SharePoint Online comes with a set of storage management tools built into the Admin Center: site-level usage metrics, storage quotas, and Automatic Version Storage policies. For small tenants with steady usage patterns, those tools are often enough. For everyone else, there is a gap between what Microsoft provides and what SharePoint admins actually need when storage is tight or a cleanup project is due. This page compares what you get natively with what ShareMaster's Space Master adds.
What SharePoint Online provides natively
The SharePoint Admin Center gives admins several ways to understand and manage storage at a high level:
- Storage usage by site. The "Active sites" view shows current storage consumption for each site collection, so you can identify which sites are using the most space.
- Site storage quotas. Admins can cap each site at a specific quota, which prevents individual sites from consuming more than their share of tenant storage.
- Automatic Version Storage (AVS) policies. Microsoft introduced AVS in 2024 - tenant-wide and library-level policies that govern how many versions SharePoint retains per document going forward.
- Site deletion. Individual sites can be deleted through the Admin Center, with the deleted site entering a 93-day retention window in the tenant-level Recycling Bin before permanent removal.
These are genuine capabilities, and AVS in particular is a meaningful step towards better version governance. But several common storage problems fall outside what these tools address.
Where the native tools fall short
Existing version history
AVS policies control versions created after the policy is applied. They do not touch versions that already exist. A document library that has been running with unlimited versioning for several years may carry hundreds of old versions per file across thousands of documents. An AVS policy will cap future accumulation, but it leaves the current backlog untouched. On a large tenant, that backlog can represent tens or hundreds of gigabytes that will persist indefinitely unless addressed directly.
This is the most common scenario SharePoint admins encounter when they first investigate why a tenant is approaching its storage quota. The version backlog is often larger than the active content itself, and there is no native tool in the Admin Center to remove it in bulk.
Image file sizes
Document libraries regularly accumulate large image files: assets from marketing campaigns, screenshots embedded in proposals, product photography, and graphics pasted into presentations. SharePoint has no built-in tool to identify or reduce oversized images. Admins who want to reclaim storage from images today must download, compress, and re-upload files manually, or write a custom PowerShell or Graph API script.
Empty folders
As content is moved or deleted over time, empty folders are often left behind. They occupy no storage, so they do not show up in any capacity metric. But they create navigation clutter and make it harder for users to orient themselves in a library. There is no native SharePoint tool to scan for and remove empty folders across a site or a tenant.
Bulk deletion spanning multiple sites
When a cleanup project targets old project sites, archived libraries, or stale content spread across multiple locations, the native Admin Center requires acting on each site or library individually. There is no cross-site bulk delete operation available in the Microsoft tooling. A project that involves removing content from 20 libraries across 10 sites requires 20 separate manual steps at minimum.
What Space Master adds
Space Master is a suite of five purpose-built tools bundled into a single module of the ShareMaster desktop application.
Version Trimmer
Version Trimmer scans your document libraries and applies trim rules to existing version history. You set a maximum version count per document, a minimum age for versions to retain, or a combination of both. The tool then deletes old versions in bulk across your library catalogue. This is the targeted solution for the backlog that AVS policies leave in place. For a full walkthrough, see the guide to trimming SharePoint version history.
Image Reducer
Image Reducer scans document libraries for image files that exceed a size threshold you define and reduces those images in place. The compressed version replaces the original without requiring a download-reupload cycle. This is useful for reclaiming storage from asset-heavy libraries without touching any file metadata or requiring users to re-upload content.
Empty Folder Remover
Empty Folder Remover crawls the folder structure of a library or site and identifies folders with no contents. You can review the list before committing to deletion, which makes it safe to run on production libraries. This is particularly useful as a final step after a migration or bulk delete operation, when the content has been removed but the folder scaffolding remains.
Bulk Delete Files/Items
Bulk Delete Files/Items targets document library files and list items across multiple libraries in a single operation. This is useful for scheduled cleanup of log files, old report outputs, expired content, or any category of file that needs to be removed across many locations at once.
Bulk Delete Sites
Bulk Delete Sites removes multiple site collections in one pass rather than requiring you to navigate to each in the Admin Center. This is the tool for decommissioning dozens of old project sites after a migration or at the end of a fiscal year cleanup cycle.
Feature comparison
| Capability | SharePoint Native | Space Master |
|---|---|---|
| View storage usage per site | Yes (Admin Center) | Yes |
| Set storage quotas per site | Yes (Admin Center) | No |
| Control future version accumulation with policies | Yes (AVS policies) | Yes (Version Trimmer rules) |
| Trim existing version history in bulk | No | Yes (Version Trimmer) |
| Compress oversized images in place | No | Yes (Image Reducer) |
| Find and remove empty folders | No | Yes (Empty Folder Remover) |
| Bulk delete files across multiple libraries | One library at a time | Yes (Bulk Delete Files/Items) |
| Bulk delete multiple site collections | One site at a time (Admin Center) | Yes (Bulk Delete Sites) |
| Preview list before committing to bulk deletion | Not for cross-site operations | Yes |
| Export storage usage report to Excel | Limited Admin Center export | Yes (via Report Master) |
| Works on SharePoint on-premises | No | No |
Features reflect SharePoint Online and ShareMaster as of May 2026.
When native tools are enough
If you manage a small tenant with a handful of sites and moderate file volumes, the SharePoint Admin Center provides most of what you need for day-to-day storage management. Viewing usage, adjusting quotas, and enabling AVS policies for new libraries will keep storage under control without additional tooling.
The same is true for targeted single-site work. If one specific library is bloated and you know exactly which files to remove, the native multi-select delete is quick and sufficient. And for setting a new version policy on a library going forward, AVS handles that natively.
When you need Space Master
The situations where Space Master has no native equivalent are:
- You have inherited a tenant with years of uncapped version history and need to reclaim that storage now, not just prevent future accumulation.
- Image-heavy sites are using disproportionate storage and a manual download-compress-reupload cycle is not viable at the volume involved.
- A cleanup or migration project requires removing content across many sites in a controlled, batch-oriented way rather than site by site.
- You want a review step before committing to a bulk delete, to catch any content that should not be removed.
Decision matrix
| Your situation | Best fit |
|---|---|
| Monitoring which sites are using the most storage | SharePoint Admin Center |
| Preventing future version accumulation with a tenant-wide policy | SharePoint AVS policies |
| Trimming existing version history built up before AVS was enabled | Space Master - Version Trimmer |
| Reclaiming storage taken by oversized images in document libraries | Space Master - Image Reducer |
| Cleaning up navigation clutter from empty folders after a migration | Space Master - Empty Folder Remover |
| Removing old content across multiple libraries or sites in a single pass | Space Master - Bulk Delete Files/Items |
| Decommissioning a batch of old project site collections | Space Master - Bulk Delete Sites |