The Complete Data Resilience Strategy for Microsoft 365

You've probably been hearing a lot of buzz around Backup Express. At AvePoint, we've integrated this service directly into our product through the Microsoft 365 Backup Service (MBS), and we brand that integrated experience as AvePoint Cloud Backup Express.

So the natural question many of our customers ask is: "If Microsoft now offers backup, why do I still need AvePoint?"

The answer isn't one or the other — it's both. AvePoint Cloud Backup for Microsoft 365 is designed to work alongside Microsoft's backup service, Express, combining Microsoft's unmatched restore speed with AvePoint's depth, breadth, and operational flexibility. Together, they deliver a complete data resilience strategy that neither can achieve alone.

How the Integration Works

Microsoft built MBS on the Microsoft 365 Backup Storage platform — a snapshot-based architecture that keeps backup data within the Microsoft 365 trust boundary. Microsoft sells this directly as a first-party product, but they also opened the underlying platform to third-party vendors through the Backup Storage API, allowing partners to become the Backup Storage Controller in a customer's tenant and build their own management experiences.

AvePoint is one of Microsoft's recognized integration partners on this platform. When customers enable Cloud Backup Express in our product, Microsoft handles the backup snapshots and generates recovery points. Those recovery points sync into AvePoint Cloud Backup Express, and customers manage everything – backup scope, restore operations, monitoring, and compliance – from a single AvePoint interface.

This means customers don't need to switch between the Microsoft 365 Admin Center and a separate backup tool. They get Microsoft's native snapshot speed and AvePoint's operational depth in one pane of glass.

What Microsoft 365 Backup Service Does Well

Let's give credit where it's due. Microsoft's backup service is purpose-built for one thing: ingesting data quickly to get your recovery points and getting you back up and running as fast as possible after a large-scale incident.

• Restore speed. Restore speeds can reach up to 1 – 3 TB per hour for Exchange, SharePoint, and OneDrive — significantly faster than traditional API-based restores at scale.
• 10-minute recovery points. The solution provides 10-minute recovery points for the trailing 14 days (SharePoint/OneDrive), and 10-minute points for a full year (Exchange).
• Fast recovery points. Pre-warmed daily snapshots significantly reduce restore start time and provide the fastest restore experience; single-site restores of approximately 1 TB or less can complete in under 20 minutes, while larger sites may take 10 – 120 minutes, depending on size. Learn more about Express recovery points here.
• Microsoft 365 trust boundary. Data stays within the Microsoft 365 trust boundary, with snapshots replicated using append-only storage so that no data leaves Microsoft's infrastructure.
• Granular file and folder restore. Granular restore for files and folders is generally available for SharePoint and OneDrive, although these restore points follow a roughly daily cadence rather than the 10-minute frequency used for full site or account recovery.
• Append-only backup storage. Backup storage uses an append-only model with bring your own key (BYOK) support, protecting backup data against overwrite and modification.

For mass disaster recovery – ransomware, widespread corruption, large-scale accidental deletion – Microsoft 365 Backup is a powerful, high-speed recovery layer.

What Microsoft 365 Backup Service Doesn't Cover

Microsoft 365 Backup is optimized for speed and scale across its core protection units: SharePoint sites, OneDrive accounts, and Exchange mailboxes. But Microsoft 365 environments are far more complex. Here's where the gaps emerge — and where AvePoint fills them.

1. Workload Coverage

Microsoft 365 Backup's core protection units are SharePoint sites (including group-connected and non-group-connected), OneDrive accounts, and Exchange mailboxes (user and shared). In AvePoint Cloud Backup Express, AvePoint also surfaces Teams and Microsoft 365 Groups recovery experiences around the backed-up Team/Group-connected SharePoint sites. However, this is not the same as full Teams or Groups backup — it does not cover conversations, channel structure, Microsoft Planner, group mailbox content, membership, settings, or other collaboration context. Cloud Backup Express also does not support private or shared channel sites, room mailboxes, resource mailboxes, or in-place archive mailboxes.

For full coverage of those workloads – plus workloads that Microsoft 365 Backup doesn't touch at all – customers need AvePoint Cloud Backup for Microsoft 365:

Microsoft 365 Backup does not support room mailboxes, resource mailboxes, or in-place archive mailboxes. AvePoint Cloud Backup Express does not support private or shared channel sites.

2. Granular Restore Capabilities

Microsoft recently introduced file and folder-level granular restore for SharePoint and OneDrive — a significant improvement. But there are two important caveats: First, that's where Microsoft's granularity ends; and second, those granular restore points operate on a roughly daily cadence — not the 10-minute frequency available for full site/account rollback). For the 15 – 365-day range, granular restore points drop to weekly.

Everyday data loss isn't usually a site-wide disaster. It's a deleted list item, a corrupted page, a permissions change that broke access, or a Planner board someone wiped clean. Microsoft 365 Backup can't help with those — AvePoint Cloud Backup provides deep, item-level granularity across every supported workload:

Some AvePoint granular capabilities vary by authentication mode, workload, and object type. Historic file versions are not backed up by default and require support enablement (the most recent 10 versions). Hidden lists and hidden mailbox folders are excluded by default for performance reasons.

3. Data Retention

Microsoft 365 Backup retains data for a maximum of 1 year (365 days). The retention period and backup frequency are not configurable by the customer.

AvePoint Cloud Backup supports flexible retention from 30 days to unlimited years (depending on how the deal was structured), configurable per service type and even per container. Customers with compliance, legal hold, or long-term regulatory requirements can retain data for as long as needed — including container-level custom retention policies.

4. Independent Copy & Storage Flexibility

Microsoft 365 Backup keeps all data within the Microsoft 365 trust boundary. While this is excellent for speed and simplicity, it means there is no independent copy of the data outside of Microsoft's infrastructure.

AvePoint Cloud Backup stores data in a separate storage location — either AvePoint-hosted (Azure Blob, Amazon S3, or Google Cloud Storage) or customer-owned, bring your own security (BYOS) across supported storage types, including:

• Azure Blob
• Amazon S3
• S3-Compatible
• File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
• SFTP (Secure Shell File Transfer Protocol)
• Dropbox
• IBM Storage Protect
• IBM Cloud Object Storage
• Google Cloud Storage

This independent backup copy, when paired with Cloud Backup Express, helps customers implement 3-2-1-style resilience strategies, depending on their storage architecture.

5. Self-Service Recovery

Microsoft's native backup restore experience is admin-driven — all restores must be initiated by an administrator through the Microsoft 365 Admin Center or via AvePoint's Express restore interface.

AvePoint Cloud Backup adds end-user recovery experiences for supported workloads through two self-service tools:

• ReCenter. A web portal where end users can search for and restore their own lost files, emails, Teams data, and more without opening an IT ticket.
• Ava. Our platform-level AI chatbot.

6. Compliance & Discovery

This is a major, often-overlooked differentiator. Microsoft's own documentation states that eDiscovery does not discover data that exists solely in Microsoft 365 Backup. Data subject request (DSR) deletion does not delete backup data. GDPR workflows are not directly executable on all backup data.

AvePoint Cloud Backup fills this gap with Backup Data eDiscovery — the ability to perform metadata-based and content-based searches across Exchange Online, OneDrive, and SharePoint Online backup data, then recover, export, or delete from results. This is critical for legal hold, compliance investigations, and data subject access request (DSAR) fulfilment.

Backup Data eDiscovery requires enablement and may involve additional cost. Exchange content search covers email attachments but does not support nested attachments.

7. Additional Capabilities

The table below highlights other differences between Microsoft 365 Backup and AvePoint Cloud Backup across a range of advanced capabilities:

The "Better Together" Story

The best way to think about this is through two lenses: what happens when things go catastrophically wrong, and what happens every other day.

For Large-Scale Incidents (Ransomware, Mass Deletion, Tenant-Wide Events)

Microsoft 365 Backup (Express) is the high-speed recovery layer. Its snapshot-based architecture can restore at 1 – 3 TB per hour — a 50 TB incident that would take approximately a month with API-based restore can be recovered in 1 – 2 days with Express. Customers should still predefine when to use recommended Fast Recovery Points (fastest start, daily RPO) versus 10-minute restore points (tighter RPO, warm-up delay) as part of their recovery SOP.

AvePoint's upcoming Rapid Recovery System (general access August 2026) takes this further by adding intelligent prioritization, smart recommendations, and critical recovery profiles on top of Express speeds — helping customers restore their minimum viable company (MVC) first.

For Everything Else (Daily Operations, Granular Recovery, Compliance)

Use AvePoint Cloud Backup for M365. The vast majority of data loss events aren't tenant-wide disasters. They're employees who deleted a folder, a permissions change that broke a workflow, a departed employee whose OneDrive needs to be recovered, or a compliance team that needs to search backup data for legal discovery. AvePoint handles all of these with precision, flexibility, and self-service options that Microsoft 365 Backup Service doesn't offer.

Together: Fast Rollback Plus Complete Resilience

When customers use AvePoint Cloud Backup (stored in AvePoint-hosted or customer-owned storage) together with Cloud Backup Express (stored within the Microsoft trust boundary), they get the best of both worlds:

• Cloud Backup Express = fastest recovery path for core Microsoft 365 workloads.
• AvePoint Cloud Backup = independent copy, longer retention, broader workload coverage, granular recovery, export, search, compliance workflows, end-user recovery, and operational controls.
• Together = fast rollback plus complete resilience, supporting 3-2-1-style backup strategies.

How to Get Started

Express is included in all AvePoint Resilience packages and is available as a standalone capacity purchase for new and existing Cloud Backup for M365 customers. Another key advantage of purchasing through AvePoint rather than directly from Microsoft is that, when transacted via the Azure Marketplace, customers can use Microsoft Azure Credits (MAC).

To set up Express alongside your existing AvePoint backup, your team simply needs to:

1. Configure a Cloud Backup Express service app in AvePoint Online Services.
2. Activate your Microsoft 365 tenant in AvePoint Cloud Backup Express.
3. Define your backup scope — the same interface you already use for standard backup.

Recovery points from Microsoft will begin syncing automatically, and both Express and standard restore options appear directly within our product.

The Bottom Line

Microsoft 365 Backup Service is a powerful addition to the data protection landscape — and we're fully invested in it. We've integrated it directly into our product via the Backup Storage API, and we believe it strengthens our customers' resilience posture.

But Microsoft 365 Backup is purpose-built for high-speed recovery across its core protection units (SharePoint, OneDrive, Exchange) with a one-year retention window and admin-driven restore workflows. It was never designed to replace a comprehensive backup solution.

AvePoint Cloud Backup extends protection to 12 workloads, adds deep item-level granularity, supports unlimited retention, provides an independent backup copy in customer-controlled storage, enables end-user self-service recovery, and delivers compliance workflows, such as backup data eDiscovery, that Microsoft's service doesn't support.

Cloud Backup Express is the high-speed recovery layer for large-scale incidents. AvePoint Cloud Backup is the complete resilience platform for everything else — and both live in a single product.