Direct answer: Microsoft 365 Backup is a separate pay-as-you-go product, not a backup entitlement automatically activated by buying Business Premium, E3, or E5. Microsoft currently bills protected content by capacity rather than selling a simple per-user backup license. Before enabling it, verify billing prerequisites, supported workloads, protected capacity, restore behavior, administrator roles, and offboarding in the current Microsoft documentation and your tenant.
This guide was source-checked on August 21, 2026. Product scope and rates can change. Microsoft's Microsoft 365 Backup overview and pricing documentation control over this summary.
Current Native Product Decision Table
| Dimension | Current documented model | Buyer decision |
|---|---|---|
| Commercial model | Pay-as-you-go consumption based on protected content. | Assign a billing owner and model current capacity plus retained deleted or versioned content. |
| Workloads | Exchange Online mailboxes, OneDrive accounts, and SharePoint sites. | Identify requirements for Teams, Dynamics 365, on-premises Exchange, and other excluded services separately. |
| Retention | One year for the three documented workloads. | Do not design around the old 1-to-180-day statement or assume longer retention. |
| Recovery points | Workload-specific cadence; it is not simply "any point" in the year. | Verify that required dates and granularity are available for the exact workload. |
| Restore | Account/site-level behavior for OneDrive and SharePoint; documented Exchange item types include mail, contacts, calendar, and tasks. | Test destination, overwrite, conflict, metadata, and scale before committing to an RTO. |
| Teams | Not listed as a Microsoft 365 Backup workload. | Do not infer restorable Teams chats or channel messages from Exchange or file coverage. |
| Storage | Inside the Microsoft 365 trust boundary with append-only protection and a controlled deletion/offboarding path. | Decide whether that administrative and storage boundary meets the threat model. |
How Consumption Billing Works
Microsoft currently publishes a list price of $0.15 per GB per month of protected content. That is a dated public list price, not a contractual quote. Protected content can include data retained by Backup after it is deleted or versioned in the live service. Microsoft explains that retained deleted content can continue contributing to consumption until the one-year backup retention period expires.
Illustrative arithmetic only: if the billable protected-content measurement is 2,000 GB for a month and the applicable list rate is $0.15/GB-month, the arithmetic estimate is 2,000 × $0.15 = $300/month. This does not predict future capacity, taxes, regional terms, partner charges, or the tenant's actual meter.
| Input | Evidence source | Recorded value |
|---|---|---|
| Exchange protected content | Current tenant measurement and Microsoft calculator method. | [GB and collection date] |
| OneDrive protected content | Current tenant measurement by protected account. | [GB and collection date] |
| SharePoint protected content | Current tenant measurement by protected site. | [GB and collection date] |
| Expected change | Measured history, not a generic per-user assumption. | [Range and basis] |
| Applicable price | Microsoft or partner quote with date and currency. | [Rate, region, effective date] |
Native, Partner, and Independent Models
A partner application built on Microsoft 365 Backup Storage can use the same underlying Microsoft platform while providing its own interface and commercial relationship. Microsoft states that partner customers can be billed by the partner rather than receiving a separate Microsoft storage charge. A general Microsoft Graph backup service is a different architecture: it reads supported objects and writes them to provider-managed or customer-managed storage. Review the distinction in the Backup API implementation guide.
| Model | Primary bill | Storage boundary | Due-diligence focus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft native | Microsoft consumption billing. | Microsoft 365 trust boundary. | Capacity, workload restore, roles, offboarding. |
| Backup Storage partner | Partner commercial model. | Underlying Microsoft 365 Backup Storage. | Partner workflow, support, pricing, data relationship. |
| Independent managed service | Provider price model. | Provider-managed architecture outside the tenant boundary. | Object coverage, storage controls, restore fidelity, exit. |
| Self-hosted/BYO | Software plus infrastructure and operations. | Customer-selected architecture. | Credentials, storage, upgrades, monitoring, staffing. |
Offboarding Is Part of the Purchase
Native backup data is append-only against nondeletion changes, but it is not impossible to delete. Microsoft's current offboarding documentation describes pausing and deleting policies, deleting backed-up data, monitoring deletion, and an undo period. Record who can initiate that process, who is notified, how billing state affects it, and what evidence must be preserved before deletion.
Copyable Buyer Checklist
- [ ] Billing: Record payer, subscription or partner relationship, currency, rate, minimums, effective date, and estimate owner.
- [ ] Scope: Reconcile protected mailboxes, OneDrive accounts, and SharePoint sites against business requirements.
- [ ] Exclusions: Assign recovery decisions for Teams messages/channels, on-premises mailboxes, and adjacent services.
- [ ] Recovery: Test a representative item and bulk scenario with required destination and metadata.
- [ ] Administration: Record roles for billing, policies, restore, offboarding, and notifications.
- [ ] Storage: Complete the storage decision record.
- [ ] Exit: Document retained-data access, deletion, billing stop, historical-data portability, and approval.
North Brook Vault Coverage and Commercial Boundaries
North Brook Vault is an independent managed SaaS service with provider-managed infrastructure and storage. Its approved public estimator uses a $5 monthly protected-seat fee, a $199 monthly account minimum, the first tenant included, $25 per additional tenant, the first retention month included, 1 GB of included storage per tenant, and $0.12/GB-month for paid retained storage beginning in month two. The North Brook Vault calculator shows the complete formula; a written proposal confirms scope and contract terms.
North Brook Vault covers supported Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams objects through object-specific handlers, with selective restore only where supported. Teams messages and channels are not restorable, and OneDrive file version history is not captured. The service does not provide customer-selected S3 or on-premises deployment, native Object Lock enforcement, PST/PDF/ZIP export, compliance reports, or a zero-throttling guarantee.
Purchase Decision
Compare equivalent objects, retention, restore destinations, storage boundaries, support, and exit behavior. Do not compare a native protected-capacity meter with an independent per-seat or retained-storage quote until the scope and recovery test are normalized.
Review service licensing scope Discuss licensing and coverage