Microsoft Left Standalone SharePoint Tenants a Suite-Only Path

Microsoft stopped new sales of standalone SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business plans after May 31, 2026. Tenants already on those seats can still renew through January 2027. After that, the $5 storage SKU is gone.

The January Partner Center notes also put Partner APIs behind MFA, replaced the free grace period with a paid extra term, and shut a separate referral program. The storage cull is the piece that still has a deadline in front of it.

Standalone SharePoint Sales Already Stopped in June

Microsoft told Cloud Solution Provider partners in no new standalone SharePoint sales after May that it was retiring SharePoint Online Plan 1 and Plan 2 and OneDrive for Business Plan 1 and Plan 2. SharePoint inside a Microsoft 365 or Office 365 suite is not leaving. The four seats sold on their own are.

This change reflects low customer demand for standalone offerings, increased instances of unintended or nonstandard usage, and higher operational costs associated with maintaining these plans.

Microsoft, January 2026 Partner Center advisory

Customers heard the same message in late January 2026. Microsoft dated the partner advisory January 28. It asked partners to find the affected tenants, talk early, and steer people toward a Business or E3/E5 suite, extra capacity, or pay-as-you-go storage. Cloud Ascent was due to flag those tenants by the end of February 2026.

THE STANDALONE STORAGE CUTOFF

1. January 28, 2026: Microsoft publishes the partner advisory and tells customers the four standalone plans are leaving.
2. May 31, 2026: Last day for a new tenant or a new customer on those SKUs. Microsoft labeled the month June 2026 as end of sale.
3. January 2027: Renewals stop. Contracts already in force run to their end dates.
4. December 2029: Service on the standalone plans ends. Remaining tenants must be on a suite, a capacity add-on, or pay-as-you-go, or they lose access.

Plan 2 had already slipped off Microsoft’s public pricing pages before the advisory. SharePoint Plan 2 left the SharePoint plans page in 2023. OneDrive Plan 2 left the service description between December 2024 and November 2025. Plan 1 for both products still listed at $5 per user per month. Plan 2’s historical list price was $10.

What Replaces a $5 SharePoint Seat?

A tenant on SharePoint or OneDrive Plan 1 pays $5 a user a month. Microsoft’s named replacement with a public price is a Microsoft 365 suite. On the July commercial suite price list, Business Basic is $7, Business Standard is $14, and Business Premium is $22, each per user per month on an annual term.

That is a $2 jump to Basic, 40% up. Standard is $9 more, 180% up. Premium is $17 more, 340% up. Microsoft 365 E3 lists at $39 after the same July 1, 2026 update, which raised it 8% from $36. E5 lists at $60, up 5% from $57. Existing suite customers keep their old rate until the next renewal after July 1.

THE SEAT-FOR-SEAT PRICE JUMP

Basic and Standard also rose on July 1, 16% and 12%. Premium did not move, so the gap from Standard to Premium is now $8. A storage-only buyer who only wanted a library or a 1 TB drive still has to pick up mail, Teams, and the rest of the suite to stay on Microsoft’s fully priced path.

Frontline Workers Lose the Cheap OneDrive Bolt-On

The awkward case is a frontline worker. Microsoft 365 F3 lists at $10 after July 1, up 25% from $8, and includes 2 GB of OneDrive. Many firms bolted OneDrive Plan 1 onto F3 for 1 TB at another $5. That bundle is $15. After January 2027, the $5 bolt-on cannot be renewed.

F1 is in the same bind. It lists at $3, up 33% from $2.25, and also ships 2 GB of OneDrive. Office 365 E1 still lists at $10 and includes 1 TB, so it is cheaper than F3 plus Plan 1. It drops the Windows licence, Intune, and Entra ID P1 that F3 carries. Microsoft 365 E3 restores those pieces and lists at $39, which is 160% above the $15 F3-plus-Plan-1 stack and 290% above F3 alone.

FRONTLINE STORAGE MATH

On 1,000 frontline seats, F3 plus Plan 1 is $15,000 a month. The same headcount on E3 is $39,000. E1 is $10,000, with the device-management hole. There is no published replacement that keeps 1 TB of OneDrive next to an F3-priced worker. Plan 2’s old expandable and “unlimited” OneDrive story is also gone from current service descriptions. E3 and E5 still describe 1 TB that can grow to 5 TB. The 25 TB support-request tier from Plan 2 is not on the current OneDrive service page.

The Grace Period Became a Paid Monthly Term

The same January packet delayed a second billing change. Microsoft had said that from January 19, 2026, partners could move eligible subscriptions with auto-renew off into an extended service term, and that API calls flipping auto-renew to false would do the same. Those production events slipped. Microsoft said it would name a new date.

The policy Microsoft had already set was this: from April 1, 2026, the free grace period on a lapsed CSP subscription would end. A customer who did not renew would cancel and lose access that day, or enter a paid extra term. Enforcement then moved to May 4, 2026. Eligible seats are licence-based services bought or renewed on or after April 1, 2025, that expire on or after that cutoff, with auto-renew off.

EST bills at the monthly rate plus a 3% uplift. If the product has no monthly SKU, the uplift is 23%. Partners can cancel or convert back to a normal term at any time and pay only for days used. Turning auto-renew off is no longer a pause. On an eligible seat it is a paid month-to-month term unless someone picks cancel at end of term on purpose.

That is the quiet billing twin of the storage cull. A tenant that used the old 30-day buffer to think now pays to think. A partner who leaves auto-renew off as a holding pattern starts a surcharge.

Partner Center APIs Started Blocking Calls in April

Microsoft enforced MFA on App+User calls to Partner Center APIs on April 1, 2026. The company had already required MFA on the Partner Center portal in September 2025. APIs were MFA-ready for testing from late 2025, and sandbox tenants were already blocking bad tokens in March 2026.

A call without an MFA claim in the token is rejected. Microsoft’s docs describe HTTP 401. Partner integration notes also cite error code 900421. App-only tokens still work for operations that do not need a user in a customer tenant. A lot of CSP billing, provisioning, and subscription tools are App+User. Those had to send a valid MFA claim or they stopped.

Microsoft’s January note said the rule would “protect against 99% of identity-based attacks.” That is the company’s figure. The operational point is smaller. The night before the cutoff, admins who run automated scripts were telling each other to check token flows or expect broken jobs in the morning. Public posts on the storage retirement, by contrast, were mostly distributors reprinting the three dates. The SKU cull barely drew an argument. The API cut did, because it could halt provisioning the same day.

Partners Are Selling Copilot Against the Clock

January did not only take SKUs away. It handed CSP partners a set of attach motions that all point at the same stack: a Microsoft 365 suite, Copilot, and security add-ons.

THE JANUARY ATTACH KIT

• Copilot renewal list: From January 21, 2026, the Partner Center AI assistant can list Microsoft 365 Business tenants renewing in the next 60 days and name a Copilot Business bundle, including more than one path with a promotion. The export can take up to 6 hours. An empty file means no Business seats renew in that window.
• Entra ID P2 and Defender for Endpoint P2: CSP gained step-up SKUs for Microsoft 365 E3 customers who are not buying a Security Suite or E5 yet. Entra Plan 2 lists at $10 after July 1, up 11% from $9. Microsoft told partners not to use the motion when E5 already fits.
• Dragon Copilot Physician Practice: From February 1, 2026, CSP partners can sell a down-market Dragon Copilot SKU, capped at 100 licences, no mix with Enterprise licences in the same org, in every geography where Dragon Copilot already sold.
• Purview for Copilot: Microsoft extended a 50% discount on Purview Suite for tenants with Microsoft 365 Copilot licences through June 30, 2026. That offer has now ended.
• Qualified Referral Program: Microsoft retired QRP at the end of March 2026 and folded intake into Partner Center referrals. In-flight items stay valid until they are accepted or they expire. Historical QRP data was due to stay readable for about 90 days so partners could export it.

The Modern Work designation also grew its eligible workload list in January, adding Microsoft 365 Copilot, Entra ID P1, Viva apps, Teams Phone, and Windows 365 among others. Referral intake in the Partner Center UI gained BANT checks, a ban on fake deal values such as “0 USD,” and a rule that a close date cannot sit in the past or inside the next seven days. Bulk upload and APIs were left alone in that first phase.

February 1 also arrived without a March preview price list for NCE licence-based services. Partners who plan next month’s quotes off that file had one less look-ahead. The March 1 live list was still due as normal. The pattern is tight: less à la carte, more suite, more Copilot on the renewal call, less time to sit on a lapsed seat.

Pay-as-You-Go Bills Storage by the Gigabyte

Microsoft’s January note named three exits: a suite, capacity packs, and pay-as-you-go storage. The suite has a price. The other two are not a $5 user seat under another name.

Microsoft 365 SharePoint Storage entered public preview for commercial tenants in June 2026. Microsoft 365 OneDrive Storage was due in public preview in July 2026. Both need an Azure subscription and a billing policy in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Education, GCC, and 21Vianet tenants are out. While SharePoint pay-as-you-go is on, quota warning mail and admin banners stop because the tenant is treated as inside quota.

THE OVERAGE METERS

• SharePoint overage: $0.20 per GB per month, shown on the invoice as $0.00667 per GB per day, for data above the tenant quota.
• OneDrive overage: $0.20 per GB per month at the same daily rate, for data above each account’s licensed entitlement.
• OneDrive Extra Storage packs: 100 GB, 500 GB, and 1 TB through 6 TB, assigned to one user, not split, with a 25 TB cap per person. Pay-as-you-go OneDrive still tops out at 25,600 GB.
• Who can buy Extra File Storage: CSP and volume-licence tenants cannot buy Office 365 Extra File Storage straight from Microsoft. They go through the partner.

Those meters help a suite tenant that ran past its pool. They do not rebuild Plan 1. A library that existed only because someone bought SharePoint Plan 1 still needs a suite licence under the people who use it, then pays $0.20 a gigabyte when the pool runs out. Partners who want a non-Microsoft home for the files have until each contract ends, and until December 2029 at the latest, to move them.

January 2027 is the last month those standalone seats can be renewed. After that, every remaining Plan 1 and Plan 2 contract is just running out the clock.