Per-Seat vs Per-Tenant: What Identity Backup Actually Costs at Scale

Microsoft 365 backup is priced per seat, and that is defensible: each mailbox holds its own mail, each OneDrive its own files. Twice the users really is twice the data.

Identity backup inherited the same model, and there it makes far less sense. What you are protecting is the tenant configuration — Conditional Access policies, role assignments, group structure, app registrations, PIM settings. That configuration does not double when a client hires another hundred people. The number of policies stays roughly the same. The blast radius of losing them stays exactly the same.

You still pay double. This piece works through what the major vendors actually charge, where the crossover points fall, and where per-seat genuinely wins. All figures are the vendors' own published US list prices, retrieved 14 August 2026 and linked at the end. Re-check before quoting a client — this market repriced twice in 2026.

What identity backup is billed at

**Veeam** sells Data Cloud for Microsoft Entra ID as a standalone at **$1.08 per enabled Entra ID member user per month**, billed annually. It is also bundled into their Advanced M365 tier at $3.33 per user per month, where Veeam allocates $0.70 of that to Entra.

**AvePoint** lists Cloud Backup for Microsoft Entra ID at **$12.00 per user per year** on Azure Marketplace, as a separate transactable purchase from their M365 backup at $3.00 per user per month.

**Barracuda** ships Entra ID backup as a product distinct from Cloud-to-Cloud Backup. No price is published for it.

**Keepit** sells per-application connectors, Microsoft 365 and Entra ID among them, with bundle discounts. Neither price is published.

The pattern is consistent: identity is a separate line item, and it is billed per user.

The arithmetic

Take a single client and scale it. Veeam standalone at $1.08 per user per month; AvePoint at $12.00 per user per year, which is $1.00 per user per month.

**50 seats** — Veeam $54/month. AvePoint $50/month, $600/year.

**100 seats** — Veeam $108/month. AvePoint $100/month, $1,200/year.

**500 seats** — Veeam $540/month, $6,480/year. AvePoint $500/month, $6,000/year.

**2,000 seats** — Veeam $2,160/month, $25,920/year. AvePoint $2,000/month, $24,000/year.

VentraID is priced per tenant: $49, $99, $199 or $349 per month depending on which tier of capability you want. Those numbers do not move with seat count. The 2,000-seat client and the 50-seat client pay the same for the same tier.

Where per-seat wins, honestly

Below a certain size, per-seat is cheaper, and pretending otherwise would be an insult to anyone who can do division.

Against **Tier I at $49/month**, per-seat billing at roughly $1 per user is cheaper until about **45 to 50 users**. A 20-seat client costs around $21 a month to protect on a per-seat plan and $49 on ours. Per-seat wins clearly.

Against **Tier IV at $349/month**, the crossover sits near **325 to 350 users**.

So the honest summary is this: if your book is mostly sub-50-seat clients and you only need configuration backup, per-seat pricing will cost you less. If you carry mid-market clients, or if you want the higher tiers, per-tenant stops the bill scaling with a number that has nothing to do with what is being protected.

The second-order effect matters more than the first. Per-seat identity pricing means every client win makes your cost base grow in lockstep with your revenue, on a line item whose underlying workload is flat. Per-tenant pricing turns identity protection into a fixed cost per client, which is a much easier thing to build a managed-service margin on top of.

What Microsoft covers, and what it does not

Microsoft shipped native Entra ID backup and recovery to general availability in June 2026. It carries no separate charge, but it requires Entra ID P1 or P2 — $7.00 and $10.00 per user per month respectively, on annual commitment.

It is genuinely useful and it has a defined scope. Microsoft documents a retention window of 7 days. Their supported-object list does not include directory role assignments, PIM configuration, or administrative units. And their documentation states plainly that it "doesn't support the recovery or re-creation of hard-deleted objects."

Separately, on deleted users, Microsoft documents a 30-day soft-delete window, after which "the permanent deletion process automatically starts and can't be stopped", and "after a user is permanently deleted, neither you nor Microsoft Support can restore them."

None of that makes the native capability bad. It makes it a 7-day in-tenant safety net with a defined scope, which is a different product from an independent long-retention copy held outside the tenant.

What to actually check before you buy anything

**Is identity a separate line item?** For most vendors it is. Price the pair, not the headline.

**Is the headline price the entry price?** Frequently not. One major vendor's advertised M365 rate is its 251-plus-seat volume tier; a 10 to 50 seat buyer pays materially more. Always ask for the ladder.

**Does the price include storage, and what does leaving cost?** Some vendors bundle it, some bill it separately, some do not say.

**What is actually in scope?** Conditional Access policies, role assignments, PIM, administrative units and app registrations are the objects that hurt to lose. Get the supported-object list in writing.

**And can you find the price at all?** Of the vendors we surveyed, eight published no price on their own site as of 14 August 2026. That is a legitimate commercial choice, and it is also a real cost to you in time.

Sources

Veeam Data Cloud purchasing options, veeam.com/products/veeam-data-cloud/purchasing-options.html, retrieved 14 August 2026.

AvePoint Cloud Backup for Microsoft Entra ID, Azure Marketplace listing, retrieved 14 August 2026.

Microsoft Entra plans and pricing, microsoft.com/en-us/security/business/microsoft-entra-pricing, retrieved 14 August 2026.

Microsoft Entra backup and recovery scope and limitations, and restoring deleted users, learn.microsoft.com, retrieved 14 August 2026.

VaultFuzion pricing is published in full at vaultfuzion.com/pricing.

Vendors revise pricing without notice. Verify current figures before quoting them to a client.