How Much SharePoint Storage Comes With Office 365?
Last Updated on April 25, 2024
Microsoft SharePoint is an excellent document and file collaboration platform for growing businesses. However, Microsoft’s pricing plans do not clearly state how much storage you get when you purchase a subscription. If you’ve just obtained SharePoint training certification and are ready to use the platform, we’ll share the exact amount of SharePoint storage you get with Office 365 and how to make the best use of it.
How Much Storage Comes With a SharePoint License?
When you subscribe to SharePoint, you’ll get a storage space of one terabyte (TB). This storage is for the organization account, meaning it’s operational for one user. Adding external users to SharePoint Office 365 is easy, but If you have employees and want to make your account usable for them, you’ll have to purchase additional licenses. Each license costs five U.S. dollars per month, or more for plans with more storage.
With each license, you get ten gigabytes (GB) of additional space. This means that if you have five users, you will get fifty GB of additional storage. Each license allows the user to access their account on five computers, five phones, and five tablets.
You don’t have to add users to increase space, however. You can also buy additional storage for $0.20 per month or GB. The maximum limit for increasing storage space this way is twenty-five TB per site. Each SharePoint space permits two million sites. This means that if one site uses twenty-five TB, you can rent another site and receive another twenty-five TB.
Apart from the general storage space, SharePoint also offers one TB of OneDrive storage space per user. This can be extended up to five TB.
How Much Is One Terabyte?
TB stands for terabyte—1,000 GB of data. This is equivalent to four standard MacBooks or Windows laptops with 256 GB each. In mobile devices, it’s equivalent to sixteen iPhones or Samsung phones with sixty-four GB each.
This space is enough to hold 250 movies in high-definition quality or 6.5 million Office files, presentations, and PDFs. In physical form, this would be 1,300 filing cabinets filled with paper.
What Happens if SharePoint Storage Is Full?
Once you’ve reached the storage limit on your SharePoint account, you won’t be able to upload any more files. If you access a new file with the same account, it’ll automatically switch to read-only mode. You’ll then receive an email and a notification about reaching the storage limit.
How to Check SharePoint Storage
When you’re about to run out of storage, SharePoint will notify you automatically. However, it’s a good idea to keep track of your storage consumption, so you’re not caught by surprise when the storage is all used up. Keeping track of your storage can help you stay organized and delete unnecessary files from time to time.
To check your storage space, go to:
Site Contents > Settings > Site Collection Administration > Storage Metrics
You can find “Site Contents” on the left side of the screen.
Tips to Maintain Storage on SharePoint
It’s important to keep track of your uploads to SharePoint from day one. People often upload duplicate files, and this can occupy storage space unnecessarily. An easy starting point for maximizing storage is to simply delete any duplicate files.
In addition, Microsoft SharePoint will store deleted items in the digital recycling bin for ninety-three days. This will also occupy space, so delete these unnecessary files from the recycling bin as well.
Finally, delete old files that you’re no longer using. We recommend checking out the usage report before buying new storage—this will give you a detailed breakdown of the occupied storage space.
In Conclusion
SharePoint offers a massive amount of storage that is sufficient for many users. The option to gain more storage is always available, but with careful data management, the standard amount should be more than enough.
For more SharePoint information, check out our post on connecting external databases in SharePoint Online.
