Microsoft's native tooling now moves mailboxes, OneDrive, SharePoint sites, Teams chats and meetings — so the question is no longer "which tool", it is "does anything justify buying one". EPC Group has delivered with the native path, Quest, BitTitan, ShareGate, Cloudiway and AvePoint, and resells none of them.
Last updated: 2026-07-31
EPC Group is a Houston-based Microsoft consulting firm operating since 1997, with six Microsoft Solutions Partner designations and 216+ M&A tenant migrations covering 1.83M users. Governed Microsoft AI, Data & Cloud — since 1997.
Key facts
- Microsoft native now covers four workloads across two paths — individual cross-tenant mailbox, OneDrive and SharePoint tools, plus the Microsoft 365 Migration Orchestrator (preview) coordinating mailboxes, OneDrives, Teams chats and meetings in one dependency-ordered batch.
- The Orchestrator does not move shared data. Microsoft: "The Cross-Tenant User Data Migration solution doesn't migrate shared data, such as Teams and Channels or SharePoint Sites."
- Cross-tenant SharePoint migration is Enterprise Agreement–only, licensed "on a per 100 GB of data moved basis", and does not support GCC or GCC High.
- Native SharePoint and OneDrive moves are one-shot. Microsoft: "Incremental and delta migration passes can't be performed."
- Only three of five vendors publish pricing. BitTitan: $14 per mailbox, $17.50 per user bundle. ShareGate: $5,995 / $9,995 / $17,995 per year. Cloudiway: $580 per 20-licence bundle. Quest and AvePoint publish none (July 2026).
- Mailboxes on any type of hold are blocked, as are OneDrive accounts under a hold policy. Regulated estates hit this on day one.
- Cross-tenant mailbox and calendar permissions are not supported natively. Microsoft requires you to "organize principals and delegates into consolidated move batches".
Quick facts
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Does Microsoft ship a native cross-tenant tool? | Yes — mailbox, OneDrive and SharePoint individually, plus the Orchestrator (preview) |
| Teams channels or SharePoint sites in the Orchestrator? | No. Explicitly out of scope |
| Delta / incremental file passes natively? | No |
| GCC / GCC High natively? | Not for cross-tenant SharePoint or OneDrive |
| Does native move identities? | No — "This migration moves content, not identities" |
| Cheapest published tool pricing | Cloudiway: $580 for a 20-licence bundle |
| Flat-fee option | ShareGate: from $9,995/year, Migrate Pro |
| Per-user option | BitTitan: $17.50/user bundle, $57/user tenant bundle |
| Documented GCC High Teams migration | Quest On Demand Migration |
| Broadest source coverage (Slack, Box, Dropbox, Google) | AvePoint Fly |
| Does EPC Group resell any of these? | No resale, no referral commission |
Our disclosure, up front
EPC Group has delivered tenant-to-tenant and M&A migrations using Microsoft's native path, Quest On Demand Migration, BitTitan MigrationWiz, ShareGate, Cloudiway and AvePoint. We hold no reseller agreement and take no referral commission on any of them. Every other comparison on page one of this query is written by a company paid when you pick its product. Our bias is toward whichever option reduces total project cost — frequently the free one.
What Microsoft native actually ships in 2026 — the fair baseline
Every commercial tool must be measured against what you already own, and that baseline is materially larger than it was two years ago.
Cross-tenant mailbox migration (generally available). New-MigrationBatch through the Move Mailboxes role, requiring a migration application consented in both tenants, an Exchange Online migration endpoint, an organization relationship, and a mail-enabled security group in the source scoping which mailboxes may move. Only user-visible content moves — email, contacts, calendar, tasks, notes. After the move the source mailbox is deleted and converted to a MailUser stamped with a routing address, which is what gives you mail-routing coexistence.
Cross-tenant OneDrive and SharePoint migration. SharePoint Online PowerShell, a trust between tenants, pre-created target users and groups, and an identity mapping file. Content never leaves the Microsoft 365 cloud, and a redirect is left on the source so existing links keep working until it is deprovisioned.
The Microsoft 365 Migration Orchestrator (preview). The significant addition. It coordinates Exchange mailboxes, OneDrives, Teams chats and meetings in one dependency-ordered batch across three architecture models — Single-Event, Phased, and Tenant Move/Split — mapped to acquisitions, large enterprises and divestitures. It requires Cross-Tenant Identity Mapping (CTIM), which maps source users one-to-one to target users and stamps the required attributes.
Licensing. A per-user, one-time Cross-Tenant User Data Migration add-on covers Exchange and OneDrive in an orchestrated move and can be assigned on either side. During preview, Teams chats and meetings need no additional licence. SharePoint site moves use the separate Cross-Tenant Shared Data Migration licence, per 100 GB, EA customers only. Microsoft publishes no list price for either on Learn.
What native still cannot do. No identity migration. No Teams channels or team structure through the Orchestrator. No delta passes on files. No GCC or GCC High for SharePoint or OneDrive. No mailboxes or OneDrive accounts on hold. No public folders, client-side rules, send-as permissions or auto-mapping profiles. No on-premises Exchange or file-share source. No device re-join. Those gaps are the entire commercial market.
The capability matrix
Every vendor claim below is drawn from that vendor's own published product or documentation pages, cited in Sources. Where a vendor does not publish a capability, this table says so rather than guessing.
| Microsoft native | Quest ODM | BitTitan MigrationWiz | ShareGate Migrate | Cloudiway | AvePoint Fly | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Workload coverage | Mailbox, OneDrive, SharePoint sites, Teams chats + meetings (Orchestrator, preview). No Teams channels | Exchange Online + on-prem Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams + M365 Groups, Power BI, AD, Entra ID, Entra devices, email domains | Mailboxes, archives, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams channels, Teams private chat, contacts, calendars, public folders, AD/Entra | SharePoint, Teams (channels, files, tabs, apps, Planner), OneDrive, Entra ID, Exchange Online mailboxes, Google Workspace, file shares | Exchange Online, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams channels/files/tabs/Planner/OneNote, Intune, DLs, security groups | SharePoint (Server + Online), OneDrive, Exchange incl. public folders, Teams, Groups, Power Platform, AD, Entra ID, Google, Slack, Box, Dropbox, file shares, PST |
| Identity migration | No — content only | AD, Entra ID, devices | AD/Entra, Directory Sync | Entra ID users, groups, memberships, licences | Groups and DLs only | AD, Entra ID |
| Permissions fidelity | File permissions preserved for principals in the identity map; mailbox and calendar delegate permissions not supported | "Fully preserve sensitivity labels, encryption policies and access scopes" | Not detailed | Purview sensitivity labels, encryption keys, access rules (Pro and up) | "Permissions, Membership roles" for Teams | "Preserve permissions, versions, sensitivity labels… with advanced mapping" |
| Teams / chat | Chats and meetings via Orchestrator (preview); channels out of scope | Chats and channel conversations; documented Commercial/GCC → GCC High matrix | Channels; private chat in the User Migration Bundle | Channels, files, tabs, apps, Planner. 1:1 chat not listed | Channels, files, tabs, Planner, OneNote. 1:1 chat not documented | Teams and Groups; chat scope not itemised |
| Throughput controls | 4,000 accounts queued; 5 TB / 1M items per site; 400-char path cap; no delta passes | Not published | Not published | 1 / 5 / 25 machine activations by tier; "No data caps. No re-run limits." | "Unlimited delta passes"; vendor-claimed 4–8 hours per 50 GB mailbox | "Migrate incrementally"; rate not published |
| Coexistence | Source mailbox → MailUser with routing address; file redirects; cross-tenant sync + multitenant organization | Directory sync, domain rewrite, "Unified address list for Microsoft Exchange", OWA access | "Coexistence Between Tenants"; automatic Outlook reconfiguration | Incremental passes between waves | Free/busy lookup, GALSync, mail routing | "Keep both environments online and migrate incrementally" |
| Reporting / audit | PowerShell and Graph move reports; documented prevalidation and error tables | "AI-driven log analysis"; ISO/IEC 27001, 27017, 27018 | Not detailed | "Item-level results with error context, centralized across all workloads" | Not detailed | "Real-time dashboard"; reports on volumes, item counts, trends |
| Pricing model | Per-user add-on + per-100 GB EA-only SharePoint licence. Not published on Learn | Not published | Published: $14/mailbox (≤50 GB); $17.50/user bundle; $57/user tenant bundle; $48/team | Published: $5,995 / $9,995 / $17,995 per year — flat, unlimited users and data | Published: $580 (€500) per 20-licence bundle | Not published |
| Support model | Microsoft support; FastTrack covers data migration only, excluding architecture and post-migration orchestration | Vendor support; ISO-certified operations | "100% SaaS. No local installations or professional services needed" | 24/7 premium support at Enterprise tier | "24x5 Expert Support" plus services | Self-Managed or AvePoint-Managed delivery |
| GCC / GCC High | Not supported for SharePoint or OneDrive | Documented, with published unsupported list (bots, code snippets, OneNote, Wiki) | Not published | Not published | Not published | Not published |
When the free native path is enough
Use the native path — and buy no tool — when all of the following are true. If any one fails, escalate.
- Both tenants are commercial cloud. Not GCC, not GCC High, not sovereign.
- You can accept one cutover per user with no delta pass. If the business needs users working in the source for weeks after their files move, native does not fit.
- No mailbox or OneDrive in scope is on hold. Holds block the move outright.
- You do not need Teams channels or team structure. Sites can move via the separate SharePoint feature on an EA; team structure cannot move natively at all.
- You do not need identity, device or on-premises source migration.
- You have PowerShell capability in-house. The native path is entirely script-driven. There is no console for a junior admin.
- Your evidence requirements are satisfiable from move reports.
The native path suits simple, commercial-cloud, sub-1,000-user consolidations where the acquirer controls both tenants and the timeline is not compressed. It becomes insufficient the moment identity, devices, GCC, on-premises remnants, long coexistence or Teams channel structure enter scope.
The Native-First Escalation Ladder
The Native-First Escalation Ladder is EPC Group's selection framework. Its governing rule: you do not choose a tool, you escalate to one, and each escalation must be justified by a named gap you can point at in Microsoft's own documentation. Start at rung one; stop at the first rung that covers your scope.
| Rung | What you use | The gap that forces the next rung |
|---|---|---|
| 1 — Native individual workloads | Cross-tenant mailbox + OneDrive/SharePoint migration, run by script | You need dependency-ordered batches, or Teams chats and meetings |
| 2 — Native Orchestrator | Migration Orchestrator + Cross-Tenant Identity Mapping | You need Teams channels, delta passes, or preview status is unacceptable to your risk committee |
| 3 — Single-purpose commercial tool | A flat-priced file-and-collaboration tool, or a per-user mailbox tool | You need identity, devices, on-premises sources, or long-run coexistence |
| 4 — Full-platform commercial tool | Identity + devices + all workloads + coexistence in one platform | You need GCC High, a regulated evidence chain, or non-Microsoft sources at scale |
| 5 — Platform plus managed delivery | Vendor- or partner-managed execution against a fixed cutover date | Nothing. The remaining risk is delivery discipline, not tooling |
Two rules make the ladder work. Write the gap down — if your team cannot name the documented limitation forcing an escalation, you are buying comfort, not capability. And run the ladder after the assessment, not before.
Scenario-to-tool routing
| Scenario | Profile | Start at rung | What actually decides it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small carve-out | Under ~250 users, commercial cloud, one-shot cutover, no on-prem | 1 | Whether Legal releases holds. If yes, native. If no, rung 3 |
| Large M&A consolidation | 1,000–20,000 users, phased over months, Teams channels in scope | 3 or 4 | Coexistence duration and Teams channel scope. Flat-fee tools win the economics at this size; per-user tools win when only a subset moves |
| Regulated (finance, healthcare, insurance) | Holds everywhere, item-level audit evidence, chain-of-custody scrutiny | 4 | Evidence, not throughput. Ask for the audit artefact before the feature list. See our SOC 2 compliance guide |
| GCC or GCC High | Government or defence-adjacent tenant on either side | 4, documented GCC High path | Native is out. Quest is the only vendor here publishing a Commercial → GCC High Teams matrix |
| Hybrid with on-premises remnant | Surviving on-prem Exchange, file shares, domain-joined workstations | 3 or 4 | Native has no on-premises source and no device story. See Exchange to Office 365 migration and SharePoint migration services |
| Divestiture / tenant split | A subset leaves; the source tenant survives | 2 minimum | Microsoft's Tenant Move/Split model covers the content. The hard part is entitlement separation and the TSA clock, not the file copy |
Total cost of tooling — including the labour the tool does not remove
Half one — tool licence, for an illustrative 500-user consolidation, at rates as published at time of writing (July 2026):
| Option | Published rate | 500-user tool cost |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft native | Per-user add-on + per-100 GB EA-only SharePoint licence | Not published on Learn — request from your account team |
| BitTitan User Migration Bundle | $17.50 per user | $8,750 |
| BitTitan Tenant Migration Bundle | $57 per user | $28,500 |
| ShareGate Migrate Pro | $9,995/year flat, up to 1,000 employees | $9,995 |
| Cloudiway Tenant Migration bundle | $580 per 20 licences | Confirm the licence-to-user ratio before modelling |
| Quest On Demand Migration | Not published | Request quote |
| AvePoint Fly | Not published | Request quote |
Flat-fee versus per-user is the biggest commercial decision here, and it inverts around scale: per-user is cheaper below a few hundred users, flat annual pricing usually wins above roughly a thousand. That is exactly why the vendor with flat pricing publishes a 500-user comparison and the vendor with per-user pricing does not.
Half two — the labour no tool removes. Price these at your own blended rate; we will not invent an hourly figure. Each exists on every project regardless of tool:
- Discovery and inventory — mailboxes, sites, teams, holds, sensitivity labels, guest and service accounts, delegate chains, third-party integrations.
- Identity mapping and target object preparation. Native requires exact
ExchangeGUID,ArchiveGUIDand everyx500proxy on the target MailUser or the move does not start. Tools automate some of this; none decide your UPN strategy. - Remediation — 400-character paths, oversized sites, labels with user-defined permissions and source Customer Key encryption (both block native SharePoint migration outright), holds, previously-provisioned target mailboxes.
- Batch design. Principals and delegates must move together; so must departments that share content. Business-relationship modelling, not a technical task.
- Communications and training — new UPN, new sign-in, Outlook reprofiling, Teams re-sign-in, OneDrive resync. See our Teams Premium features guide.
- Cutover operations, hypercare and reconciliation — staffed hours, an escalation bridge, a named rollback decision-maker, and item counts in versus out per workload in a form an auditor accepts.
- Source decommission and the domain move, which cannot happen while any user, group, distribution list, team, shared or resource mailbox or admin sign-in still uses the domain.
In EPC Group's delivery experience the licence line is routinely the minority of total project cost. Vendors compete on the line item that matters least. Our view on structuring the engagement around it is in delivery partner and vendor risk.
The procurement questions checklist
Send these in writing and require written answers. The answers, not the demo, are the evaluation.
- Which in-scope workloads do you migrate, and which do you explicitly not migrate? Provide the published support matrix, not a sales summary.
- Do you support GCC and GCC High as source, target, or both? Link the documentation.
- What is your position on mailboxes and OneDrive accounts under legal hold?
- Do you migrate 1:1 chat, or only channel conversations?
- Do you preserve mailbox delegate and calendar permissions across tenants? Microsoft's native path does not — what do you do differently?
- What happens to sensitivity labels, encryption and Purview policy on migrated content?
- Can we run delta passes after the initial move? How many, at what cost?
- What is the licence model, list price and term, and what happens if the project overruns it?
- What audit artefact do you produce — item-level reconciliation, per user, per workload?
- What is your support SLA during a cutover weekend, and is it included or an add-on?
- What are the top five reasons your migrations fail, and the remediation for each?
- Under what circumstances would you tell us to use Microsoft's native tooling instead of yours?
Question 12 separates vendors. One that cannot answer it honestly will not tell you the truth about question 11 either.
What breaks — failure modes
| Symptom | Root cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Native mailbox move never starts for a subset of users | Target MailUser missing ExchangeGUID, ArchiveGUID or the source LegacyExchangeDN as an x500 proxy | Stamp all required attributes before the batch; use Cross-Tenant Identity Mapping to automate it |
| Target mailbox provisioned unexpectedly, move fails | Target user licensed before identity mapping, so Exchange created a mailbox instead of a MailUser | Set-User — irreversible. Run CTIM first, licence second |
| Delegates lose access to a principal's mailbox after cutover | Cross-tenant mailbox and calendar permissions are not supported | Move principals and delegates in the same consolidated batch. There is no post-hoc fix |
| Users bounce with a 5.1.1 NDR replying to pre-migration mail | Source LegacyExchangeDN not stamped as an x500 address on the target | Add every source x500 proxy to the target object and re-run |
| SharePoint site migration fails at the target | The target site already exists; native cannot overwrite or merge | Delete or rename the target site. Restrict site and OneDrive creation in the target tenant for the whole project |
| Site migration fails immediately, no items moved | Purview Customer Key service encryption on the source tenant, or a read-only source site | Disable Customer Key on the source or use a commercial tool; set source sites to read/write |
| Files migrate but sensitivity protection disappears | Native migration does not carry label protection across tenants; labels with user-defined permissions block the site entirely | Remove labels pre-move, reapply post-move, and budget relabelling as a work package |
| Migration fails at a random depth in one library | Source path plus new target site or user URL exceeds the 400-character limit | Shorten target site and user URLs before the move; remediate deep folder structures |
| Domain cannot be added to the target tenant on cutover day | Source objects still reference the domain, or release has not completed | Clear every user, group, DL, team, shared and resource mailbox from the domain weeks ahead. Never make the domain move a cutover-night task |
What changed in 2026
- The Migration Orchestrator entered public preview, adding Teams chats and meetings to native scope for the first time. If you evaluated tools before it shipped, your business case is out of date.
- Cross-Tenant Identity Mapping became the required identity step for orchestrated migrations, removing the most error-prone manual task in the native path.
- Microsoft published a consolidated tenant-to-tenant planning page with a three-way approach table: orchestrated, individual workload, or partner and third-party tools. Microsoft naming third-party tools as a legitimate approach is itself new.
- Microsoft's documentation now names the Orchestrator's exclusions plainly — Teams and Channels and SharePoint Sites are out of scope. That sentence is the strongest argument a commercial vendor has.
- ShareGate published flat annual pricing tiers and a competitor cost comparison, pushing price transparency into a category that had none.
- Quest published a Commercial/GCC → GCC High Teams support matrix with an explicit unsupported list — currently the clearest government-cloud migration documentation in this market.
Where to go next
If you are being asked to pick a tool before anyone has run an assessment, stop. The assessment decides the tool; the demo does not. EPC Group runs a fixed-scope tenant assessment producing the workload inventory, the hold and label remediation list, the identity strategy and a scored recommendation against this matrix — and we are paid the same regardless of which option wins. Start with Microsoft consulting or Azure cloud migration consulting.
Related: Exchange to Office 365 migration · SharePoint migration services · Microsoft 365 E3 vs E5 · E3 vs E5 · Teams Premium · Box vs SharePoint · My Sites in SharePoint · SharePoint consulting Dallas · Data governance firms · Microsoft Frontier Company · CFO AI governance · EPC Group
Frequently asked questions
Can I migrate between Microsoft 365 tenants without buying a tool?
Yes, in many cases. Microsoft ships cross-tenant mailbox, OneDrive and SharePoint migration, plus the Migration Orchestrator in preview for mailboxes, OneDrive, Teams chats and meetings. The native path fits commercial-cloud moves with no holds, no identity migration, no on-premises sources and no need for delta passes.
What does Microsoft's native cross-tenant migration not cover?
Identities, Teams channels through the Orchestrator, delta file passes, GCC and GCC High for SharePoint and OneDrive, mailboxes or OneDrive accounts on hold, public folders, client-side rules, send-as permissions, on-premises sources, and devices. Microsoft states the solution "moves content, not identities".
Which tenant-to-tenant migration tool is cheapest?
It depends on user count. BitTitan publishes $17.50 per user for its User Migration Bundle, so 500 users is $8,750. ShareGate publishes $9,995 per year flat for Migrate Pro. Per-user pricing wins below a few hundred users; flat pricing wins above roughly a thousand. Quest and AvePoint do not publish pricing.
Does any tool migrate Teams 1:1 chat?
Microsoft's Migration Orchestrator migrates Teams chats and meetings in preview. BitTitan includes Teams private chat in its User Migration Bundle. Quest documents chats and channel conversations. ShareGate and Cloudiway do not list 1:1 chat migration on their published workload pages — confirm in writing before assuming it.
Can I migrate to a GCC High tenant?
Not with Microsoft's native cross-tenant SharePoint or OneDrive migration — Microsoft documents that government environments are not supported. Quest publishes a Commercial and GCC to GCC High Teams migration matrix, including an unsupported list covering bots, code snippets, OneNote and Wiki content.
What happens to mailboxes on legal hold?
They are blocked. Microsoft states that mailboxes on any type of hold are not migrated, and OneDrive accounts with a hold policy are blocked too. Either get Legal to release the hold, migrate, and reapply it on the target, or use a commercial tool. Resolve this in discovery, not at cutover.
Does the native path support incremental passes?
No. Microsoft is explicit that cross-tenant moves are a one-and-done activity, content is moved rather than copied, and incremental and delta migration passes cannot be performed. Every commercial tool here supports repeat passes; that is one of the clearest reasons to escalate off the native path.
Does EPC Group resell any of these tools?
No. EPC Group holds no reseller agreement and takes no referral commission on Microsoft's native tooling, Quest, BitTitan, ShareGate, Cloudiway or AvePoint. We have delivered with all of them and are paid for delivery, not licences. The question that exposes a biased vendor is: "Under what circumstances would you tell us to use Microsoft's native tooling instead of yours?"
Sources and verification
- Microsoft Learn — Plan a Microsoft 365 tenant-to-tenant migration
- Microsoft Learn — Tenant-to-tenant migration with orchestrator: overview
- Microsoft Learn — Orchestrator: planning and prerequisites
- Microsoft Learn — Resolve errors during orchestrated migration (preview)
- Microsoft Learn — Cross-tenant mailbox migration
- Microsoft Learn — Cross-tenant SharePoint migration
- Microsoft Learn — Cross-tenant SharePoint migration FAQs
- Microsoft Learn — Cross-tenant OneDrive migration
- Microsoft Learn — Cross-tenant OneDrive migration FAQs
- Microsoft Learn — Cross-Tenant Identity Mapping
- Microsoft Learn — Microsoft 365 migration overview
- Microsoft Learn — FastTrack: Cross-Tenant Migration
- Microsoft Learn — Cross-tenant synchronization overview
- Microsoft Learn — Plan for multitenant organizations
- Microsoft Learn — Remove a domain from Microsoft 365
- Microsoft Learn — SharePoint limits
- Quest — On Demand Migration
- Quest — Teams migration from a commercial tenant to a GCC High tenant
- BitTitan — MigrationWiz Microsoft 365 Tenant Migrations
- BitTitan — MigrationWiz Pricing
- ShareGate — Tenant-to-tenant migration
- ShareGate — Pricing
- Cloudiway — Microsoft 365 tenant-to-tenant migration
- Cloudiway — Microsoft Teams migration
- Cloudiway — Pricing
- AvePoint — Fly