If your Dynamics 365 environment has been running for more than a few months, you’ve probably noticed something: storage grows faster than you expect. Attachments pile up, emails multiply, notes are added daily — and suddenly, your Microsoft invoice looks heavier than it should.
Microsoft’s model doesn’t help. At $40 per gigabyte per month for database storage and $2 per gigabyte for file storage, what seems like a small expense quickly turns into a significant operational cost. For many organizations, this adds up to thousands of dollars in hidden storage fees every year.
Watch our free on-demand webinar for a full break down of where these costs come from and how our solution, AttachmentExtractor, helps organizations eliminate them without compromising user experience.
Where the Hidden Costs Come From
CRM is designed to be the single source of truth. But that doesn’t mean every file should live inside it. The largest “data hogs” are:
- Activity records: especially email content, stored in the activity pointer base table.
- Notes and attachments: often large files sitting in the annotation and attachment tables.
The challenge is that while these items are essential for customer history and record-keeping, they don’t need to consume high-cost storage. Left unchecked, they can push companies into steep overage bills — sometimes in less than a year.
The Smarter Alternative: Move, Don’t Delete
Businesses often think they have only two choices:
- Stop tracking data in CRM (which defeats the purpose).
- Delete files and risk losing valuable history.
AttachmentExtractor offers a third, smarter option: move the data to low-cost storage while keeping it accessible from CRM.
Here’s how it works:
- Email content is shifted from the database to Azure Blob storage — reducing cost from $40/GB to less than one cent per GB.
- Attachments and notes can be stored in either Azure Blob or SharePoint.
- Links remain intact, so users never lose context. Everything still appears inside Dynamics as if it were stored there originally.
From the user’s perspective, nothing changes. Attachments preview, download, forward, and reply exactly as before. Even with Microsoft Copilot and other AI features, there’s no negative impact.
Simple Setup, Full Control
AttachmentExtractor is designed as a “set it and forget it” service, but it also gives administrators flexibility:
- Filters by size (ignore small signature images if you choose).
- Filters by age (only move older items or everything new).
- Filters by entity (whitelist or blacklist specific tables).
- Custom folder structures in SharePoint that follow your document management model.
Setup usually takes only 15-60 minutes, and you can start with a free trial to see it in action. The free trial allows up to 5,000 items to be extracted (100 per day) so you can see real savings before making a commitment.
Best of all, your data isn’t locked in. If you stop using AttachmentExtractor, you still retain access to everything already moved. mscrm-addons.com never stores or “holds hostage” your data.
Why This Matters Now
Storage isn’t just a line item on your Microsoft bill — it’s a hidden tax on growth. Every new record, every customer interaction, every attached file makes your CRM more expensive to run.
By proactively managing where your data lives, you can:
- Protect your IT budget.
- Keep users happy with a seamless experience.
- Ensure compliance by maintaining access controls through Dynamics and SharePoint security models.
See it for yourself.
Watch the on-demand webinar: The Hidden Cost of CRM Storage and How to Eliminate Them with AttachmentExtractor.