File storage decisions

SharePoint vs Egnyte for Business: should you keep paying for both?

By Edward Pinela — Microsoft-certified SharePoint consultant · October 2, 2026

The SharePoint vs Egnyte for business question usually arrives at renewal time, in a firm that already pays for Microsoft 365 and notices it is also paying Egnyte to store files. The answer turns less on features than on file size and location. Egnyte was built as a hybrid: a cloud file system plus on-premises caching that keeps hot project folders at office network speed, which is why architecture, engineering and construction firms with heavy CAD files chose it. SharePoint is a cloud workspace that sits inside the Microsoft 365 you already license. For ordinary documents, that is usually enough. For multi-gigabyte drawings and multi-terabyte archives, it may not be. This page is for the choosing stage; if you have already decided to leave, our Egnyte to SharePoint migration services page covers how that move is run.

The core difference: a hybrid file system versus a cloud workspace

Egnyte starts from a file system. Folders look and behave like a network drive, rights are granted per folder to groups, and the desktop app and on-premises caching options let an office work on large files as if they were on a local server, with changes synchronised to the cloud behind the scenes. Governance features such as content classification and ransomware detection are offered on top, depending on plan. It was built for firms whose files are big, numerous and opened constantly.

SharePoint starts from the organization. Content lives in document libraries inside sites, access follows site membership, and libraries carry metadata columns and views so documents can be filtered rather than found by path. The OneDrive sync app puts those libraries in File Explorer or Finder, Teams shows the same files, and Power Automate can act on them. What it does not have is a shared local cache: every laptop that opens a file downloads its own copy from Microsoft’s cloud. For a 2 MB contract, nobody notices. For a large drawing set opened by twenty people in one office every morning, that difference is the whole decision.

Side by side on the points that decide it

The table compares the two on what drives most decisions for a firm that already has Microsoft 365. It leaves out prices, which change by plan and contract; check the specific edition you would buy against each vendor’s current terms.

Large files and sync: where the gap is real

Microsoft’s published SharePoint limits (opens in new tab) settle the storage question quickly: a single file can be up to 250 GB, a library can hold up to 30 million items, and the full decoded path including the file name can run to 400 characters. Very few firms hit those ceilings. The same page carries the limit that matters more in delivery: for best performance, Microsoft recommends syncing no more than 300,000 files in a single library, and warns that the same performance problems can appear once a device syncs 300,000 items across all its libraries.

That is the line multi-terabyte project archives cross. A design firm with fifteen years of project folders can easily hold millions of files, and the habit Egnyte allowed — browse the whole archive from the desktop as if it were a mapped drive — does not carry over to OneDrive sync at that scale. The fix on the SharePoint side is design: split the archive into libraries, sync only active projects, and use the browser or search for the rest. Files On-Demand (opens in new tab) keeps files online-only until someone opens them and lets teams pin the folders they need offline. That works well for most teams; it is a different workflow, and people who opened everything from one big drive will notice.

Then there is open time. With an Egnyte cache in the office, the second person to open a large drawing gets it at local network speed. With SharePoint, each person’s device fetches its own copy over the internet. On a strong connection with modest files, that is fine. With large drawing sets, shared reference files and a busy office on a limited line, it is the most common complaint we hear after a move made without testing it first.

Library throttling and the habits that trigger it

SharePoint protects itself by throttling: when a user or application makes too many requests in a short window, further requests are slowed or refused for a while. Microsoft’s guidance on avoiding throttling in SharePoint Online (opens in new tab) says ordinary users rarely trigger it, but names patterns that do, including one user syncing a large amount of data across several machines at once, and running the sync client alongside migration or crawling tools.

In practice that shows up in two places. During a migration, a pilot team that starts syncing while bulk copies are still running can make both slower. After a migration, render farms, backup tools and anything else that scans whole libraries need to be configured with SharePoint’s limits in mind rather than pointed at it like a file server. Neither is a reason to avoid SharePoint; both are reasons to plan sync scope and tooling rather than leave them to defaults.

The cost of running both

Many firms already run both: Microsoft 365 for email, Teams and Office, with project files in Egnyte. The visible cost is a second subscription on top of Microsoft 365 licences that already include SharePoint and OneDrive storage. The less visible costs are operational. Every joiner and leaver is handled in two places. Permissions are reviewed in two consoles with two different models. Retention applies to email and Teams through Microsoft Purview but to project files through Egnyte’s own controls, so a records question has two answers. And if you run an on-premises cache, there is hardware or a virtual machine to patch, monitor and eventually replace.

None of that makes running both wrong. It makes it something to choose on purpose. If you keep Egnyte, set a boundary and write it down — for example, Egnyte for active CAD projects and the drawing archive, SharePoint for proposals, contracts, HR, finance and everything else the business keeps — so nobody has to guess which copy is current.

When keeping Egnyte is the sensible choice

We would tell a firm to keep Egnyte, even though we sell SharePoint work, when most of these are true. Day-to-day work is large drawings, models, point clouds or renders rather than documents. Several people in one office open the same large files repeatedly, and the local cache is what makes that tolerable. The project archive runs to multiple terabytes and millions of files that people genuinely browse from the desktop. Office internet capacity is limited relative to the size of the files people open. Or design applications rely on linked references and file paths that would have to be rebuilt to move.

In that situation the honest recommendation is often to keep Egnyte for the CAD estate and move everything else into SharePoint, rather than force every file into one platform.

When SharePoint is enough

The picture changes when Egnyte is mainly holding ordinary business documents: proposals, contracts, specifications as PDFs, photos and spreadsheets. If drawings are a small share of the content, or are opened by one or two people at a time, SharePoint with sensible sync scope handles them. It also pulls ahead when you want retention and labelling managed in the same place as email and Teams through Microsoft Purview retention policies and labels (opens in new tab), when files should feed approvals and Teams work, or when the on-premises appliance is due for replacement and nobody wants to own another server.

What a switch actually involves

Leaving Egnyte is a different project from leaving a pure-cloud service, because there can be two sources to reconcile: the cloud file system and whatever lives only on the local appliance. Folder permission groups have to be mapped to Microsoft 365 groups rather than copied literally, CAD project trees need an agreed destination before anything moves, and share links have to be reissued. Our Egnyte to SharePoint migration page walks through how we run that, and our wider SharePoint migration services cover file servers and other sources that often sit alongside Egnyte.

A partial move is a real option. Moving the document estate first and leaving CAD content in Egnyte until a pilot proves open times and sync behaviour on real project work gives you evidence before you commit the hardest folders.

A simple way to decide

Ask three questions. Is most of your content large CAD, model or render files rather than documents? Do several people in one office open the same large files every day? Do people browse a multi-terabyte archive from the desktop? If all three answers are no, SharePoint is likely enough and the second subscription is hard to justify. If two or more are yes, keep Egnyte for that content and decide where the boundary sits. If your incumbent is a different platform, the reasoning shifts: Box is mostly a governance and external-sharing decision, covered in SharePoint vs Box for business, and Dropbox is a simpler sync question, covered in SharePoint vs Dropbox for business.

When SharePoint is the answer for some or all of your files, we scope the sites, libraries, permissions and sync design as fixed-fee SharePoint consulting: you approve a defined piece of work and a price before anything starts, senior US-based engineers deliver it in a typical two to four weeks, and 30 days of hypercare follow go-live.