Feature-by-feature comparison of SPMT, ShareGate, AvePoint, Metalogix, and MigrationWiz for enterprise migrations.
This guide compares the top SharePoint migration tools for enterprise: Microsoft SPMT (free), ShareGate, AvePoint FLY, Quest Metalogix, and BitTitan MigrationWiz. Each tool has different strengths by migration scenario, user scale, compliance requirement, and pricing model. EPC Group uses all five tools — we select based on the specific engagement requirements.
Last updated by Errin O'Connor, Founder & Chief AI Architect, EPC Group
Enterprise SharePoint migrations involve petabytes of data, millions of documents, complex permission hierarchies, and business-critical workflows. The migration tool you select directly impacts data integrity, timeline accuracy, and total project cost. After completing 500+ SharePoint migrations involving 11,000+ engagements, EPC Group has tested every major migration tool in production enterprise environments.
Quick Answer: The best SharePoint migration tool for enterprises is not just one product. It requires a multi-tool strategy. Consider the following tools:
For migrations that exceed 10TB or involve more than 5,000 users, engage a specialized migration partner like EPC Group. They can orchestrate multiple tools for optimal throughput.
This guide compares the five leading SharePoint migration tools across 15 enterprise-critical dimensions including performance, permission fidelity, compliance support, and total cost of ownership.
Source Support
On-prem, cloud, file shares, third-party
Permission Fidelity
Granular permissions and metadata mapping
Delta Sync
Incremental migration for cutover windows
Reporting
Audit trails and compliance logging
Total Cost
Licensing, infrastructure, and labor
Free — included with Microsoft 365
Microsoft SPMT is a free desktop application that helps migrate content from different sources. These sources include file shares, SharePoint Server 2013+, and JSON/CSV-defined sources. The tool is crucial for enterprises to assess, particularly for file share consolidations where advanced permission mapping is not necessary.
Best for: Migrations from file share to SharePoint Online that involve fewer than 50,000 items per wave. This option is ideal for organizations with a limited migration budget. It is also suitable for pilot migrations to test content structure before using more advanced tools.
From $9,995/year — unlimited data volume
ShareGate is the leading third-party tool for SharePoint migration. It has a user-friendly interface and effective permission mapping features. ShareGate is particularly strong in SharePoint-to-SharePoint migrations. This tool ensures that complex permission hierarchies, content types, and metadata remain intact.
In addition to migration, ShareGate provides:
Best for: SharePoint-to-SharePoint Online migrations with complex permissions, organizations needing delta sync for minimal cutover windows, and IT teams that want an intuitive interface without scripting requirements.
SaaS-based — per-user or per-GB pricing
AvePoint FLY is a cloud-native SaaS migration platform. It supports a wide range of source environments, including:
Its strength is in cross-platform consolidation. Organizations can standardize on Microsoft 365 while migrating from multiple collaboration platforms at the same time.
Best for: Multi-platform consolidations (Google + Box + file shares to Microsoft 365), multi-tenant migrations, and organizations requiring SaaS-based migration management with centralized audit trails.
Enterprise licensing — contact Quest for pricing
Quest Metalogix Content Matrix is a leading SharePoint migration tool. Migration specialists prefer it for its detailed control over the entire migration process. It effectively manages complex scenarios, including:
These features make it superior to simpler tools.
Best for: Highly complex migrations with custom solutions, managed metadata restructuring, organizations migrating from SharePoint 2007/2010, and scenarios requiring database-attach migration for maximum speed.
Per-user licensing — from $12/user (document migration)
BitTitan MigrationWiz is a cloud-based migration platform. It is well-known for email migrations, but it also supports document and SharePoint migrations.
Its per-user pricing model is appealing for smaller migrations. However, costs increase linearly with the number of users, which can make it costly for large enterprises.
Best for: This solution is ideal for:
| Feature | SPMT | ShareGate | AvePoint FLY | Metalogix | MigrationWiz |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SharePoint On-Prem Source | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Limited |
| File Share Source | Yes | Limited | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Google Workspace Source | No | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Box / Dropbox Source | No | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Permission Mapping | Basic | Advanced | Advanced | Advanced | Basic |
| Metadata Preservation | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Limited |
| Version History | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Limited |
| Incremental / Delta Sync | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Scheduling / Automation | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pre-Migration Assessment | Basic | Yes | Yes | Yes | Limited |
| Managed Metadata Migration | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Content Type Support | Basic | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Multi-Tenant Support | No | Limited | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SaaS Deployment | No | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Compliance Audit Logging | Basic | Yes | Yes | Yes | Limited |
| Tool | Pricing Model | Estimated Cost (10TB / 5K Users) | Hidden Costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft SPMT | Free | $0 (tool only) | Labor, infrastructure, Azure staging storage |
| ShareGate | Annual license | Vendor-quoted | Migration infrastructure, Azure blob staging |
| AvePoint FLY | Per-user or per-GB | Vendor-quoted | Premium support tiers, data pass-through bandwidth |
| Quest Metalogix | Enterprise license | Vendor-quoted | Professional services, complex installation |
| BitTitan MigrationWiz | Per-user (vendor list) | Scales with user count | Additional licenses for SharePoint vs email |
EPC Group has successfully completed over 500 enterprise SharePoint migrations. We do not rely on a single tool for these projects. Our migration architects select the best combination of tools based on your:
Inventory all content, permissions, workflows, and customizations across source environments. Identify items requiring remediation before migration.
Select the optimal tool combination based on source type, data volume, permission complexity, and compliance requirements. Configure migration infrastructure.
Migrate 2-3 representative sites covering different complexity levels. Validate permissions, metadata, and user experience with stakeholders.
Execute parallel migration streams during off-hours windows. Monitor throughput, error rates, and API throttling in real-time.
Final delta sync, DNS cutover, user redirection. Execute automated validation scripts to confirm 100% content integrity.
Learn more about our enterprise SharePoint migration services or explore our full SharePoint consulting capabilities.
Migrating everything — including ROT (Redundant, Outdated, Trivial) content — inflates timelines and costs by 30-50%. Clean before you migrate. EPC Group recommends eliminating 30-40% of content through pre-migration analysis.
Lifting and shifting broken permissions from on-premises to SharePoint Online multiplies security risks. Use the migration as an opportunity to implement clean permission models aligned with Azure AD groups and sensitivity labels.
Microsoft 365 aggressively throttles migration APIs. Running too many parallel streams or migrating during business hours causes failures and exponential slowdowns. Proper scheduling and throttling management is critical.
Jumping directly to bulk migration without piloting 2-3 representative sites leads to discovering issues at scale — when they are 10x more expensive to fix. Always pilot first, validate with stakeholders, then scale.
Declaring migration complete without automated validation scripts means discovering missing content, broken permissions, or lost metadata weeks later. EPC Group runs automated integrity checks on 100% of migrated content.
Users who are not trained and prepared for the new SharePoint Online environment will resist adoption, create shadow IT, and undermine the ROI of the entire migration investment.
500+
SharePoint migrations completed
11,000+ engagement scale
Users migrated across platforms
99.97%
Content integrity rate
28+
Years of Microsoft expertise
Don't risk your enterprise migration with just one tool or an inexperienced partner. EPC Group offers:
Enterprise SharePoint architecture, migration, and governance from EPC Group.
Read moreFull-service migration from on-premises to SharePoint Online for 10K+ user environments.
Read moreRanked comparison of the top enterprise SharePoint migration service providers.
Read moreThe best SharePoint migration tool depends on your environment. For enterprises with 10,000+ users and complex permissions, EPC Group recommends a multi-tool approach: Microsoft SPMT for basic file migrations, ShareGate for permission-heavy SharePoint-to-SharePoint moves, and AvePoint FLY for cross-platform consolidations. No single tool handles every enterprise scenario perfectly. EPC Group uses a proprietary orchestration layer on top of best-of-breed tools to optimize throughput, maintain audit trails, and ensure a documented 5-day cutover average across large-scale migrations.
Microsoft SPMT (SharePoint Migration Tool) is free and effective for straightforward file share-to-SharePoint Online migrations under 50,000 items. However, it lacks scheduling, granular reporting, advanced permission mapping, and multi-tenant support needed for enterprise migrations. SPMT does not handle SharePoint on-premises site-level migrations well and cannot migrate workflows, InfoPath forms, or custom solutions. For enterprises, SPMT is best used as one tool in a broader toolkit rather than the sole migration engine.
ShareGate pricing starts at approximately $9,995 per year for a single license, with enterprise agreements available for multi-license deployments. The license covers unlimited data migration volume, which makes it cost-effective for large migrations. Additional costs include Azure Blob Storage for staging (approximately $0.018/GB for hot tier) and dedicated migration infrastructure. The total cost of a 50TB enterprise migration run in-house on ShareGate is tool licensing plus infrastructure plus internal labor; a full-service migration engagement is a fixed fee quoted after a scoping call.
Yes. All major migration tools support SharePoint 2013, 2016, and 2019 as source environments migrating to SharePoint Online. ShareGate and AvePoint FLY handle this most effectively, preserving site structures, metadata, permissions, and version history. Key considerations include: authentication differences (NTLM/Kerberos to Azure AD), workflow migration (2013 Workflows cannot be directly migrated — they must be rebuilt in Power Automate), InfoPath forms (require conversion to Power Apps), and custom solutions (need SharePoint Framework rebuilds). EPC Group has migrated 11,000+ engagements across these version transitions.
Enterprise SharePoint migrations typically take 3-9 months depending on data volume, complexity, and user count. A 10TB migration with 5,000 users and moderate complexity averages 12-16 weeks. Key timeline factors include: discovery and assessment (2-4 weeks), pilot migration of representative sites (2-3 weeks), bulk migration waves (4-8 weeks), user acceptance testing (2-3 weeks), and cutover (1-2 weeks). EPC Group uses parallel migration streams and off-hours scheduling to compress timelines by 30-40% compared to sequential approaches.
AvePoint FLY is the migration engine designed for moving content between platforms (SharePoint on-premises, SharePoint Online, Google Workspace, Box, Dropbox, file shares). AvePoint Cloud Backup is a backup and recovery product for protecting Microsoft 365 data in place. They serve completely different purposes. For migration projects, FLY is the correct product. Some enterprises deploy both: FLY for the initial migration, then Cloud Backup for ongoing Microsoft 365 data protection post-migration.
Standard migration tools cannot migrate: SharePoint 2010/2013 workflows (must be rebuilt in Power Automate), InfoPath forms (require Power Apps conversion), custom web parts and solutions (need SharePoint Framework redevelopment), managed metadata term store relationships (require manual recreation or scripting), custom search configurations, and server-side event receivers. Additionally, OneNote notebooks stored in SharePoint often require separate handling, and items exceeding SharePoint Online limits (file path >400 characters, individual files >250GB) need remediation before migration.
For migrations under 1TB with simple file shares, a self-service tool like SPMT or ShareGate may be sufficient with internal IT managing the project. For enterprise migrations (10TB+, 5,000+ users, multiple source environments, compliance requirements), hiring a specialized consulting firm is strongly recommended. The tool itself is only 20% of the challenge — the remaining 80% involves discovery, content cleanup, permission redesign, user communication, change management, and post-migration validation. EPC Group provides end-to-end migration services using best-of-breed tools orchestrated by experienced migration architects.
Schedule a free migration assessment with our team. We will analyze your current environment, recommend the optimal tool strategy, and provide a detailed migration roadmap with fixed-fee pricing.
This guide compares the leading SharePoint migration tools for enterprises: Microsoft SPMT (free), ShareGate, AvePoint FLY, Quest Metalogix, and BitTitan MigrationWiz.
Each tool has unique strengths based on:
EPC Group utilizes all five tools and selects the best one based on specific engagement needs.
Standard migration tools move files and permissions — they cannot migrate legacy customizations. Plan for manual remediation of these items.
For enterprises with 10,000+ users and complex permissions, EPC Group recommends using multiple tools in combination.
Using a single tool for all scenarios is a false economy — each tool has real limits at scale.
On-premises to Online migrations require addressing these issues before migration execution.
Choosing the right migration tool depends on your specific needs. Here are some options:
For in-place tenant scenarios and file share migrations with simple permissions, the answer is yes. However, for tenant-to-tenant migrations after M&A, cross-platform consolidations, or environments needing detailed compliance reporting, consider using:
SPMT is also free — it is often used as the primary tool with ShareGate handling the permission-complex sites.
Microsoft SPMT is free. ShareGate charges per migration or annual subscription — enterprise pricing available on request. AvePoint FLY charges per user or per GB — enterprise licensing available.
Quest Metalogix charges per GB. BitTitan MigrationWiz charges per user. EPC Group includes migration tool licensing within our project pricing for most engagements.
Standard migration tools cannot migrate SharePoint 2010 or 2013 workflows. These workflows must be rebuilt in Power Automate.
To assist with this process, use the Microsoft Workflow Migration Tool to generate a report of all existing workflows.
Consult with a SharePoint migration architect to find the best tool for your needs. Consider your source environment, scale, and compliance requirements.
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