Enterprise Vault Licensing: What Drives the Cost

What does an Enterprise Vault license cost? There is no single list price to quote, because the figure depends on how your estate is counted. Arctera's Enterprise Vault Product Use Rights set out the rules: most offerings are licensed per user, some per terabyte of front-end capacity, and each is offered as a subscription, a perpetual licence or, for some older offerings, either. Your offering, quantity and term drive the cost, so get those three right before renewal.

How Enterprise Vault is licensed

The Enterprise Vault Product Use Rights published by Arctera list each offering with its licence type and its "license use meter". There are two main meters:

• Per user. Email Management, Archive Discovery and the eDiscovery and Surveillance suites are licensed per active and legacy user. Legacy users can also be licensed on their own.
• Per front-end terabyte (FETB). Legacy Content Management and Discovery and the Data Insight Information Governance Complete Suite are licensed by capacity.

The current offerings in the document are subscriptions, and the licence terminates at the end of the applicable licence term. Under its "Legacy Offerings" heading, some products, such as Email Management Perpetual User, are listed as perpetual, and others as subscription or perpetual. Check which model your own contract uses before planning a renewal.

How users are counted

User counting is where most licence questions start. The Product Use Rights include these rules:

• Mailbox archives: one licence for each non-empty mailbox archive.
• Journal archives: one licence for each unique author or sender of email in your domains, including domains imported through a merger or acquisition.
• Microsoft 365 moves do not end the count. For Email Management, customers who have migrated mailboxes to Microsoft 365 still need to license every user who can access archived content through Email Shortcut, Virtual Vault or Enterprise Vault Search.
• One licence per user, however many content sources that user has.

Where file system or SharePoint archives are used for discovery under the eDiscovery and Archive Discovery offerings, the document converts capacity to users at 1 TB = 100 users. For the Enterprise Vault Product Suite Complete, a legacy offering, it notes that File System Archiving has a capacity of 5 GB per user in aggregate for Enterprise Vault 14.3 and later.

What drives the cost

Four things usually set the figure on an Enterprise Vault quotation:

1. The offering. Email archiving alone, archiving plus discovery, or a wider suite with surveillance or file governance.
2. The quantity. Active and legacy users, non-empty archives or front-end terabytes, depending on the meter.
3. The term. Subscription length, or maintenance on a perpetual licence.
4. Changes in the estate. Leavers, mergers, new domains and Microsoft 365 moves can all change the licensed count.

What this means for GCC customers

If you keep email archives for many years, as many GCC banks and regulated organisations do, the number of legacy users can grow quietly as staff leave. Group restructures and acquisitions bring new domains into journal archives, and the Product Use Rights count senders in those imported domains. If you moved mailboxes to Microsoft 365 but kept Enterprise Vault as the archive, the Email Management rule on migrated users applies to you.

Version matters too. Enterprise Vault 16, available from 11 May 2026, adds improved licence management and proactive licence notifications, and supports direct upgrade from 14.x. A renewal is a good point to review whether you are on the release you want to run for the next term. Our Enterprise Vault 16 upgrade guide covers the planning.

What to send for an accurate renewal quote

To get a quote that matches your entitlement, collect:

• Your current order or contract references and the expiry date.
• The offering names and licence type (subscription or perpetual) on your entitlement.
• Current counts of active users, legacy users and, where relevant, front-end terabytes.
• Your installed Enterprise Vault version and the components in use, such as Discovery Accelerator or File System Archiving.
• Any planned changes: Microsoft 365 moves, acquisitions, decommissioned sources or an upgrade.

Our licence renewals team checks entitlements, quantities, expiry dates and lifecycle before you sign, and the same team provides Enterprise Vault support for what you renew. If your archive sits alongside Microsoft 365, see our Enterprise Vault for Microsoft 365 service.

Frequently asked questions

Is Enterprise Vault licensed per user or per terabyte?

Both, depending on the offering. Email Management and Archive Discovery are licensed per active and legacy user. Legacy Content Management and Discovery, and the Data Insight Information Governance Complete Suite, are licensed per front-end terabyte.

Do we still need licences after moving mailboxes to Microsoft 365?

For Email Management, yes, if users can still reach archived content. The Product Use Rights state that customers who have migrated mailboxes to Microsoft 365 still need to license every user who can access archived content through Email Shortcut, Virtual Vault or Enterprise Vault Search.

Why does Virtech not publish Enterprise Vault prices?

Because the price depends on your offering, quantity and term, and vendor pricing changes over time. A quotation based on your actual entitlement is the reliable figure.

Talk to Virtech's Enterprise Vault team

Planning a renewal or checking your licence position? Call or WhatsApp Virgil on +971 55 700 8578, or email sales@virtech.ae.