Microsoft 365 Single Tenant vs Multi Tenant: Explained

Microsoft 365 Single Tenant vs. Multi Tenant

author
Published By Aldrich Calvin
Anuraag Singh
Approved By Anuraag Singh
Published On January 30th, 2024
Reading Time 6 Minutes Reading
Category Office 365

Summary: In this write-up, we will talk about what happens when we need to choose between Microsoft 365 single tenant vs multi tenant. In addition, it can be a confusing task. Besides, if you decide to choose multiple tenants over single tenants for your organization. On top of that, it will be the wrong choice as it comes with some limitations for the end-user experience. 

Office 365 suite is the one that provides a seamless workflow to organizations through its services such as Outlook, SharePoint, Teams, and many more. The organizations can manage Office 365 as a single or multi-tenant. Moreover, even experts suggest opting for a single Office 365 tenant for your organization in the majority of the cases. Therefore, a single tenant offers integrated online services for professional messaging, file sharing, and meetings. Tenants are used as containers for organization assets. 

So, in this article, we clarify the differences of the tenants,  but before we start from the main topic. Let’s start the article with the meaning of the tenants.

Explanation of Tenant in Microsoft 365 Single Tenant vs Multi Tenant

It can be a special space, only for one organization within the M365 cloud. Therefore, we can say that it is more like a virtual home for user accounts and settings. This significant space will be separate from others, and this will keep your things private. With the help of this, the administrator will minimize their workload. On top of that Administrators can create, configure, and manage user accounts within the tenant.

What Does ‘Multiple Office 365 Tenant’ Mean?

Within this part of this article, we will learn the meaning of multiple Office 365 tenants. So, it refers to a situation where an organization has multiple separate subscriptions of M365. Therefore, this means that an organization has to manage multiple distinct Microsoft 365 environments. Users within one tenant do not have access to their resources in another tenant since these tenants are segregated from each other. 

If we talk about the situations in which we need multiple tenants. So, users need to be integrated, when two companies agree to work concurrently. In addition, some of the organizations, need to use separate tenants to avoid internal conflicts of interest.

Microsoft 365 Single Tenant vs Multi Tenant: Which Suits Us Best?

It is essential to know the difference between Office 365 single tenants vs multiple tenants. So, here are some main differences of the same:

Single Office 365 Tenant

  1. You can handle it within the same company, and it ensures a better user experience.
  2. Users need only a single OneDrive for business sites. 
  3. SharePoint Search will provide results for all organizations, and the new intelligent search suggestions will offer a complete experience.
  4. Single profile per user is created.
  5. Users can gain full experience in Office 365 Groups.
  6. Users can share their data efficiently.
  7. The document library in the SharePoint can be synced in offline mode.

Multiple Office 365 Tenant

  1. Not handled within the same company, as users from different tenants are considered guests, impacting the user experience.
  2. Users need to maintain their multiple OneDrive for Business sites.
  3. Both SharePoint Search and the Term Store are confined to a single tenant.
  4. SharePoint libraries cannot be synced offline.
  5. It will become unreliable to manage multiple profiles.
  6. You can gain limited experience in Office 365 Groups.
  7. It affects the sharing experience as from different tenants users cannot share their Shared mailboxes.

Above we saw the “Microsoft 365 single tenant vs multi tenant” meaning and differentiation. In the next part of the blog, we will learn the alternative query which is how can we consolidate two different tenants. 

Also read: How to Move Office 365 Subscription to Another Tenant?

How to Consolidate Multiple Tenants into a Single Office 365 Tenant?

If an organization decides to switch from multiple tenants to a single tenant, in this case, they need to perform the migration procedure. In addition, at present there is highly advised and Most Secured Office 365 Merge Tool that to merge Office 365 tenants. Moreover, it also provides the option of a date filter, with this you can merge Exchange Online Mailbox specifically. Additionally, it is compatible with Windows 10 (64-bit), and Windows Server 2012 / 2016.

Here are some steps of the above-mentioned software:

Step 1. Download and Launch the tool.

Download Now    Purchase Now

Step 2. Select Office 365 as the source and Office 365 as the destination.

choose source and destination

Step 3. Under the Workload Selection window, Software allows you to select Category, Email, Contact, Task, Calendar, and Document.

select items to migrate

Step 4. You can see there are two options available, then select these reliable options:

  • Migrate Document Permissions
  • User Group Mapping

enter permissions and group mappings

Step 5. You can perform the date-based selective backup, using the Date-Range Filter option. Click on Next.

apply date range filter

Step 6. After that, Enter the Admin email ID & Application ID of the Source tenant & then click on the Validate button. Similarly, repeat the same step for the destination as well.

source credentials

Step 7. You can see the permissions are validated. Click on the Next button.

validate source credetials

Step 8. There are several ways in which you can add users from the source account that need to be processed such as Fetch Users, Import Users, and Download Template.

add users

Step 9. Now, Click on the Start Migration button to start the process.

start migration

Wrapping Up

In this comprehensive blog, we learn about Microsoft 365 single tenant vs multi tenant and find out which is better. Here we covered the meaning of both single-tenant and multi tenant. On top of that, we discussed the difference between the same. In addition, there are many situations in which we need to consolidate the two different tenants. So, to solve this problem, we talked about the most efficient method for the migration process.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What is the difference between Microsoft single-tenant and multi-tenant?

Ans – There are varieties of benefits with the multi-tenant such as multiple cloud platforms that are not available in the single-tenant.

Q2. Can a company have multiple tenants?

Ans – Yes, as per the requirements company can use the multi-tenant

Q3. Risk of single tenant and multi-tenant?

Ans – Due to the usage of resources by one the other user faces issues in the case of multi-tenant. But in a single tenant, there are no issues with resources because each user has its own dedicated resource.  

Q4. Is it possible to merge tenants?

Ans – Yes, you can merge the tenants by using the above-explained tool.