1 · The home for the library – per licensed head, per month
| Route | Read only | Entry seat | Working seat | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Workspace shared drive + Sites | Free – viewer access for any Google account | Business Starter $7 | Business Standard $14 | Aleph corporate is already on Google Workspace, so corporate seats cost nothing extra. Roles: Viewer, Commenter, Contributor, Content Manager, Manager |
| Microsoft 365 SharePoint library | Free – guest access (Entra B2B) | F1 frontline $3 (web only) or Business Basic $7 | F3 $10 or Business Standard $15 | Prices rose July 2026. Roles: Visitor, Member, Owner, plus fine-grained library levels (Read, Contribute, Edit, Full Control) |
2 · The assistant layer – where the platforms truly differ
| Option | Price | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Gemini (Google) | Included in Business Standard ($14 seat) | The assistant across Gmail, Docs, Drive and Meet, at no additional per-user charge |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot | $18–21 per user promotional (organisations under 300 seats; enterprise $30), on top of the base licence | The off-the-shelf assistant inside Office and SharePoint |
| Microsoft Copilot Studio | $200 per month per 25,000-credit pack, tenant-wide, or $0.01 per credit pay-as-you-go | A custom agent built over the SharePoint library; paid by consumption, not per user |
| Azure AI / Azure Machine Learning | Consumption-priced compute; an engineering project rather than a licence | The bespoke-build route. Not needed for a document library with an assistant; relevant only if the group one day builds its own models |
| Claude – individual | Pro $20 per user; Max $100–200 for heavy users | The platform already chosen for the working engine (agreed 17 July; start small) |
| Claude – Team | From about $25 per standard seat; premium seats $100–125 | Managed team workspace; every seat includes Claude Code. The natural step for the factory operators |
| Claude – Enterprise | $20 per seat per month plus usage billed at standard API rates; from 20 seats | Single sign-on and admin controls, usage-based – suits a wider rollout where most seats are light users |
3 · The recommended model, priced for the estate
Two to three licensed seats per property – General Manager (GM), Human Resources, trainer, the property’s choice – and free read access for everyone else. The property pays; where it cannot, Aleph absorbs, and the standard holds either way. At roughly 50 properties with three seats each:
| Scenario | Per property / month | Estate / year | Assistant included? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Business Starter | $21 | ~$12,600 | Partly (Gemini in Gmail) |
| Google Business Standard | $42 | ~$25,200 | Yes – Gemini included |
| Microsoft F1 frontline | $9 | ~$5,400 | No |
| Microsoft Business Basic + Copilot | $75–84 | ~$45,000+ | Yes – Copilot add-on |
| Everyone who only reads | $0 | $0 | n/a |
For scale: the whole estate on the strongest Google scenario costs less per month than one night in one suite. The licence bill is not the decision; the architecture is.
4 · The reporting stack – held open
| Component | Price | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Fairmas | Contracted by Aleph | First wave live from September; collects and stages the numbers |
| BIRD (presentation layer) | Offer received 2 September. Modular: USD 100–150 per module, per hotel, per month; the recommended five-module configuration is USD 500 per hotel per month, with a one-off implementation priced per system pattern rather than per hotel | Kept high level by design – the specialist unpacks the detail directly with Aleph. Next step: a 45-minute working session with the corporate team, offered against live figures |
Notes and abbreviations. Public list prices in United States dollars, September 2026, annual-commitment rates where both exist; Microsoft raised most plan prices in July 2026; volume and reseller pricing can improve every number here; final numbers follow the scope confirmation. GM: General Manager. F1/F3: Microsoft’s frontline-worker licence tiers. Entra B2B: Microsoft’s guest-access mechanism for people outside the organisation. API: application programming interface, the usage-based way software calls Claude. BIRD: the reporting presentation layer under evaluation; its rollout proposal shadows the Fairmas schedule rather than competing with it. Fairmas: the financial reporting platform Aleph has contracted.