Guide · Compliance & IT

Inactive Mailbox Storage Fees Are Here — Cheaper Ways to Stay Searchable and Compliant

For years the standard move was simple: when someone left, you put their mailbox on hold and Microsoft kept it around for free. That era is over. Since January 2025, Microsoft charges for storage on inactive mailboxes held under retention or legal hold, and Google's Archived User licences were never free to begin with. If you're keeping old mailboxes for compliance, the meter is now running. Here's how to stay compliant for less. Sources: Microsoft Learn — inactive mailboxes; Google Workspace AU licensing.

Why the old approach quietly got expensive

  • Microsoft 365: inactive mailboxes under retention/hold now incur storage charges, and the volume only grows as more people leave. What used to be a free safety net is now a line item that compounds.
  • Google Workspace: an Archived User licence keeps the mailbox in Vault but bills per user, every month, indefinitely — a permanent tax on every departure.
  • Doing nothing / deleting: not an option when you have retention, e-discovery, or industry-compliance obligations. Losing the mailbox can be worse than paying for it.
What to do instead

Cheaper ways to stay searchable and compliant

1

Move inactive mailboxes to a dedicated archive that charges per active user, not per mailbox

Your cumulative leaver mailboxes stop being a growing per-seat bill.

2

Keep them immutable and searchable

Retention and e-discovery need the mail intact and findable — not zipped in a file. Full-text search across every archived mailbox from a browser beats logging into Vault or reloading PSTs.

3

Consolidate across platforms

Migrating Google ↔ Microsoft, or through an acquisition? Keep the old corpus searchable without running the old system or double-paying licences.

For SMBs priced out of Mimecast/Smarsh:

you don't need enterprise-grade archiving pricing to meet SMB retention needs. Evermail keeps departed and inactive mailboxes searchable and compliant for a fraction of a live seat.

Stop paying to keep dead mailboxes alive.

Move departed-employee email off M365/Google licences into Evermail — fully searchable, compliant, for a fraction of a seat.

See the savings →
FAQ

Common questions

Exactly how much does Microsoft charge now?
It varies by plan and storage volume — the point is inactive-mailbox storage is no longer free as of January 2025; check your Microsoft billing for your rate.
Does moving mailboxes out break compliance?
No — an immutable, searchable archive is a recognised retention approach; Evermail keeps mail intact and producible.
Is this only for big companies?
No — it's aimed at SMBs the big archivers overprice. See the savings breakdown.