Microsoft 365 Business Standard is CHF 12.50 per user, per month. For a 20-person company, that's CHF 3,000 per year — just for the license. That number is what gets quoted in the sales conversation. It is not what shows up on your actual annual spend when you add everything that comes with running Microsoft 365 in a real SME.

The Full Cost of M365, Not Just the License

License fees are the visible part of the iceberg. Underneath, most Swiss SMEs are also paying for:

• SharePoint consultants to set up site structures, permissions, and document libraries that actually make sense — typically a multi-day engagement at CHF 150–200/hour
• Teams training for staff who need to learn channels, permissions, and how OneDrive sync actually behaves (or doesn't)
• OneDrive sync issues — the IT time spent fixing broken sync, duplicate file conflicts, and "why did my file disappear" tickets
• Downtime and troubleshooting during migrations, updates, and the periodic reorganizations Microsoft pushes through its own product changes
• Data-residency risk — the compliance exposure and potential fines under GDPR and the Swiss DSG if data residency isn't properly configured (and by default, it often isn't)

Once you add consultant hours, IT support tickets, and training time, the real annual cost of M365 for a 20-person company is commonly 3 to 4 times the sticker license price — landing somewhere between CHF 9,000 and CHF 12,000 a year, not CHF 3,000.

What Rocky Cloud Hub Costs Instead

Rocky Cloud Hub runs on a flat-rate model: CHF 110 per month for up to 25 users. That's it. No per-seat pricing, no tiered feature gates, no "Business Standard vs Business Premium" decision tree.

CHF 110/month × 12 = CHF 1,320/year — for up to 25 users.

Compare that to M365 Business Standard licensing alone for 20 users (CHF 3,000/year), and Rocky is already cheaper before you even account for the consultant and support costs layered on top of Microsoft's stack.

Break-Even Math for a 15-Person Team

Let's run the numbers for a mid-sized SME with 15 employees.

Microsoft 365 Business Standard:

• 15 users × CHF 12.50/month = CHF 187.50/month in license fees
• Add a conservative estimate for IT support and occasional consultant hours: roughly CHF 600/month amortized across setup, sync troubleshooting, and training
• Total: approximately CHF 790/month

Rocky Cloud Hub:

• Flat CHF 110/month, covers all 15 users with room to grow to 25
• No onboarding consultants required — setup takes 24 hours
• Total: CHF 110/month

Difference: roughly CHF 680/month saved — CHF 8,160/year for a 15-person team. That's where the CHF 8,000+ figure comes from, and it's a conservative estimate that doesn't even factor in the value of reduced downtime or faster onboarding for new hires.

Beyond the License Line Item

The savings aren't just about the monthly invoice. A few things compound over a year:

• Zero onboarding consultants. Rocky doesn't require a SharePoint architecture project before your team can use it productively.
• Setup in 24 hours. Compare that to typical M365 tenant configuration and migration timelines, which commonly run into weeks when SharePoint structure and permissions are involved.
• Swiss support. When something breaks, you're talking to a team that understands Swiss business practices and answers in your working hours and language — not routed through a global support queue.

The Compliance Line Item Nobody Budgets For

Data-residency risk deserves its own mention because it's not hypothetical for Swiss companies. Under the Swiss DSG (Datenschutzgesetz) and its overlap with GDPR for companies serving EU clients, where your data is physically stored and who can access it matters legally — not just operationally. Getting this wrong isn't a line item on an invoice; it's exposure that shows up if a client, auditor, or regulator asks the wrong question at the wrong time. Rocky Cloud Hub keeps all data in Swiss data centers by default, which removes that risk entirely rather than requiring an add-on configuration to manage it.

Rocky Isn't Replacing M365 — It's Replacing the Collaboration Layer

To be direct about what Rocky is and isn't: it is not pitched as a full Office replacement. If your team is deep into Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for document creation, Rocky doesn't ask you to abandon that. What it replaces is the collaboration layer sitting on top — file sharing, search, team chat, task tracking, and calendar — the parts of M365 that get expensive fast once you add SharePoint architecture, Teams governance, and OneDrive sync management.

For many Swiss SMEs, the practical setup is Rocky running alongside existing Office licenses, handling the parts of daily collaboration that were costing the most in consultant time and IT overhead — while Office itself stays exactly where it is.