Looking for an AvePoint alternative?
Then the first useful thing we can tell you is when not to switch. AvePoint Opus is a serious product with real Australian public-sector credentials, and for a whole class of buyer it is the right answer. This page is about the other class.
When AvePoint Opus is the better buy
We would rather say this plainly than have you find it out after signing with us. Choose Opus, or something like it, when:
- Records management is the requirement. Retention schedules, disposal authorities, classification against sensitivity labels, an auditable disposal decision for every record. That is a governance discipline, not a storage optimisation, and a purpose-built archiver will not satisfy it.
- The scope is the whole estate. Opus spans SharePoint, Exchange, Teams and beyond from one console. ArchiveBridge does SharePoint Online. If you need one lifecycle policy across everything, that is a real architectural argument.
- You are in Australian government or education and the tender says so. AvePoint holds IRAP assessment and VERS compliance, with ANZ case studies across councils and universities. If your procurement requires those specific credentials today, that is a straightforward answer and we will not pretend otherwise.
None of that is faint praise. Governance platforms are hard to build and Opus is a capable one. The problem this page addresses is narrower: a great many organisations go looking at lifecycle platforms because a storage bill got out of hand, and end up quoted for a compliance programme they did not set out to buy.
When you just want the storage bill down
If you can read the following and recognise your own situation, you are not really a governance-platform buyer:
- Your SharePoint pool is full or close to it, and the quote to fix it is an add-on at roughly US$205 per terabyte per month.
- Most of what is filling it hasn’t been opened in two years, and nobody is willing to delete it — because occasionally somebody does need one of those files.
- You have no retention schedule to enforce, no disposal authority to satisfy, and no auditor asking for a classification report. You have an invoice.
That is a storage problem wearing a compliance costume, and the cheapest honest fix is to move the cold files somewhere that costs a tenth as much and leave a link where each one used to be. Which is the entire job ArchiveBridge does. You can put your own numbers through the calculator before talking to anyone, including us.
Side by side
The AvePoint column describes what the company publishes publicly, current as at July 2026 — not an assessment of what the product can do behind a demo. Where we say “not published”, that means we could not find it stated, not that it doesn’t exist. Check anything here with them directly.
| AvePoint Opus | ArchiveBridge | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary job | Information lifecycle management — records, retention, classification and disposal across the Microsoft estate | Archiving cold SharePoint files to cheap object storage, and nothing else |
| Published pricing | Not published — demo request | Per terabyte, on the pricing page, in your currency |
| Where the data lands | Not specified publicly | Your own Wasabi, Backblaze B2 or S3-compatible bucket, or storage we provision in Sydney |
| Integrity before deletion | Not stated as a headline claim | SHA-256 re-hashed at the destination and compared byte-for-byte; one mismatch halts the job |
| Records management | Yes — the core of the product | No. Retention labels and legal holds are detected and excluded, not managed |
| Australian credentials | IRAP assessed, VERS compliant, ANZ public-sector case studies | Australian-owned and operated, Sydney storage by default, service databases in Australia |
| Buying process | Enterprise sales cycle | Free read-only scan, 14-day trial, no card |
Three things we publish that this category mostly doesn’t
We went and read the public material for the main products in SharePoint archiving. These three came up so rarely that they are worth stating as differences rather than features.
1. A price, on a page
US$20 per TB per month to manage your data, plus US$14 per TB per month if you want us to host the storage — or nothing extra if you bring your own bucket. Metered daily, no per-seat licence, no egress fee, restores never charged. It is on the pricing page because a buyer should be able to rule us out at 11pm without booking a call.
2. The storage cost, named and separate
Wasabi publishes about US$7.99 per TB per month; Backblaze B2 around US$6. Those are their numbers, not ours, and if you bring your own bucket you pay them directly at those rates while we never touch the margin. Being specific about where the data lands and what that costs is the difference between a saving you can verify and a percentage on a slide.
3. Verify before delete, as a hard rule
Archiving is a move, and a move is only safe if the copy is proven before the original goes. Every file is copied, re-hashed with SHA-256 at the destination, and compared byte-for-byte with the source. Only on an exact match is the SharePoint original removed. One mismatch halts the job, names the file, and leaves the original untouched — a rule with no exceptions, documented on the security page. It is striking how seldom anyone in this category leads with it.
What we don’t do
A comparison page that lists only the other side’s weaknesses isn’t a comparison. ArchiveBridge does not do records management or defensible disposal workflows. It does not classify content against sensitivity labels. It covers SharePoint Online, not Exchange or the wider estate. It holds no IRAP assessment or VERS compliance today — the infrastructure underneath does hold ISO 27001, and our own SOC 2 and ISO 27001 are on the roadmap as the customer base grows, which is a roadmap answer and we will not dress it up as more.
And archiving does move data outside SharePoint’s native boundary. We compensate by reading compliance state from Microsoft Purview before every run and excluding anything under a retention label or legal hold, with each exclusion logged and its reason recorded. But if your position is that regulated content must never leave the Microsoft compliance boundary at all, that is a coherent position, and it points at Microsoft 365 Archive or a governance platform rather than at us.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good alternative to AvePoint Opus?
It depends on why you were looking at Opus. If you need records management, retention policy enforcement and defensible disposal across SharePoint, Exchange and Teams, most alternatives are a downgrade and you should stay with a governance platform. If what you actually need is your SharePoint storage bill to come down, a purpose-built archiver costs considerably less: ArchiveBridge, ShareArchiver, Squirrel and ShArc all move cold files to cheaper storage and leave a link behind. The question worth answering first is whether you are buying governance or buying a lower cost per terabyte.
How much does AvePoint Opus cost?
AvePoint does not publish per-terabyte or per-seat pricing for Opus on its website; the route to a number is a demo request, which is normal for enterprise governance platforms. That makes direct price comparison impossible from public information alone, so if cost is your deciding factor, ask for a figure per terabyte per month and compare it against published rates like ours. We publish ours because we would rather lose a deal on price than win one after a discovery call.
Does ArchiveBridge do records management like AvePoint?
No, and it is worth being direct about it. ArchiveBridge does not do records management, physical-records governance, sensitivity-label classification, or defensible disposal workflows. It archives cold SharePoint files to object storage, verifies every byte with SHA-256 before removing the original, leaves a stub that restores in one click, and excludes anything under a Purview retention label or legal hold. If your requirement is a compliance programme rather than a storage bill, AvePoint Opus is genuinely the better fit.
Can I keep my archived data in Australia?
Yes. Managed storage is provisioned in the Sydney region by default, and any Wasabi region worldwide is available if the data needs to live elsewhere. You can also bring your own S3-compatible bucket, in which case the data lives wherever you created it and the credentials stay yours. Because the destination is a bucket you can point at, residency is a configuration you control rather than an assurance you have to accept.
What happens to my files if I stop paying?
They stay where they are, in standard S3 object format, readable with any S3 tool. Managed storage is a dedicated account per customer rather than a shared pool, so if you leave, that account is handed to you. You can also mass-restore everything back to SharePoint before you go, free of charge — restores are never metered. The exit path is deliberately boring, because a proprietary vault you cannot leave is the single most expensive thing in this category.
Is ArchiveBridge suitable for MSPs managing multiple tenants?
Yes. Every client tenant is managed from one console with its own Microsoft 365 connection, storage bucket, policy and billing line, metered daily so a client onboarded mid-month costs nothing for the days before they connected. Indicative wholesale pricing is roughly 20% below list, confirmed for your volume on approval, and you set your own client pricing on top.
Settle it with your own numbers.
The scan is read-only, takes minutes, and tells you how many gigabytes of cold data you’re paying premium rates to keep. Whatever you decide afterwards — us, Opus, or neither — you’ll be deciding with a figure instead of a pitch.
Weighing up the whole field? SharePoint archiving software compared →