Sharepoint: I want to compare on-prem vs cloud cost

Here is a clear real-world cost comparison 👍

☁️ SharePoint Cloud vs 🖥️ On-prem Cost

☁️ SharePoint Online (cloud)

Typical pricing:

About AU $7.50 per user / month for standalone SharePoint plan

Or ~$5–$20 / user / month depending on Microsoft 365 plan

Example — 100 users

~$10/user/month → $1,000/month
→ $12,000/year
→ $36,000 over 3 years

✅ No hardware
✅ No server maintenance
✅ Updates included

Cloud cost is predictable subscription.

🖥️ SharePoint 2019 On-prem

Licensing model = Server + CAL

Typical ballpark:

Server licence ≈ ~$7,000+

CAL ≈ ~$100–$200 per user

SQL Server ≈ ~$3,500+

Hardware ≈ $5,000–$20,000

Example — 100 users

Realistic deployment:

Licences + infra total → $20k–$50k upfront

Then add:

IT staff time
backups
patching
power
cooling

🧠 Simple intuition

	Cloud	On-prem
Upfront cost	⭐ very low	💀 high
Monthly cost	steady	low
Maintenance	Microsoft	You
Customisation	limited	full
Control	less	full
Long-term cost	can exceed on-prem	cheaper if very long life

⚠️ Important real-world insight

Small org → Cloud almost always cheaper
Large org (500+ users) → on-prem can win long-term
Heavy customisation / compliance → on-prem preferred
Short-term deployment → cloud massively easier

⭐ VERY rough break-even idea

Cloud cheaper for first 3–5 years
On-prem cheaper after ~6–8 years
(if infra already exists)

If you want, tell me:

👉 number of users
👉 storage size
👉 uptime requirement
👉 do you already have servers

I can give you a much more realistic cost model (like enterprise architects do) 👍