Should we use OneDrive Groups or a SharePoint subsite for shared docs?

Question

We're a UK not-for-profit private company owned by a charity. Our ICT setup, hardware, software, licenses, etc., all come through the charity. The company has 6 employees.

The charity has just switched to Office365 and I am trying to figure out how best to use the cloud storage options for shared documents. Since we need to keep our documents separate from the charity two options seem sensible:

1) Use a OneDrive (for Business) Group. This has the benefit of being more "accessible" in a Browser i.e all files accessed via OneDrive rather than going into SharePoint.

2) Create a SharePoint subsite specifically for our team and limited to them. This has the benefit of including the other SharePoint features.

Because our team is so small and we're co-located, I don't see the additional benefits of a SharePoint subsite being leveraged. I strongly doubt the Charity (which will "own" the main SharePoint site) will ever actually utilise that either.

But, confusingly, I have read that Microsoft has done away with Groups maybe that applies to OneDrive Personal only?

My questions are:

Is there are a real technological difference between these two approaches in terms storage capacity & efficiency, optimisation, etc.?

Is one more robust than the other?

Which approach has the most longevity at this point?

Answer 1

The similar names (OneDrive consumer and OneDrive for Business) can sometimes cause a bit of confusion. The groups link only applies to OneDrive consumer. There is a new, different Groups feature in SharePoint Online, but that may or may not be available to you as they are restricted based on the licenses you have purchased and are assigned.

For the first two questions, there is little technical difference between OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online. They both run as Site Collections on top of SharePoint. The main difference is that OneDrive for Business acts as a more personal storage site while Team Sites are intended for group collaboration.

You group should probably get a dedicated team site. You can control the permissions for that site so other parts of the organization can only see what you share with them. The life cycle of the team site is also not tied to an individual user. When a user leaves, their OneDrive for Business site is deleted after a period of time. Keeping documents on a team site can ensure that documents are around for as long as the organization exists as opposed to the lifetime of an employee.