The ops hub I wrote about last post needed somewhere to keep its records. The normal answer is a database — spin one up, put it behind an API, pay for it, maintain it, explain to everyone why they can't see inside it. I didn't do that. I pointed the whole thing straight at SharePoint lists instead — mostly because I wanted to see if it was possible.
It was. And it kept on being possible well past the point where I expected it to fall over. What started as one experiment is now most of our back office running on lists: the CRM, the mailing list, the quoting records, and — as of this week — a blog manager. The post you're reading went live because a row in a SharePoint list said it was time. (I enjoy that more than I probably should.)
The database you're already paying for
Here's what makes this more than a party trick. If your business runs on Microsoft 365 — and for most small and medium businesses I meet, it does — you already own this. SharePoint lists come with the subscription you're paying anyway: secure, structured, backed up, and living inside the same account your email does. No additional cost — which is handy for a business that doesn't want to pay more just to store its own rows.
To make "pay more" concrete, here's what the usual alternative looks like — the little stack of subscriptions a typical small business collects, one tool at a time:
| What businesses usually buy | Typical advertised price | On Microsoft 365 lists |
|---|---|---|
| CRM | $25–$100 per user, per month | A Clients list — $0 extra |
| Email marketing platform | $20–$60+ per month | A Subscribers list — $0 extra |
| Proposal & e-signing tool | $30–$65 per user, per month | Quoting records in a list — $0 extra |
| Forms & workflow tool | $20–$50 per month | Microsoft Forms + Power Automate — included |
Typical advertised pricing at the time of writing — your mileage will vary. The point is the direction, not the decimals.
Even for a two- or three-person business, that stack quietly adds up to a few thousand dollars a year. It's not hypothetical for us either — our own proposals portal replaced a per-seat SaaS stack that was heading past $3,600 a year, with the records sitting in the account we already paid for.
I can hear the objection forming: isn't that just a spreadsheet with extra steps? It isn't. A list has typed columns, choices you can constrain, and a record of who changed what and when. It behaves like a table in a database because, underneath, that's what it is — one that comes with its own screens, so you don't have to build any.
A regular person can see the back-end workings
The cost is the argument that gets attention, but it's not my favourite part. My favourite part is that the data isn't behind a database wall. When a client asks where their information lives, I don't draw them an architecture diagram — I open the list and show them the rows. Their staff can look at the same rows. Nothing about the system is a black box that only the consultant understands.
That sounds like a small thing. I don't think it is. Most of the distrust I see around business systems comes from people being asked to depend on something they're not allowed to look at. A list you can open beats a database you have to take someone's word about.
One place to lock the door
The other quiet win is permissions. Because the lists live in Microsoft 365, they inherit the permissions you already manage — the same place you set up staff logins and mailboxes. You can gate it all in one place. Someone joins, you grant access once. Someone leaves, you disable one account and every list, file and mailbox closes behind them. No separate database users to remember, no forgotten credentials in an old config file.
What you actually get
The cost argument opens the door, but it's the accumulation of small, built-in things that keeps me here. Laid out in one place:
| What you get | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Microsoft's security | Your rows live in the same tenancy as your email — MFA, encryption and backups included, nothing new to secure. |
| Visible data | Anyone you allow can open the list and see the rows. No black box, nothing hidden behind a consultant. |
| Permissions in one place | Access rides on the Microsoft accounts you already manage — one switch on the way in, one on the way out. |
| Version history | Every item keeps a record of who changed what, and when — and you can roll a change back. Try that in a spreadsheet. |
| Guides live with the data | The how-to page sits on the same SharePoint site as the list it explains — the manual can't wander off from the machine. |
| Reporting built in | Views, filters, grouping and exports out of the box — and Power BI plugs straight in when you want charts. |
| Reminders without new software | Power Automate's stock templates do date-based reminders, approvals and alerts against any list column. |
Where the ceiling is
I'm not arguing SharePoint replaces real databases — a product doing thousands of writes a minute, or heavy reporting across millions of rows, needs the real thing, and I build with the real thing when the job calls for it. I'm arguing something narrower: most small businesses never get near that point, and they're paying for dedicated infrastructure — or a stack of per-seat SaaS subscriptions — to hold a few thousand rows that would sit happily in the tools they already own.
✓ The right fit
- Internal tools, registers and records — hundreds to a few thousand rows
- Teams already living in Microsoft 365
- Data your people need to see, check and trust
- Businesses that want capability without another subscription
— The wrong fit
- Thousands of writes a minute, or millions of rows
- Complex cross-table queries and heavy analytics
- Public-facing apps at real scale
- Businesses not on Microsoft 365 — no subscription, no free lunch
So before your next system comes with its own database, its own logins and its own monthly bill, it's worth asking one question: could this live in the Microsoft account we already have? The answer is yes more often than the software industry would like you to know. The tool is already in your hands — it came with your email.