Free vs. Paid Ways to Move Dropbox to Microsoft 365

As an IT admin or someone who is overseeing your company’s Dropbox to Microsoft 365 migration, you may get confused about whether to go for a free or a paid way.

This post addresses the differences in migrating from Dropbox to Office 365 (OneDrive and SharePoint) in free and paid ways. We hope you get good insights to use for your company.

1. Migration Management and IT Support

One of the most significant drawbacks of free cloud migration tools is their self-service functionality. In most cases, self-service does not work for businesses that have complex migration needs, with large data size being at the forefront.

It’s only through a managed migration service with dedicated IT support that SMBs and enterprises can ensure all their needs are met without disrupting their ongoing operations at the source cloud.

With CloudFuze’s managed migration service, you can have the entire migration managed professionally with dedicated IT support.

2. Data Size Migration Capabilities

Free migration tools have many limitations, including limited data size migration capabilities. For example, a free migration tool such as Microsoft migration tool Mover can migrate individual files of only up to 15 GB in size which can be a bottleneck for businesses.

On the other hand, a premium migration solution such as CloudFuze does not have data size limitations. In fact, CloudFuze’s migration engine is enterprise-ready for migrating terabytes and petabytes of data.

Check out our Mover vs. CloudFuze guide.

3. Metadata Migration

Business migration isn’t as simple as migrating only the user accounts and data. The need to migrate intricate metadata and features makes almost every business migration (including Dropbox to Microsoft 365 migration) complex.

Ways to move from Dropbox to OneDrive for free are limited to only migrating basic metadata, including root folder permissions.

They cannot migrate intricate features such as created and/or modified timestamps, in-file comments, external and internal shares, and embedded links. This is where a full-stack migration tool like CloudFuze comes into the picture.

Here’s an excerpt from our Mover.io vs. CloudFuze guide.

4. Custom Migration Requirements

Businesses can have custom migration requirements, such as moving Dropbox-specific features, e.g., Dropbox Paper. Many businesses also have extensive custom requirements, such as performing the Dropbox to Microsoft 365 migration in a specified server hosted in a specific location.

Only scalable, paid Dropbox migration tools work to ensure the best results for these types of custom requirements.

Share your specific migration needs with our migration team for a speedy resolution.

5. Local Migration

Not all businesses may move Dropbox to Office 365 on a standard SaaS server. If you need to move your company’s Dropbox data to OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online on a private migration environment or locally, the migration tool you choose must be scalable.

Free Microsoft migration tool (or free Mover alternatives) does not offer this type of high level of flexibility. On the contrary, you can use a paid tool like CloudFuze as a standalone program and run it into your company’s data center to ensure optimum data safety.

6. Incremental Migration (Delta Migration)

Tools to move Dropbox to Office 365 for free may perform delta migration. But if you want to perform multiple delta migrations to ensure that no incremental changes are left out, it’s essential to use a paid tool.

With a paid migration platform, like CloudFuze, that offers managed migration services, you can customize delta migrations to rationalize migrated data at Microsoft 365 (OneDrive and SharePoint Online).

7. Decommissioning Source Cloud

Since free Dropbox migration tools have a self-service model, you are on your own when it comes to decommissioning data at the source cloud (Microsoft 365).

On the contrary, if you are using a managed migration service, you can get professional help and know about all the do’s and don’ts of decommissioning source cloud.