Amazon WorkDocs vs SharePoint: what to use now that WorkDocs is gone

What happened to Amazon WorkDocs

WorkDocs was AWS's hosted document service: folders, sharing, comments and version history, billed per user and run inside AWS. In April 2024 Amazon told customers that new sign-ups and account upgrades had ended and that support would end on April 25, 2025, with all data permanently deleted after that. AWS built a data migration tool so a site administrator could export an entire WorkDocs site to Amazon S3, and individual users could download their own files. AWS named no successor service of its own; the one migration offer it published was a discount on Dropbox through AWS Marketplace.

So if your company used WorkDocs, one of three things is true today: the files were exported to an S3 bucket in your AWS account, they were moved to another product such as Dropbox or SharePoint, or they are gone. The rest of this article is for the first group, which is the largest, because the export tool was the path AWS built.

Keep business files in S3 or move them to Dropbox or SharePoint?

• Sign-ups ended: April 2024.
• Support ended: April 25, 2025.
• Data deleted if nothing was done: April 26, 2025.
• Export path from AWS: the WorkDocs data migration tool, into an S3 bucket you own.

Amazon WorkDocs vs SharePoint, feature by feature

Both were vendor-hosted document stores sold per user, which is why the comparison came up. The differences were in who hosted them and what sat around them.

SharePoint's strength is the rest of Microsoft 365: if staff already live in Outlook and Teams, the document library is one more tab in a place they already sign in to. Its weakness for a WorkDocs-sized archive is storage. Fifteen Business Basic licences give a tenant about 1.15 TB of SharePoint storage; everything beyond that is Office 365 Extra File Storage, which resellers list at about $0.20 per GB per month.

What the export left you with

The WorkDocs migration tool wrote a site's folders and files into an Amazon S3 bucket in your own account. That is a better starting point than it sounds. The files are in storage you own, at S3 Standard's $0.023 per GB-month, with versioning, lifecycle rules to colder classes and replication available as bucket settings. What they lack is the part WorkDocs provided: a way for staff to browse, open and share them without an AWS login.

That is the real decision. The bucket is the archive; the question is whether to move the archive into SharePoint or to give people a way into the bucket.

Path one: move the files into SharePoint

Moving is right when most of these hold: the archive is around a terabyte or less, so the storage included with licences covers it; the team co-authors Office documents every day; nothing else writes new files into the bucket; and the company already pays for Microsoft 365.

Count the cost before deciding. At 10 TB, SharePoint storage beyond the included allowance runs near $1,800 a month on top of licences, and moving 10 TB out of S3 costs roughly $920 in AWS data transfer. If the archive is small and the team edits together, pay it and get one place for email, chat and files.

SharePoint limits on Microsoft Learn ↗

• Archive of about 1 TB or less.
• Daily co-authoring of Office files.
• People are the only source of new files.
• Microsoft 365 is already paid for.

Path two: keep the files in the S3 bucket

Keeping them is right when the archive is several terabytes or still growing, when scanners, exports or partners write into the bucket, when the files must stay in your AWS account for contractual or residency reasons, or when most people need to find, open and share files rather than edit them together.

Then the only thing missing is access. The options are the ones any S3 bucket has: the AWS console for engineers, a desktop client such as Cyberduck for one technical person, Storage Browser for S3 if you have a React app and a developer to own it, or a hosted workspace that connects to the bucket through one scoped IAM role so nobody else needs an AWS identity.

Cyberduck alternatives for teams that share one S3 bucketS3 access for non-technical teams: the complete guide

• Several terabytes, or growing.
• Other systems write into the bucket.
• Files must stay in your AWS account.
• Find, open and share, not co-author.

The bill at 10 TB and 15 people

Storage is where the two paths separate. On SharePoint the bill grows with headcount and terabytes; in S3 it grows with terabytes only, and the access layer is a separate, flat line.

• SharePoint with Business Basic: $105 a month in licences plus about $1,800 for 8.85 TB of extra storage, around $1,900 a month.
• S3 Standard: about $235 a month for 10 TB before requests and transfer, less once cold files move to cheaper classes.
• A workspace on the bucket: BucketDesk Standard at $100 a month for five operators with viewers free, about $335 a month with the storage, or Ultra at $350.