azure tenant under their own keys; the platform's positioning explicitly addresses "zero vendor lock-in" |
| Squirrel | Customer retains all archived data in their own Azure Blob Storage account. SmiKar provides each customer with a copy of the encryption keys for independent access. Termination of the SmiKar relationship does not affect customer ownership of archived content. |
What this means for buyers
The economic value of avoiding lock-in scales with archive volume. For tenants with 50 TB or less of archived data, lock-in is an annoyance. For tenants with 500 TB or more, it can be a strategic constraint that affects negotiating position with the vendor at every renewal cycle.
Question 8: How quickly can we archive at scale - 50 TB, 100 TB, or 500 TB?
Why it matters
Throughput becomes a major procurement consideration above the 50 TB mark. The architecture of the archiving solution - whether it is built around per-customer infrastructure that needs to be provisioned, or built around a managed-SaaS layer that can scale ingest concurrency - determines whether large initial archive jobs are completed in reasonable timeframes or stretch across calendar quarters.
This is also where realistic enterprise pilots distinguish vendors. A solution that handles 5 TB cleanly may struggle at 500 TB if the underlying ingest architecture wasn't designed for that scale.
How each vendor answers
| Solution | Scale and throughput approach |
|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Archive | Microsoft-operated infrastructure at hyperscale; the archive operation is bounded by Microsoft's own back-end systems and tenant limits |
| AvePoint Opus | Customer infrastructure or AvePoint-hosted depending on configuration; confirm specific throughput for your tenant size with AvePoint |
| Archive360 | Dedicated customer tenant model; throughput depends on the customer's chosen Azure storage configuration and ingest concurrency |
| Squirrel | Managed SaaS layer with parallel ingest into the customer's own Azure storage; scales with the customer's chosen Azure tier and the SmiKar processing layer's concurrency. Documented customer deployments include enterprise archiving from active SharePoint of over 600 TB at a Fortune 500 healthcare brand owner and a FTSE 250 engineering group reversing their tenant from 460 TB down to 165 TB. See the customer case studies for the deployment detail. |
What this means for buyers
Ask vendors for reference architectures at your specific scale, and ask to see customer outcomes at that scale. Vendors that have not deployed at the volume you are planning are research projects, not procurement choices.
Vendor Suitability Summary
Bringing the eight answers together:
| Buyer scenario | Best-fit solution(s) |
|---|---|
| Native Microsoft, file-level archiving, no third-party vendor needed | Microsoft 365 Archive |
| Broad multi-source archiving (M365 + on-prem + Box + Google Drive + physical records) as a single platform | AvePoint Opus |
| Regulated industry (financial services, healthcare, government, legal) with WORM and immutability requirements | Archive360, Squirrel (for SharePoint-specific scope) |
| SharePoint Online specialist with customer-owned Azure as standard, Microsoft Copilot grounding via Nutshell AI, and active Microsoft Purview retention preserved | Squirrel |
| Cost-sensitive with Microsoft Copilot deployment depending on archived content remaining discoverable | Squirrel |
For the head-to-head comparisons against each named competitor, see:
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Do all four solutions cover SharePoint Online, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams content?
A: Coverage varies. Microsoft 365 Archive covers SharePoint sites and is expanding file-level capabilities. AvePoint Opus covers a broad multi-workload set including SharePoint, OneDrive, Exchange, Teams, plus non-Microsoft sources like Box and Google Drive per AvePoint's product documentation. Archive360 also covers multiple workloads including email, Slack and Zoom. Squirrel is specifically focused on SharePoint Online document libraries - departed user OneDrive, Exchange and Teams data archiving is handled by SmiKar's separate Chipmunk product, which deploys from Azure Marketplace.
Q: Which solution has the lowest per-TB pricing?
A: Microsoft does not publish negotiated pricing publicly; AvePoint Opus, Archive360 and Squirrel all engage in custom quotes against tenant size. Microsoft 365 Archive is published at $0.05 per GB per month for the archive storage tier with a $0.60 per GB reactivation charge, but those rates exclude the SharePoint Online seat licensing the customer is already paying. For the underlying SharePoint pool storage and overage rates context, see SharePoint Online pricing.
Q: Why isn't ShareGate or Quest Metalogix in this comparison?
A: ShareGate is a Microsoft 365 governance and migration platform, not a SharePoint archiving solution in the storage-offloading sense - per ShareGate's own product documentation, ShareGate Protect is positioned around governance, lifecycle and Microsoft Copilot security readiness rather than moving content to lower-cost storage. Quest Metalogix is positioned around SharePoint management and migration. Both can identify inactive content but neither offloads it to a cheaper storage layer at scale, which is the operational definition of SharePoint archiving in this comparison.
Q: Can I switch from one of these solutions to another later?
A: Yes in principle, with cost varying by data volume and the storage model. Solutions where archived data sits in the customer's own Azure tenant (Archive360, Squirrel) make the switch significantly easier than solutions where the data sits in vendor-controlled storage, because the underlying storage relationship does not change when the management layer does.
Q: Does archiving with any of these solutions break Microsoft Copilot for end users?
A: Microsoft 365 Archive explicitly removes archived content from the SharePoint search index, which removes it from Microsoft Copilot grounding. AvePoint Opus and Archive360 do not document Microsoft Copilot integration explicitly on their public product pages. Squirrel preserves Microsoft Copilot grounding via the Nutshell AI module, which embeds AI-generated summaries into stub files so the archived document's substantive content remains in the SharePoint index and is therefore visible to Microsoft Copilot answers.
Q: How do these solutions handle the SharePoint Preservation Hold Library?
A: All four solutions interact with the Preservation Hold Library because it is a SharePoint system construct triggered by Microsoft Purview retention. Squirrel includes specific Recycle Bin Capture functionality designed to intercept deleted content before it lands in the Preservation Hold Library - see the Preservation Hold Library storage trap for the broader operational context. Other solutions vary in how they interact with the Preservation Hold Library; confirm directly with each vendor.
The Buyer's Recommendation in Practice
The eight questions reveal a structural pattern in the market. The three answers that genuinely separate vendors are:
- Where archived data physically lives (questions 2, 3, 7 are all variations of this)
- Whether Microsoft Copilot can still ground on archived content (question 5)
- Whether active Microsoft Purview retention is supported without disabling it first (question 6)
For organisations evaluating SharePoint archiving in 2026, those three are the questions that have the largest long-term consequences. Pricing and feature lists matter, but they matter less than where the data ends up, whether the AI investment continues to work, and whether compliance retention configurations are preserved or have to be torn down to enable archiving.
For the detailed comparison against Microsoft 365 Archive specifically, see Squirrel vs Microsoft 365 Archive. For the head-to-head against AvePoint Opus with verified competitor citations, see AvePoint alternative for SharePoint archiving. For the documented customer outcomes that demonstrate the model at petabyte scale, see the Squirrel customer case studies.
To audit your tenant's storage consumption and identify which content makes practical sense to archive before contacting any vendor, SharePoint Storage Explorer is a free Windows tool that surfaces site, library, and file-type consumption in one view. That picture changes which questions in this checklist actually matter most for your situation.
