“Moving to Microsoft 365 has only resulted in increased costs and slower response times when opening documents.“
Last week we were approached by a small business that has a small on premise server. Even though this is adequate for all their file storage needs, their data was moved to Microsoft 365 by another provider some months ago. As this server is needed for a specific line of business application, moving to Microsoft 365 has resulted in increased monthly costs and increased support costs. Users have reported slower response times when opening documents, and the business owner is concerned about the ease with which data can leak out of the organisation.
We’ve looked at the ongoing costs associated with their current Microsoft 365 setup, versus moving data back to the on premise server and using a Microsoft 365 alternative for email hosting, this is what we’ve found for this small business:
It costs around £83 + VAT per month to have mailboxes for these eight users, over a three year period this amounts to around £3000 + VAT
Note the prices for the mailboxes above include the rental of Microsoft Office software for 7 users, that is Word. Excel, Outlook etc – software that many business customers use.
In order to move them off Microsoft 365, we’ll have to price up some Zimbra Mailboxes, and as they are heavy Outlook users they’ll need perpetual version of Microsoft Office.
In year one there are no obvious savings due to the up front costs, but over three years the customer will save over £800 and over five years will save over £1500 in mailbox and hosting costs alone.
When you add the extra costs of supporting Microsoft 365 (we estimate this is at least £500 per year for a basic tenant when managed properly) we think this customer will save £4000 over a 5 year period.
Of course, when the customer drops Microsoft 365, the “cloud hosting” features will go with it, but as they already have a server and don’t need to put their data on the internet, there’s no issue.