BucketDeskKeep business files in S3 or move them to Dropbox or SharePoint?
When a team's files already live in Amazon S3 and staff want something friendlier, moving everything to Dropbox or SharePoint is the obvious answer. Here is what each option costs at 10 TB and when moving really is the better choice.
If your team co-authors Office files and the archive is small, move to SharePoint or Dropbox. If the archive is large, other systems write to it, or it has to stay in your AWS account, keep the files in S3 and change how people reach them. At 10 TB and 15 people, the storage alone runs about $360 a month on Dropbox Advanced, around $1,900 on SharePoint with extra storage, and about $235 on S3 Standard, before you count the cost of moving.
A common situation: the company's files are in Amazon S3 because an engineer set it up that way years ago. Contracts, invoices, project folders and footage have piled up to several terabytes. Nobody outside engineering can open them without help, so someone proposes the obvious fix: move it all to Dropbox or SharePoint, where people already know how to work.
Sometimes that is the right call. Often it trades one problem for three: a large migration, a second copy that drifts out of sync with whatever still writes to S3, and a storage bill that grows with headcount. This article compares the two paths, moving the files or keeping them in S3 and changing how people reach them, with prices as listed on October 7, 2026.
What you are really choosing between
Dropbox and SharePoint are vendor-hosted. You upload files into storage the vendor runs, and the product and the storage are one purchase. S3 is storage you own inside your AWS account, and anything that gives people a friendly way in sits on top of it.
That difference decides most of what follows. With Dropbox or SharePoint the vendor's limits become your limits: how much storage comes with each license, how big a file can be, what happens when you run out. With S3 you keep AWS's limits and pricing, and you choose the access layer separately. We wrote more about the two models separately.
Choosing document management software when the files are in your own cloud storage
What each one costs at 10 TB
Take a company with 15 people and 10 TB of files. Five of them create and organize files; the other ten mostly need to find, open and share them.
On Dropbox, the Standard team plan is $15 per user per month and starts at 3 TB for the team, so 10 TB doesn't fit. The Advanced plan is $24 per user per month for three or more people and starts at 15 TB for the team. For 15 people that is $360 a month, or $4,320 a year.
On SharePoint, Microsoft 365 Business Basic is $7 per user per month on an annual commitment since July 2026, and includes SharePoint. Every tenant gets 1 TB of SharePoint storage plus 10 GB per license, so 15 licenses give about 1.15 TB. The other 8.85 TB has to be bought as Office 365 Extra File Storage, sold per gigabyte. Microsoft doesn't publish the rate on its documentation pages; resellers list it at about $0.20 per GB per month, which puts the extra storage near $1,800 a month on top of $105 in licenses. Microsoft also offers pay-as-you-go SharePoint storage, in preview since June 2026. One user's OneDrive includes 1 TB, but that is personal storage, not a shared company archive.
If the files stay in S3, S3 Standard in US East is $0.023 per GB per month, so 10 TB costs about $235 a month before requests and data transfer. Files nobody has opened in years can move to colder classes for much less, as long as you understand the minimums. Storage cost doesn't change when you add people. Whatever you put on top to give staff a friendly way in is a separate line: BucketDesk Pro is $100 a month for five operators with viewers free, and Business is $350.
Amazon S3 pricing explained: what a business file archive really costs
- Dropbox Advanced: starts at 15 TB for the team, $24 per user per month, so the bill grows with headcount.
- SharePoint with Business Basic: 1 TB plus 10 GB per license, then extra storage by the gigabyte, so the bill grows with headcount and terabytes.
- S3 Standard: no practical storage limit and no per-person storage cost, so the bill grows with terabytes only.
The cost of moving
Moving 10 TB out of S3 is not free. Data transfer out to the internet is $0.09 per GB for the first 10 TB a month, so a one-time migration of 10 TB costs roughly $920 in AWS transfer fees alone. Then there is the time: re-creating folder permissions, checking that nothing was skipped, and deciding what to do with the applications, scripts and backups that still write to the bucket.
That last part is where migrations usually go wrong. If anything else produces files in S3, such as an export job, a scanner, a partner upload or your own app, the Dropbox or SharePoint copy is out of date the next morning. Now there are two places to look and no single answer to "which one is right".
When keeping the files in S3 is the better choice
Keep them in S3 when most of the points below are true. Then the problem isn't S3, it's that staff have no good way in, and that is solvable without moving anything: give them a workspace over the bucket with previews, search and links that expire.
S3 access for non-technical teams: the complete guideArchiving files in Amazon S3: Glacier, lifecycle rules and recovery
- The archive is several terabytes or growing, and the cost should follow storage rather than headcount.
- Applications, scanners, exports or partners write to the bucket, so a copy elsewhere would drift.
- You rely on S3 features such as Versioning, Object Lock retention, lifecycle rules to Glacier, or replication to another Region.
- Files have to stay in your own AWS account for contractual, compliance or residency reasons.
- Most people need to find, open and share files, not co-author them.
Starter is free. Deploy a scoped role with CloudFormation, sign in, and browse, without handing anyone an access key.
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