Before you can use any SharePoint Content AI features, you need to configure pay-as-you-go billing. In this episode of the Ultimate SharePoint Content AI Deep Dive Series, we walk through how to set it up properly and securely in Microsoft 365.
Joined by MVP Gokan Ozcifci, we’ll show you:
✔️ Why Microsoft moved to pay-as-you-go for Content AI
✔️ What you need before getting started (Azure, permissions, and yes… a credit card 😅)
✔️ How to enable the right services while staying in control of costs
✔️ Best practices for pilot rollouts, spend limits, and budget alerts
✔️ What’s coming in 2025 for departmental billing, budget enforcement, and admin center reporting
📌 Pay-as-you-go pricing info
🎥 Related video with Microsoft PM on upcoming changes
📘 Free SharePoint Content AI eBook
📺 FULL SharePoint Content AI Series
Watch my 100+ courses on Pluralsight
Video Summary
- Start Small, Scale Smart
Most orgs begin with a pilot—enabling select features for a small user group, monitoring ROI and usage, and then expanding based on results. That “crawl, walk, run” approach helps reduce financial risk and boosts adoption. - Fine-Tuned Flexibility
You can decide which AI services (like OCR or autofill columns) run on which sites—down to SharePoint or OneDrive, even limiting them by CSV-uploaded site lists. It’s not perfect (CSV limits to 100), but it’s a good starting point. - Watch Those Budgets
Budgeting tools in Azure let you set alerts and spending caps, like “ping me at 80% spend.” It’s a lifesaver for controlling experimentation costs. Soon, these controls will migrate into the M365 admin center for even easier access. - Transparency on Pricing
Each Content AI service has a separate price tag—from $0.005 per autofill transaction to $2 per e-signature. The official pricing page is your go-to, since Microsoft likes to shuffle pricing around at the end of each fiscal year. - Future-Proofing Built In
Microsoft is investing heavily in pay-as-you-go. Upcoming upgrades will enable multiple subscription billing (hello, departmental chargebacks!) and better in-portal spend enforcement, making life easier for IT admins everywhere.
For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!
Transcript
SharePoint Content AI is really awesome, but before we can get into the fun features, we need to learn how to configure Pay-As-You-Go billing in Microsoft 365. Hello everyone, and welcome to the third episode of the Ultimate SharePoint Content AI series. So far, we have introduced SharePoint Content AI, learned how to use the M365 assessment tool, and asked if Content AI is even worth it. The answer was yes—if not, we wouldn’t be here right now. Now we are at a very important step: learning how to enable all the different features we’ll be covering in this series. Without this episode, we’re not going very far.
In this very important episode, I’m joined by Microsoft MVP Gokan Ozcifci, who’s going to make sure I say the right things and also share a lot of his knowledge on how to configure it properly, especially for big enterprises.
First of all, let’s talk about why Pay-As-You-Go. My funny answer is: because Microsoft decided so. If you want any of the features, you have to configure it. This is a Microsoft slide, by the way—this is not one of mine. I stole it from them at the M365 Community Conference. Microsoft says many organizations are scared to invest $30 per user per month with a one-year commitment for AI features, worried they’ll buy the license and no one will use it. With Pay-As-You-Go, you only pay for what gets used. Of course, if it’s successful, it’ll cost more—but it’s a fair model. You know exactly what you’re billed for, based on usage.
Gokan, back in the day when you were one of the first to start with content processing—before all the renames—we used to have a Syntex license. It was something like $5 per user per month. It gave us a lot of benefits, but people tried to game the system using a service account or complained about having to buy it for everyone. Pay-As-You-Go was Microsoft’s compromise.
Now, what services require Pay-As-You-Go? The list is big—basically everything in this series. Some features in the series are free, but still require setup. Other features not covered in the series require it too: Microsoft 365 Archive, Backup, SharePoint Embedded, and enabling agents for users without a Copilot license. Everything is configured the same way we’ll show you—it’s one configuration for all of them.
You’ll need a few things to get started: an account that’s either a SharePoint Online admin or Global admin, an existing Azure subscription and a resource group (or permissions to create one), and—most importantly—a credit card. Make sure to ping Gokan on LinkedIn or X and ask for his credit card info (just kidding). There are only three steps: go to Azure, create the subscription and resource group (or get the info from your Azure admin), then go to the M365 admin center and configure the Pay-As-You-Go settings. Finally, choose which SharePoint Content AI services to enable and where. You might not want to enable everything for your entire tenant—you get to pick and choose.
If you try without an Azure subscription, you won’t get far. That’s the first step. In Azure, I created a subscription called “Pay-As-You-Go for M365” and made sure I had the Owner role. For those of you with Visual Studio subscriptions—MVP, MCT, or via your employer—you cannot use it. It has to be a Pay-As-You-Go plan. Even we as MVPs have to pay out of pocket—we can’t use our Visual Studio credits.
To activate Pay-As-You-Go, there are two ways: search “Pay-As-You-Go” in M365 Admin Center, click “Activate Pay-As-You-Go Services,” and then “Get Started.” Or go to the Setup section and find “Activate Pay-As-You-Go”—same destination.
Now, under Syntex Services (yes, Microsoft still loves that name), select your subscription and resource group. Choose your region—I picked East US. Accept the terms and click Save. That’s it. Just by doing this, you’ve activated several free features: Annotations, Content Query, etc. They don’t cost anything but require Pay-As-You-Go billing to be set up. You could disable everything else and never pay anything as long as this is enabled.
While that process, let’s talk about configuring Content AI services. You decide which services are enabled or disabled. For some, like OCR, you can pick whether they’re enabled across all SharePoint sites or only some. This helps control cost—enable only where it makes business sense. Some settings are service-specific. In later episodes, Gokan will walk us through configuring the Content Center.
Once the billing setup is complete, go into each service, decide whether to leave it on or off, and choose if it’s applied to all sites, selected sites (via CSV), or none. Important to note: the CSV file is limited to 100 sites. I wish we had better filtering, like selecting based on sensitivity labels, site templates, or site name prefixes. For now, we can use PowerShell to export a filtered list and upload as CSV, but the 100-site limit still applies.
Each feature has its own scope settings. Autofill Columns, Content Assembly, Optical Character Recognition, and others can be toggled on or off for SharePoint, OneDrive, or specific libraries. For example, you might want OCR only on SharePoint libraries or only on Gokan’s OneDrive—depends on your use case.
With Pre-Built Document Processing, you’ll see your default Content Center. Some settings also apply to videos—like video translation for transcripts—and others to backup, archive, or SharePoint Embedded apps. But the important point is: after enabling Pay-As-You-Go billing, you must configure each service.
Most clients start with everything disabled. They open it slowly, start with 10, 15, 20 people doing tests. Then they look at results: adoption, ROI, consumption. Based on that, they either expand to 100 users or close it down. It’s all about ROI. You enable something like Autofill, Content Assembly, E-signature, etc., and monitor what you get from it in 30 days. That informs your decision to scale up or not.
You can even do pilot projects. Many orgs use IT Champions—users who love metadata, content types, and search. They build proof-of-concepts and MVPs, then others learn from their results.
As for reporting, right now, it’s basic. The screenshot shown in the video is a future view—Microsoft is working on it. Today, go to the Azure portal, look under Cost Analysis, and check usage under the “Syntex” label. You’ll see the region and spend. You can also set budgets and alerts. For example, I created a “Don’t Spend Too Much” alert with a $50 budget and an 80% threshold. That way, you get an alert before overspending.
Gokan recommends always setting alerts at 80%. If the ROI looks good—people are using metadata, tagging images, processing documents—you can raise the budget to $200. Spending may spike in the first month while testing, then stabilize.
All of this lives in Azure right now, but it’ll move into the M365 Admin Center. Soon, we’ll no longer need Azure admins to help us configure this.
Here’s what’s coming in the future: multiple subscriptions and scoping expansion (nicknamed “departmental billing”), which will let you bill HR, Finance, etc., separately. Right now, there’s one credit card for everything. Also coming: the ability to set spending limits directly in the M365 Admin Center. This means we can enforce thresholds like “shut off Autofill if it hits budget,” but not necessarily for backup or finance.
We’ll have better visibility into budget trends—monthly fluctuations, annual forecasts, and more granular reporting—all within Microsoft 365.
Now you’re probably wondering: how much does everything cost? In each video, we’ll share feature costs, but you can also find them through a link in the description. For example: Autofill Columns cost $0.005 per transaction, Content Assembly is $0.15, and E-signature is $2 per request. So if you’re wondering where to be cautious, E-signature is the one to watch.
Microsoft regularly changes licensing—especially near the end of their fiscal year—so we’re pointing you to the most current resource instead of citing fixed numbers.
Final thoughts from Gokan: don’t be scared. Organizations get nervous about unpredictable spend, preferring fixed costs like Copilot’s $30 per user per month. But with Pay-As-You-Go, you’ve seen it’s mostly pennies and cents. Yes, costs might spike early, but then usage slows down and stabilizes. You can test it, set limits, and monitor ROI. V2 of Pay-As-You-Go is on the way—with better reporting, insights, and access to all SharePoint AI features.
That’s it! We’re done with theory and setup—it’s finally time to dive into real features. Next up: content extraction. If you enjoyed the video, make sure to like, subscribe, and jump to the next one.
