I'm considering an upgrade from our aging on-premise Exchange server to Microsoft 365 and have received a quote ranging between $18,000 and $27,000 for the migration process from our IT management company. The scope of the quote includes reviewing our existing Exchange 2016 setup, determining mailbox stats, configuring Exchange Online protection, assigning licenses, preparing mailboxes for migration, and more. Given that we're only migrating 25 email accounts, does this price seem justified?
4 Answers
Honestly, $18k-$27k seems excessive for 25 accounts. A lot of the steps they included can be done relatively easily, especially if you have a good setup. If you have basic IT skills, I'd say you could probably handle it on your own or with minimal help. You might want to consider looking into automated migration tools like BitTitan, which could save you a lot of cash.
That quote is definitely on the high side for just 25 email accounts. Depending on how much user support you'll need, I would estimate that a migration project of this size shouldn't really go beyond 15-25 hours at most. If your current provider is already managing your Exchange environment, much of the discovery work they listed shouldn't take too long either. If you think your users will need hand-holding during the transition, maybe a simpler migration approach might be more suitable and less costly. It's worth getting a second opinion!
Keep in mind that while it does seem pricy, the quote may include additional services that could be helpful if anything goes wrong. Making sure that everything is secure and compliant is important, especially when transitioning to cloud-based services like Microsoft 365. If you're not comfortable doing this yourself, it might be worth paying a little more for peace of mind, but I wouldn’t take that quote at face value; get more bids!
I've recently migrated about 750 mailboxes and I think you could get this done for much less than that. I’d estimate around $6,500 for a project like yours. The tasks mentioned in the quoted proposal, like setting up MFA and configuring licenses, can be done fairly quickly without too much hassle if everything is prepped well. Definitely shop around for better quotes!

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