ShareGate vs AvePoint Fly for MSPs: Price the Cutover, Not the Tool

ShareGate vs AvePoint Fly is the wrong question if the quote only prices the migration license.

The better question is this: which tool fits the data you need to move, and what project work will your MSP still own after the tool finishes its job?

ShareGate and AvePoint Fly can both be useful in Microsoft 365 migration projects. ShareGate often makes sense for MSPs that want an admin-friendly path through SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive, file shares, and Microsoft-heavy cleanup. AvePoint Fly often makes sense when the project is broader, messier, or closer to an enterprise tenant-to-tenant migration with Exchange, Teams chat, Google, Slack, Box, Dropbox, Active Directory, or Entra ID questions in the same room.

Neither tool prices the weekend.

The unpaid work hides in discovery, permissions cleanup, identity mapping, tenant consent, user communication, failed-item handling, after-hours support, and post-migration proof. That is where MSP margin usually gets hit.

If you are building a migration quote, treat the tool as one line in the project. Treat the cutover plan as the project.

Quick answer: should MSPs choose ShareGate or AvePoint Fly?

MSPs should usually choose ShareGate when the project is Microsoft 365 content-heavy, the team wants a simpler operator workflow, and SharePoint or Teams structure is the main risk. MSPs should look at AvePoint Fly when the migration spans more workloads, needs Teams chat handling, requires heavier reporting, or may involve managed migration help.

Scopable matters because the buying decision is not only tool selection. Scopable helps MSPs turn migration findings, exclusions, approvals, rollback language, and after-hours support into a scope clients can approve before the cutover starts.

ShareGate vs AvePoint Fly: the MSP decision table

Decision point	ShareGate tends to fit when	AvePoint Fly tends to fit when	Quote risk to price
Primary workload	SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive, file shares, and Microsoft content cleanup are the center of the job	Mailboxes, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, Teams chat, Google Workspace, Slack, Box, Dropbox, file systems, and identity work may all appear	Do not quote only by GB. Item count, metadata, versions, and permissions drive labor.
Operator model	Your technician wants a guided desktop workflow, reports, and permission visibility	Your team needs a broader migration platform, central dashboards, and larger project controls	Senior engineer time must be priced separately from tool cost.
Teams expectations	Channel content, files, tabs, apps, Planner, and membership are the main Teams scope	Teams chat or broader Teams project reporting is part of the client ask	Private chats, meetings, apps, reactions, and tabs need explicit acceptance language.
Pricing shape	Annual ShareGate plans and machine activations fit the MSP's migration volume	AvePoint's subscription pricing can vary by product, user count, or amount of data migrated	Tool licensing may not match client billing cleanly. Add margin review before quoting.
Cutover tolerance	The client can accept staged migration, validation, and cleanup before the final move	The client needs heavier orchestration, reporting, or a larger multi-workload cutover	After-hours labor, rollback, and failed-item ownership belong in the SOW.
Client profile	SMB or mid-market Microsoft 365 project with known boundaries	Larger tenant consolidation, M&A, divestiture, or mixed-source migration	Legal holds, long paths, identity conflicts, and endpoint rejoin work can change the project.

The table is not a verdict on product quality. It is a warning against quoting tool features as if they were delivered outcomes.

A migration tool can copy data. It cannot decide whether a shared mailbox is still needed, whether a Teams archive should be preserved, whether a legal hold blocks a mailbox, or whether the client will approve downtime at 11 PM on Saturday.

That part is your scope.

What ShareGate is strong at for MSP migrations

ShareGate's public positioning is simple: Microsoft 365 migration and governance with clear migration planning, content movement, and post-migration reporting. Its pricing page lists SharePoint, Teams, Planner, OneDrive, file shares, Google Workspace, Gmail, Google Calendar, Box, Exchange Online, and Entra ID preview coverage by plan, with ShareGate Migrate starting at annual plan pricing rather than a per-end-user model.

That pricing shape matters for MSPs. If your team runs several Microsoft-heavy migrations each year, annual tool access may be easier to standardize than buying a one-off license per client. If you only migrate a few small clients, the annual cost has to be allocated carefully so it does not quietly eat the project margin.

ShareGate is especially useful when the hard part is content structure and permission cleanup.

The product's own materials emphasize pre-migration reports, source analysis, permission reports, incremental migrations, and the ability to copy content, metadata, versions, permissions, and structure. For an MSP, that maps nicely to the work clients often underestimate:

• finding abandoned SharePoint sites before they move
• cleaning guest access and broken permission inheritance
• deciding which Teams should be archived instead of copied
• validating file structure and version history
• showing the client what moved and what failed

ShareGate's Microsoft Teams page says it migrates standard teams, standard and private channels, channel conversations, files, tabs and apps, Planner plans, and team membership. It also names limits MSPs need in the quote: group chats, one-to-one chats, shared channels, reactions, tags, previews, recordings, meeting artifacts, and several user-specific settings are not handled the same way as channel content.

That distinction is not trivia. It is the difference between a clean client expectation and a Monday morning argument.

ShareGate is a strong first look when the MSP can say: "This is mainly a Microsoft content and collaboration migration. We need visibility, cleanup, mapping, staged passes, and proof. We do not need one platform to own every possible workload."

What AvePoint Fly is strong at for MSP migrations

AvePoint Fly is usually the more natural fit when the migration brief is bigger than a clean Microsoft content move.

AvePoint's migration page lists supported sources across SharePoint Server and SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Exchange Online, Exchange Server, public folders, Microsoft Groups, Teams including Teams Chat, Power Platform, Active Directory, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Workspace Chat, Slack, Box, Dropbox, file systems, IMAP, POP3, PST mailboxes, and Entra ID. That is a broader source list than many MSPs need every week, but it matters when a client says "tenant migration" and then reveals five adjacent systems.

AvePoint also positions Fly around self-managed, supported, and fully managed migration paths. That can be useful when the MSP wants tooling for the technical move but does not want to absorb every migration engineering hour internally.

The product's Learn documentation reflects the breadth: separate sections for Exchange Online, Exchange on-premises, public folders, Microsoft 365 Groups, Teams, Teams Chat, OneDrive, SharePoint Online, Google Drive, file systems, Slack, Dropbox, Box, Power Automate, Power Apps, Active Directory, Entra ID, and tenant discovery.

The trade-off is not "AvePoint is for big clients and ShareGate is for small clients." That is too blunt.

The real trade-off is operational appetite. A broader migration platform can fit a broader project, but it also asks the MSP to manage more mappings, permissions, policies, reports, and client decisions. If the client has Exchange, Teams chats, Google Drive, Slack history, and identity cleanup in one project, the tool conversation gets more serious. So does the statement of work.

AvePoint's pricing page says its subscription model can be based on user count or the amount of data to protect or migrate. That means the MSP should not assume the commercial model matches its own quote model. If you sell the client a fixed project price, but your vendor cost changes with users or data, you need a discovery buffer and a change-order trigger.

AvePoint Fly is a strong first look when the MSP can say: "This project has several workloads, higher reporting expectations, or migration engineering risk that a narrow content workflow may not cover."

The biggest quote trap is Teams, not SharePoint

SharePoint looks scary because permissions are visible. Teams is scarier because user expectations are messy.

A client says they want Teams migrated. They may mean channels, posts, files, tabs, apps, Planner, membership, private channels, one-to-one chat, group chat, meetings, recordings, calendar behavior, pinned apps, personal settings, and the vague feeling that Monday should look exactly like Friday.

No serious MSP should let that sentence sit unchallenged.

ShareGate's Teams page is unusually helpful here because it states both what migrates and what does not. Its help article from May 2026 also says copying Teams private chats using ShareGate was disabled until further notice after issues were discovered with destination message history.

AvePoint, meanwhile, publishes Teams Chat migration materials and its Fly documentation has a distinct Microsoft Teams Chat migration section. AvePoint also has a March 2026 article describing Teams one-to-one chat migration and the need to use a placeholder account if the goal is to move one-to-one chats directly into destination Teams rather than convert them into group chats.

That does not mean "AvePoint wins Teams." It means the Teams scope has to be precise.

Before you price either tool, ask the client to approve these Teams statements:

• Channel posts and files are in scope or out of scope.
• Private channels are in scope or out of scope.
• One-to-one chats are in scope, excluded, exported, or treated as best-effort based on tool support.
• Group chats are in scope, excluded, exported, or treated as best-effort.
• Meetings, meeting artifacts, recordings, reactions, apps, tabs, and user settings are individually named.
• The client accepts that some items may require reconfiguration instead of migration.

That approval should live in the SOW, not in a technician's memory.

Microsoft limits still matter even when you buy a migration tool

Third-party tools do not remove every Microsoft constraint.

Microsoft's cross-tenant mailbox migration documentation says cross-tenant mailbox moves require a per-user Cross Tenant User Data Migration license, and mailboxes on hold are blocked from migration. It also says that after a successful cross-tenant mailbox migration, the source mailbox is deleted and is no longer available in the source tenant.

Microsoft's cross-tenant OneDrive documentation adds another planning warning: cross-tenant OneDrive moves are a one-time move, not an incremental or delta migration. It says up to 4,000 OneDrive accounts can be scheduled in advance, migrated users have a short read-only period, old links redirect to the new location, path limits can break moves, and each OneDrive account can contain up to 5 TB or 1 million items.

That is official Microsoft behavior. It should shape the quote even if the tool is ShareGate, AvePoint Fly, or something else.

If legal hold cleanup is not priced, the MSP eats it. If target accounts are not ready, the MSP eats it. If long paths fail after hours, the MSP eats it. If the client says they did not know OneDrive would become read-only, the MSP eats the escalation.

A better migration quote names Microsoft constraints directly:

• Cross-tenant migration licensing must be purchased or verified before work starts.
• Holds, path length, item count, existing OneDrive sites, and target account readiness are discovery items.
• Failed items are categorized as tool retry, client decision, Microsoft limitation, or billable remediation.
• Cutover timing is conditional until prechecks pass.
• User communication is a deliverable, not an afterthought.

The tool can help with the move. It cannot make the client read your mind.

Price the weekend cutover as its own workstream

Most migration margin leaks happen outside the normal workday.

The MSP sells a fixed Microsoft 365 migration project. The client assumes email, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, mobile devices, Outlook profiles, DNS, apps, old links, permissions, and Monday morning support are all included. The quote says "migration." The ticket queue says otherwise.

A cutover workstream should include:

1. Discovery and source cleanup: tenant inventory, mailbox counts, shared mailbox counts, OneDrive sizes, SharePoint site owners, Teams inventory, external sharing, legal holds, guest users, and stale groups.
2. Commercial validation: tool license, Microsoft migration add-on licenses, support plan, after-hours labor, third-party vendor access, and margin approval.
3. Identity and access readiness: target users, groups, domains, MFA, conditional access, admin consent, app registrations, delegated access, and break-glass accounts.
4. Pilot migration: a small representative group with mail, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, mobile, Outlook, and app validation.
5. User communication: client-approved timeline, what changes, what will not move, downtime expectations, password or MFA instructions, and support paths.
6. Cutover runbook: owner, timestamp, DNS steps, tool jobs, validation checks, escalation contacts, rollback language, and go or no-go authority.
7. Post-migration proof: mail flow, calendar, OneDrive, Teams, SharePoint permissions, mobile access, Outlook profiles, failed-item list, and sign-off.
8. Warranty boundary: what is covered for the first business day, what becomes a project change, and what is excluded.

That is the work the client is actually buying.

Use a scope of work template to name those deliverables before the quote goes out. Use an MSP SLA template to separate after-hours response from full resolution. Use margin protection rules before the project turns into a heroic weekend with no margin left.

How to choose before you quote

Use this decision path before you put a number in front of the client.

1. Classify the migration by workload

If the migration is mostly SharePoint, Teams channels, OneDrive, file shares, and permission cleanup, ShareGate may be the simpler fit.

If the migration includes Exchange complexity, Teams chat, Google Workspace, Slack, Box, Dropbox, Active Directory, Entra ID, or a client expectation for managed migration help, AvePoint Fly deserves a closer look.

2. Classify the migration by expectation

Small project with known users, known data, and low downtime sensitivity? A tighter tool workflow can work.

M&A, divestiture, executive scrutiny, regulated data, or many departments with different tolerance for change? You need heavier reporting, more formal approvals, and a better client decision record.

3. Classify the migration by billing risk

If tool cost is annual, decide how much of that cost belongs to this client. If tool cost is user-based or data-based, validate the count before the quote. If Microsoft add-on licenses are required, confirm who buys them and when.

Never assume "the tool includes it" means "the client paid for it."

4. Classify the migration by support risk

If the client expects Monday morning to be quiet, price Monday support. If executives need white-glove help, price it. If remote workers need mobile and Outlook profile support, price it. If after-hours work is required, price it as after-hours work.

That is not nickel-and-diming. That is honest scope.

5. Convert the decision into client language

Do not tell the client: "We chose ShareGate because the permission matrix is useful."

Say: "This tool fits because your biggest risk is SharePoint and Teams permission cleanup, and our quote includes discovery, validation, and failed-item reporting."

Do not tell the client: "We chose AvePoint because it supports more workloads."

Say: "This tool fits because your project includes mailboxes, Teams chat, SharePoint, OneDrive, and non-Microsoft source data, and our quote separates migration, cleanup, and support work."

That is how a tool decision becomes a project decision.

What Scopable helps MSPs control

Scopable does not replace ShareGate or AvePoint Fly. It helps MSPs price and explain the work around the tool.

For a Microsoft 365 migration, that means capturing the discovery inputs that change the quote, turning them into client-facing scope, and keeping the risk visible in the roadmap instead of buried in engineer notes.

The useful output is not a prettier proposal. It is a better decision record:

• what data is moving
• what is excluded
• what must be cleaned first
• who approves downtime
• what happens if a precheck fails
• what support is included after cutover
• what becomes a paid change

That record belongs in the quote, the SOW, the QBR, and the project handoff.

If you want migration projects priced from real client context instead of memory, join Scopable early access.

Final verdict

Choose ShareGate when the migration is Microsoft 365 content-heavy, the team wants straightforward operator workflows, and the biggest risks are SharePoint, Teams channels, OneDrive, permissions, and validation.

Choose AvePoint Fly when the migration spans more workloads, includes Teams chat or mixed sources, needs broader reporting, or requires a more formal migration platform and support model.

But do not let either choice become the quote.

The quote is discovery, cleanup, user communication, migration execution, after-hours support, verification, warranty, and change control. The tool only sits inside that scope.

That is the difference between selling a migration and owning a weekend you forgot to price.