Indicative SharePoint 2010 Licensing Costs
SharePoint licensing is a complex subject. As well as there being multiple product configuration options, license prices often depend on a number of factors such as the type of organisation, the relationship with Microsoft and/or licensing retailer etc. It is useful, however, to have a rough indication of how much a product will cost when planning a project. For example if you are interested in giving all internal users access to FAST search you are looking at roughly twice the licensing costs of an installation using the standard features1.
SharePoint 2010 Licensing Overview
Before getting to the numbers there are a few things to understand. I’ve covered the basics here but head to the official Licensing Q&A page for full details.
For the full version of SharePoint Server 2010 there are two licensing models:
- Server + CAL licenses for internal users – for internal users you need to license each server running SharePoint 2010. You also need a Client Access License (CAL) for each person (or optionally each device) accessing a SharePoint Server. All users will need a standard CAL and to access enterprise features users will need both the standard and the enterprise CAL. The difference in Standard vs Enterprise features is covered below.
- Internet sites server licenses for external users – you need a server license for each server running SharePoint 2010. CALs are not required if all content is accessible to external users. If some content is for internal use only then CALs are required for users accessing this content. As well as a difference in features the Internet Sites Standard license only allows sites running on a single domain. As stated in the Microsoft Licensing Product Use Rights “The [SharePoint 2010 Internet Sites Standard] software may only be used to create and host a single site at a time resolved from a single domain name (e.g., contoso.com) and its subdomains (e.g. support.contoso.com).” It comes in at almost a third of the cost of the enterprise license, however, so opens up public SharePoint hosting to companies with smaller budgets.
FAST Search Licensing
FAST Search is licensed separately so to take advantage of all the enterprise search features you will need additional server licenses for servers running the FAST Search software.
It is also possible to use a single server for any of the above server licenses. For example if you wanted to run an Intranet and a public Internet website on the same server you could apply the SharePoint 2010 Server license as well as the SharePoint 2010 Internet Sites license to a single server. A FAST license can also be applied to a SharePoint 2010 server if required (saving hardware costs but still requiring SharePoint Server and FAST licenses).
Indicative SharePoint 2010 License Costs
The table below gives some indicative prices for SharePoint 2010 in the UK based on information from Microsoft. Note these are only intended to provide ballpark estimates only and you will need to contact a Microsoft Licensing Specialist to obtain accurate costs. These figures do not include software assurance. Additionally there are other license costs you will need to take into account such as Windows Server and SQL.
| License | Price |
| SharePoint 2010 Server | ~£3100 |
| SharePoint 2010 Standard CAL | ~£60 |
| SharePoint 2010 Enterprise CAL* | ~£53 |
| SharePoint 2010 Internet Sites Standard | ~£7,500 |
| SharePoint 2010 Internet Sites Enterprise | ~£27,000 |
| FAST Search Server | ~£14,000 |
* Note the enterprise CAL is additive i.e. this requires each user to also have a standard CAL
Here are a few examples to give you an idea of how it works:
Small, Standard License, Internal Only Environment
3 server farm – 2 x WFE/Application servers and SQL, SharePoint 2010 running on two servers, 1,000 standard users
License costs would be 2 x £3,100 (SharePoint 2010 Server) + 1,000 users x £60 (Standard CAL) = £66,200
If you wanted to add FAST search you would need to add at least one server at £14,000 and add enterprise CALs (an additional £53 per user) for users accessing these features. The total with FAST would be £66,200 + £14,000 + 1000 x £53 = £133,200 for all users. An alternative would be to only give certain users access to the enterprise features. This can be done through the use of Feature Packs (a.k.a Sets) which allow you to target features so they can only be activated on certain sites. This is useful both for hosted scenarios (e.g. it allows the hoster to restrict enterprise features to site collections that are subscribed to an enterprise plan), and internal scenarios (e.g. only allowing a management site access to enterprise features to reduce license costs).
SharePoint 2010 for a public facing internet site
3 server farm – 2 x WFE/Application servers and SQL, SharePoint running on two servers, content authors editing content that ends up being publicly available (i.e. no internal only content) on a single domain
License costs would be 2 x £7,500 = £15,000
If you wanted to add FAST you would need the Internet Sites Enterprise license to make the search features available and add a license for a FAST Search Server (although this could run on one of the WFE’s to save hardware costs). This would then be 2x £27,000 + £14,000 = £68,000.
Enterprise vs Standard SharePoint 2010 features
So what do you get for an enterprise license? The official Microsoft SharePoint site has a detailed comparison of features in each of the editions but at a high level the additional features provided in the enterprise license are:
- Access Services
- FAST search enhancements (note these also require a FAST server license)
- Sorting by any managed property
- Contextual search results (i.e. user or audience targeted)
- Refinement filter counts
- Similar results
- Thumbnails and previews
- Visual best bets
- Scale and other search platform enhancements
- Business Intelligence
- KPI’s
- Chart Web Parts
- Dashboards
- Data Connection Library
- Excel Services
- PowerPivot for SharePoint
- PerformancePoint Services
- Visio Services
- InfoPath Services
Web Analytics[update 21/06/10 – corrected – this is in standard]
Related products
- SharePoint Foundation 2010 – this is free with Windows Server
- Office SharePoint Designer – free download from Microsoft
- Office Web Apps – free for each user with a licensed version of Microsoft Office
- SharePoint Workspace – included with Office Professional Plus or available separately for approx. £85
[UPDATE: 15/10/2010] Bamboo have created a SharePoint 2010 Price Calculator that allows you to get ballpark figures for SharePoint license costs. It also includes costs for Windows Server and SQL.
Note 1 e.g. four SharePoint 2010 Server licenses @ £3100 + 1000 Standard CALs @ £60 = £72,400. Including FAST would require an additional FAST license @ £14,000 plus 1000 Enterprise CALs @ £53 = an additional £67,000 (i.e. almost double) to give all users access.
Useful post! SharePoint licensing definitely is a black art. 🙂
Rich Browne
28 May 10 at 9:39 am
[…] (e.g. 2 front-end servers and a search server). UK SharePoint expert Ari Bakker has made some useful pricing examples for SharePoint 2010, which illustrate how much it will cost in both internal end external scenarios. As an example, […]
J. Boye | Untangling SharePoint pricing & licensing for WCM
8 Jun 10 at 8:04 am
Indicative SharePoint 2010 Licensing Costs at SharePoint Config…
This article has been submitted to IntranetLounge, a website with a collection of links to the best articles about intranets…
IntranetLounge
22 Jun 10 at 3:43 pm
Interesting article which highlights the complexities in the Microsoft licensing very well. For a business that’s looking to set this up for the first time, these costs + the server OS and SQL Server licence costs + the CALs for those licences is going to be a bitter pill to swallow.
D Poyser
6 Jul 10 at 2:19 am
Just a question to clarify – are all of these numbers reflective on monthly costs? Specifically, are the server licenses monthly or per annum? I have seen other vendors quote user licenses on a monthly basis and server licenses on a yearly basis, which makes some sense but adds confusion.
S Murtuza
7 Jul 10 at 10:01 pm
@S Murtuza the numbers above are one off license costs. I’m not a licensing expert but you may have seen prices that include ‘software assurance’ which can be split over a period of time. The total price for SharePoint 2010 with software assurance will be much more than the prices above but as well as the split payment options it also gives you benefits such as support and ‘free’ upgrades to the latest version of the software within the software assurance period. For more details see http://www.microsoft.com/sa.
Ari Bakker
12 Jul 10 at 10:55 pm
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17 Aug 10 at 4:31 pm
Would the Internet Sites license cover you for internal users? My understanding of MOSS 2007 licensing is that for an external Sharepoint site, you would need an Internet Connector license for users that didn’t work for your company. But you would also need a CAL for each of your own employees. Would this still be the case for 2010.
Geoff Cornwell
10 Sep 10 at 10:13 am
we have 2 FE and 1 App server for internet users.
can we have the appserver as Internet Sites Enterprise and FE as Internet Sites standard
vishal
5 Oct 10 at 3:46 pm
Very helpful! Thanks for clarification!
M.Bajska
5 Oct 10 at 9:21 pm
what abount Sharepoint foudation? it seems it can be used for internet facing deplyoments, w/ windows server external connector.
isn’t that right?
liuk
12 Oct 10 at 4:28 pm
[…] The Bamboo calculator is based on US dollars but for UK pricing check out the SharePoint config blog who have a post on SharePoint licencing and a great explanation of what is needed in the murky world of licencing SharePoint. This post can be found at http://www.sharepointconfig.com/2010/05/indicative-sharepoint-2010-licencing-costs/ […]
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25 Oct 10 at 9:01 am
Thanks for the very useful article. I would add one important point here if your company’s roadmap includes Microsoft Project Server, which relies on SharePoint features. Project Server 2010 now requires SharePoint Server Enterprise version rather than the Windows SharePoint Services (free) version which was used on Project Server 2007.
James Sifuentes
31 Oct 10 at 11:41 am
Thanks for the information.
But, the license costs are not fixed. They are depends on how and what your organization requirements. So, that depends on how the relationship with Microsoft. If you want the correct details, only way could be contacting Microsoft sales team.
sharepoint-2010-world.blogspot.com/…/what-is-sharepoint-2010.html
SharePoint2010
23 Feb 11 at 3:56 pm
Thank you ! Very informative
G
14 Apr 11 at 2:33 pm
Ari, you mention Feature Packs as a way of managing Enterprise CALs. I am very interested in this approach but I have not seen this term before. Do you know where I can get more info on this approach? Thanks
Dean
Dean
8 Sep 11 at 2:52 pm
@Dean sure. Spence Harbar has a great series of posts on multi tenancy including how to set up feature packs at http://www.harbar.net/articles/sp2010mt6.aspx. There is also a Microsoft White paper: SharePoint 2010 for hosters that has information on setting up feature packs to manage enterprise CALs at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff652528.aspx.
Ari Bakker
8 Sep 11 at 9:59 pm
The below article may help to understand the various licenses required to set up a SharePoint Farm
http://manish-sharepoint.blogspot.com/2011/10/sharepoint-2010-licensing-for-dummies.html
SharePoint Experts
4 Oct 11 at 9:14 pm
[…] PD. Este artículo es una traducción mía del original publicado por: Ari Bakker, cuyo link es el siguiente http://www.sharepointconfig.com/2010/05/indicative-sharepoint-2010-licencing-costs/ […]
Licenciamiento de SharePoint 2010 « ismapro
18 Nov 11 at 12:58 pm
So, taking the example of…
Small, Standard License, Internal Only Environment
3 server farm – 2 x WFE/Application servers and SQL, SharePoint 2010 running on two servers, 1,000 standard users
License costs would be 2 x £3,100 (SharePoint 2010 Server) + 1,000 users x £60 (Standard CAL) = £66,200
Would this be a yearly cost? Or one-off payment?
Many thanks, Aaron
ps. I need some figures for a university assignment
Aaron
22 Mar 12 at 7:07 pm
@Aaron I haven’t checked the figures recently but yes that is my understanding for the SharePoint environment (Windows and SQL licenses would also be required) and it is a one off cost.
Ari Bakker
22 Mar 12 at 8:20 pm
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