office 365 enterprise license plans

Compare all Microsoft Office 365 Plans in one Overview

The Microsoft Office 365 plans offer great tools for businesses and enterprises to fully work in the cloud. Microsoft has changed the names of most plans to Microsoft 365 but also kept partially the Office 365 label. Comparing all the plans together on the Microsoft site can sometimes be a bit challenging, so to help you out I have created an overview to compare all office 365 plans.

If you have a small business with less than 300 users, then the most interesting plans are the Microsoft 365 Business plans. Large organizations will have to look at the Office 365 Enterprise and Microsoft 365 plans.

I have also written a couple of articles where I go more into detail between the different plans, you can find the links further down in the article.

Microsoft Office 365 Comparison Chart

The table below will help you to compare the Office 365 plans. The prices are based on an annual subscription model. Enterprise plans are only available in a yearly agreement.

Note Microsoft added new plans without Teams wich are only available in the European Union. These plans are less expensive. Read everything about it in this article

Microsoft 365 Business plans

For most small businesses is the Microsoft 365 Business Standard plan the best choice. With a price of $12.50 per user per month, you get the full Office 365 suite, with the desktop apps, Exchange Online, SharePoint, OneDrive, etc. Everything you need to get your business started in the cloud. If you also want to fully manage your devices (computers, mobile phones) or make use of advanced threat protection, then take a look at the Business Premium plan.

Office 365 Enterprise plans

The Enterprise plans can also be used by companies with less than 300 users, but they are more meant for companies that also need Active Directory integration or features like Litigation Hold and eDiscovery. You get more storage for Exchange Online, OneDrive, and SharePoint with the Enterprise plans.

You can check the prices for your country or buy one of the Office 365 plans here at Office.com

Microsoft Office 365 license comparison

Start with an microsoft office 365 trial.

It can be difficult to select the right plan for your business with the many options that are available for Office 365. It’s good to start with the comparison of Office 365 plans, but keep in mind that you can also start with an Office 365 Trial . This way you can see what will work for your organization.

You can use your own domain for the trial, but only do that when you are really sure you are going to proceed with Office 365. Otherwise use a temporary domain, like Contoso-lab01, to test out Office 365.

There are a couple of trails available, Microsoft 365 Business Standard and Premium and Office 365 Enterprise E3 and E5 . If you have a small company, with less than 50 employees I recommend starting with a Microsoft 365 Business Premium trial. The business plans give you some nice features like Invoicing and Outlook Customer Manager which can be really useful in smaller companies.

If you have more than 50 employees I would recommend going for the Enterprise solution. It’s more expensive, but the Compliance and Information Protection services will help you protect your data and make it easier for you to comply with Business regulations and industry standards.

Comparing the plans side-by-side

I have written multiple in-depth articles about the differences between specific plans. These articles will help you when you can’t choose between E3 and E5 for example.

Microsoft 365 F1 vs Office 365 E1

I got a lot of questions on what the differences are between the Microsoft 365 F1 plan and the existing Office E1 plan. I worked out the details between them, you can read more about it in the in-depth article Microsoft 365 F1 vs Office 365 E1

Office 365 E1 vs E3

Do you want to know when Office 365 E1 is sufficient and what the differences are with Office 365 E3? Check out this article where we go into the differences between the two.

Microsoft 365 Business Premium vs Office E3

They look almost the same, but there is a huge price difference between these two plans. Want to know what these differences are and if E3 is worth the extra money? You can read all the details here in this article .

Microsoft 365 Business Plans

Are you a small business and do you want to know which Microsoft 365 Business Plan is the best fit for you? Then you should check out this article with all the details you need to know about the Business Plans.

Microsoft 365 Plans

Interested in Microsoft 365 as well? Take a look at this article where I explain the differences between Office 365 and Microsoft 365

Wrapping Up

Microsoft offers a lot of different plans, but in general, they offer you a lot of flexibility and can really help your business to grow. I hope this article helped you to compare Office 365 plans. If you have any questions, then just drop a comment below.

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Office 365 License Comparison: Business Plans Vs. E5, E3, and E1

• Microsoft 365 Business Basic (Formerly Office 365 Business Essentials)

Microsoft 365 Apps for Business (Formerly Office 365 Business)

Microsoft 365 business standard (formerly office 365 business premium), microsoft 365 business premium, office 365 enterprise f3, office 365 enterprise e1.

• Here’s how Office 365 Enterprise E1 differs from Business Premium:

Office 365 Enterprise E3

• Unlike Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Office 365 E3 includes: 

Office 365 Enterprise E5

• Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise (Previously Office 365 ProPlus):

Microsoft 365 Enterprise Licenses

Microsoft 365 f1, microsoft 365 f3, microsoft 365 e3, microsoft 365 e5, have questions about which office 365 license is right for your organization request a quote to see how much you can save..

Updated September 2022 Choosing an Office 365 license is a critical step before migrating to the cloud. With multiple options for small, medium, and enterprise businesses, navigating the differences can get overwhelming. This Office 365 license comparison will reveal the options available within Business and Enterprise options to help you make the correct choice for your organization. Learn more about:

• Microsoft Licensing Changes in 2022 - The New Commerce Experience
• Microsoft Government Licensing
• Office 365 Educational Licensing
• Microsoft GCC and GCC High Licensing
• Microsoft First Line Worker (F1 & F3) Licensing

Price Comparison for Office 365 Business Plans and Enterprise Licenses

When comparing Office 365 licenses, price is one of the first questions decision-makers ask. Here are the prices of each Office 365 Business and Enterprise license:

The base price per user for Office 365 Business and Enterprise Plans ranges from $6 to $35, and this cost can quickly add up for larger organizations. On the other hand, if you rely on certain functionalities like Rights Management or cloud PBX, bundling these services into your license can actually save your organization money. If you have third party tools for Anti-Virus, eDiscovery, MFA, SIEM etc, these savings can become immense.

It is important to know that Microsoft now requires an annual term for all licensing. Under “The New Commerce Experience” licensing can be accquired as P1Y (Pay One Year) or P1M (Pay One Month) licensing. Month-to-Month pricing is available at a 10% premium. To learn more read our run down on Microsoft New Commerce Experience. To better weigh the costs to your organization, let’s compare the features of the Microsoft 365 Business and Enterprise plans.

How Office 365 Enterprise and Business Plans Differ

Both the Microsoft 365 Business plans and Enterprise plans are available for organizations with fewer than 300 employees.

Because larger companies are more likely to be using Office 365 , you might be contemplating whether to go with a Business or Enterprise option.

Here are some major features you gain with Office 365 Enterprise plans:

• Microsoft Teams PBX and PSTN conferencing (PSTN calling is available as an add-on in E3 and E5)
• Advanced Information Protection
• Advanced Threat Protection
• Active Directory integration
• Viva Insights
• Litigation Hold
• Unlimited archive and mail storage
• Enterprise app management

Enterprise plans are only available when purchased as a one-year commitment.

Here’s a breakdown of all Microsoft 365 Business plans so you can better understand how they differ.

Microsoft 365 Business Plans

Microsoft 365 Business plans were created for small businesses with fewer than 300 employees that might not need all the bells and whistles Enterprise Microsoft 365 and Office 365 offer.

Here’s what’s included in each Microsoft 365 Business plan for small companies.

Microsoft 365 Business Basic (Formerly Office 365 Business Essentials )

Looking to get basic Microsoft 365 functionality? Microsoft 365 Business Basic offers business email with 50 GB mailbox storage, custom email domain, and web versions of essential Office 365 applications like Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Here’s what you need to know about the Business Essentials license:

Next is the Office 365 Business plan. Here are the price and specs for this license option:

Microsoft 365 Business Standard adds critical small business tools such as Microsoft Bookings to allows customers to schedule appointments, and Mile IQ for real-time mileage tracking from your mobile devices.

The most powerful Microsoft Business Suite without going for full enterprise plans, Microsoft 365 Business premium takes all of the features of Microsoft 365 Business Standard and rolls in industry leading advanced security features, including Advance Threat Protection against zero-days, ransomware, malware, the ability to selectively wipe company data from mobile devices with Intune, Restrict copying and saving of company information on mobile devices, apply document restrictions and provide unlimited archiving.

Note on GoDaddy’s Microsoft 365

We strongly suggest against purchasing Office 365 or Microsoft 365 from GoDaddy due to both hidden costs, and lack of feature availability. To learn more, read our blog on Migrating from GoDaddy Office 365 to Microsoft Office 365 .

Office 365 Enterprise Plans

Office 365 Business plans are great for companies just starting out or that only require limited functionality. For organizations looking for a more robust solution, Office 365 Enterprise plans are available. With Enterprise plans, your can choose from Office 365 and Microsoft 365 plans. Office 365 only includes Office, while Microsoft 365 is a full suite that includes Office 365, Enterprise Mobility and Security, and Windows 10 Enterprise. These licenses are broken up into E1, E3, and E5 enterprise plans, and F1 and F3 first line worker plans. (Learn all about Microsoft First Line Worker licensing )

Ideal for line workers, drivers, retail staff, Office 365 F3 is focused on workers who do not spend much time in front of a computer. Including popular office apps for web and mobile devices, including Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint. Bring every employee into the fold with Teams collaboration including Task and Shift Management and the unique Walkie Talkie voice mode on mobile.

E1 is the least expensive Enterprise plan. Here’s what you get with the E1 license:

Here’s how Office 365 Enterprise E1 differs from Business Premium :

• With E1, you can only access email via the online application.
• With E1, you lose desktop versions of Office applications. You must use the online versions of Outlook and other Office applications like Word or PowerPoint online.

The E3 license is one of the more popular options for digital-driven businesses. With E3, you gain desktop apps, You gain email, archiving, information protection and more storage options. Additionally, you gain Intune for device management and Azure Information Protection (plan 1) for data loss protection.

Here’s what’s included in E3:

The Microsoft 365 Business Premium plan is most comparable to the Enterprise E3 plan in terms of base features.

Unlike Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Office 365 E3 includes:  

• Exchange Online Archiving (EOA) and Legal Hold
• Unified eDiscovery Center
• Rights management, data loss prevention and encryption
• Ability to add on PSTN

Building off the E1 and E3 business plans, Office 365 E5 is the highest tier Microsoft offers. With this license, you gain Audio Conferencing, Phone System, Power BI pro, Customer Lockbox, and Microsoft Cloud App Security: 

Next, we look at Office 365 Enterprise ProPlus. It is the last Enterprise plan offering.

Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise (Previously Office 365 ProPlus ):

Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise offers a option for users who don’t need email but want Office 365 applications.

Unlike the consumer branded Microsoft 365, Microsoft 365 Enterprise  is a suite that includes Office 365, Enterprise Mobility and Security, and Windows Enterprise. M365 Enterprise gives you the enterprise security and compliance features you need, while providing cost savings through vendor consolodation and reduced management and training overhead.

While Office 365 F1 was retired in April 2020, Microsoft 365 F1 remains. A cost effective way to give first line workers collaboration tools including Teams, Sharepoint and Yammer, M365 F1 lacks email and while it includes Office apps for Web and Mobile devices, that access is just read only. This gives desk-less workers the ability read documentation no matter where they are. While this license is incredibly cost effective, you should consider if users may have a need to edit for tasks such as inventories, security logging, etc. before settling on F1 licensing.

M365 F3 bring email into the fold for desk-less workers, but also gives workers the ability to edit documents with mobile and web Office applications, while providing Windows 10 Enterprise features for users with existing Win 10 Pro installs. Enabling M365 enterprise security features including Device and Credential Guard, Windows Hello for Passwordless sign on, Secure Score, and Windows Virtual Desktop (Additional licensing needed)

M365 E3 brings together best in productivity and collaboration with Office 365 Enterprise E3, Enterprise Mobility and Security E3. and Windows 10 E3

E5 is the most feature packed of the suites, bringing an integrated phone system and audio conferencing into the mix, as well as advanced security tools such as Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat protection, and Microsoft Cloud App Security.

If any license doesn’t suit your needs, you can also add on specific features via add-on licensing. But often, the cost of upgrading is cheaper than ballooning a license with monthly add-on charges. (Read more about add-ons here .) You can also mix and match licenses depending on user needs to better control costs.

Agile IT’s cloud licensing services make it easy to purchase, transfer, and manage your licenses. As your cloud solutions provider, Agile IT handles all billing and subscriptions for your Office 365 products. You continue paying Microsoft the monthly license fee, and we take care of the rest.

Published on: Sep 26, 2022 .

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The Complete Office 365 and Microsoft 365 Licensing Comparison

I've only met one other person that could write the complete Office 365 and Microsoft 365 licensing comparison. That person is Glenton Davis, Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft. (Although, I did stump him on a few CAS unified labeling features...after he schooled me about the new Microsoft 365 Security E5 plan.) To put it another way: Microsoft subscriptions are confusing.

What did I just buy?

Or if you work in sales—what did I just sell? Microsoft has no shortage of comparison charts.

When I see that Office 365 E3 sort of includes AIP, I always need to refer to my notes for clarification. Updates to the chart are listed at the bottom of the page, so you can be sure if recent announcements have been added to the Microsoft 365 licensing comparison chart.

Note: as of April 2020 the term "Microsoft 365 Business" now means "limit of 300 users." The only bundle of Office 365, EMS, and Windows 10 in the M365 Business family is the M365 Business Premium plan.

* Microsoft 365 A1 is a one-time purchase. ** Does not include a personal SharePoint site.

RO = Read Only. EOK1 = Exchange Online Kiosk Plan 1. SOK1 = SharePoint Online Kiosk Plan 1. OME = Office Message Encryption.

Include Other Vendors When Making Your Microsoft 365 Licensing Comparison

At Infused Innovations, we prefer when our customers purchase a given feature set only once. Too often, we see a company purchase Enterprise Mobility + Security (EM+S) for the sole purpose of enabling Self-Service Password Reset (SSPR) with writeback for on-premises AD. That same company also owns Okta for SSO, AirWatch for MDM, and Netskope for CASB.

When we explain to the CFO that they already own EM+S, which contains similar functionality as those three other vendors, it's usually a pretty quick discussion to get approval to start a proof of concept deployment standardizing on Microsoft 365. The budget that was allocated for the other vendors can then be used to purchase new security features like Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (previously MD ATP) and Azure Sentinel .

Circle the solutions you have deployed above. Is the price more than $57/user/mo?

Infused Innovations partners with a few other security vendors to fill some gaps, including KnowBe4, CyberArk, and SecPod, but Microsoft's 60+ security products cover most customer's needs. The added benefit to standardizing on Microsoft services is that they all integrate with the Microsoft Intelligent Security Graph, which allows the services to work with each other and reduce false positives.

Even if you think you have a good grasp of your Microsoft 365 and Office 365 Licensing, I’d encourage you to sign up for one of our free cyber security assessments to have one of our experts review what you already own and create a strategic cyber security roadmap for your organization.

Which Microsoft 365 licensing plan should I buy?

I already expressed my thoughts that you’re (likely) on the wrong Microsoft license . For an organization of any size with an online presence, you should seriously consider one of the Microsoft 365 plans. (Unless you have purchased parts of the bundle through an EA, non-profit, or educational SKU.)

Just as you can purchase a new car without adaptive cruise control to save money in exchange for having to manually turn cruise control on and off, you can purchase Office 365 by itself to reduce your initial costs at the expense of having to manually review logs. But with the projected shortfall of 3.5 million cyber security professionals by 2020, you may actually be increasing your overall costs if you don't invest in automation now.

Microsoft spends over $1 Billion a year on security research and uses AI to interpret 6.5 trillion signals daily via the Intelligent Security Graph. With over 3,500 security engineers, it’s possible that Microsoft has more employees in its cyber security department than you have in your entire organization. All you have to do to take advantage of this combined risk intelligence and automation is purchase the correct Microsoft 365 license. And as of September 2019, you can now ingest your Microsoft 365 threat analytics data into Azure Sentinel for free !

Are you an educational organization? Read up here . Are you a non-profit organization? Read up here .

Microsoft 365 F1 for Frontline Workers

In April 2020, Microsoft changed the old Microsoft 365 F1 plan to Microsoft 365 F3. The new M365 F1 plan has no email or OneDrive storage. It's essentially Microsoft Teams plus EM+S E3 to provide a secure device to access Microsoft Teams on.

What appears to be an oversight, is that EMS E3 appears to be available for only $4/mo now if you add the M365 F1 plan to any Office 365 plan. We'll see if Microsoft addresses this by restricting licensing assignments.

Here's a comparison of the Microsoft 365 Frontline worker plans:

Microsoft 365 F3 Licensing Comparison to Office 365 F1

At only $8/user, firstline workers, employees that only need email, and contractors are a few types of users that would benefit from the Microsoft 365 F3 license. The business value for investing in M365 F3 licenses include:

• Foster culture and community: By utilizing Microsoft Teams, your employees will have access to persistent chat, and provide your firstline workers access to the same corporate resources in SharePoint Online that are used by the rest of your organization.
• Train and upskill employees : Microsoft Teams can serve as your source of institutional knowledge. Train and upskill your employees, creating opportunities for workers to develop, grow, and apply their skills.
• Digitize business process: Give your firstline workers and contractors access to your organization’s modern digital workflows that are embedded in SharePoint, Flow, and Teams.
• Minimize risk and cost: Make sure your organization’s data is only accessed from compliant devices and reduce your attack surface for potential breaches.

Microsoft 365 F3 provides the following productivity tools:

• Exchange Online Kiosk
• SharePoint Online Kiosk
• Microsoft Teams
• 2 GB of OneDrive Storage
• Microsoft 365 for the web versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

The main reason to upgrade to the Microsoft 365 F3 plan from Office 365 F1 is to add mobile security features. These include:

• Multifactor Authentication (MFA)
• Conditional Access
• Intune for MDM and data sandboxing
• Office Message Encryption
• Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics

Infused Innovations also recommends adding Microsoft Defender for Office 365 P1 to this plan to help protect users from phishing attacks.

Microsoft 365 Business Premium with Azure AD P2

If you have fewer than 300 employees and are currently using Office 365 E3, you need to switch to Microsoft 365 Business Premium right now. Both 365 licensing plans are priced at $22/mo and Microsoft 365 Business Premium adds Windows 10 Pro licensing, along with all the security features that you need to keep your organization secured. The price to value ratio is immense for M365 Business Premium.

Microsoft 365 BP includes most of the security features from Microsoft 365 F3 plus the Microsoft Defender for Office (previously Office 365 ATP P1) benefits. This allows you to deploy MFA to all your users without them noticing . Update 4/21/2020: M365 Business Premium now includes Conditional Access and full AAD P1.

Infused Innovations recommends deploying Microsoft 365 Business Premium with the Azure AD P2 add-on ($9/mo) to gain the following benefits:

• Azure AD Identity Protection
• Impossible Travel
• Stolen credentials
• Anomalous behavior
• Automatically force password changes for breached accounts
• Automatically require MFA challenges for high-risk users

Microsoft 365 E3 with Microsoft 365 E5 Security (Formerly Identity Threat Protection)

Microsoft 365 E3 with Microsoft 365 E5 Security is the new “hero” SKU if your organization doesn’t need VoIP or Power BI. Pricing for the Microsoft 365 E5 Security add-on is $16.40/mo and can only be added to the Microsoft 365 E3 plan, which is $36/mo. (Note: the M365 E5 Security/Compliance add-ons are also available if you purchase Office 365 E3 with EM+S E3.)

The M365 E5 Security add-on gives you the following advanced features to your M365 E3 plan:

• Azure AD P2
• Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps
• Microsoft Defender for Identity (formerly Azure ATP)
• Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (formerly Microsoft Defender ATP)
• Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (formerly Office ATP P2)

The five SKUs above provide comprehensive cybersecurity licensing to detect breaches and perform digital forensics across the entire attack chain. The P2 features of Microsoft SKUs also add automation features that respond to breaches at the speed of the cloud. Human minds can no longer keep up with modern attacks. Microsoft 365 E3 with Microsoft 365 E5 Security provides enterprise-class security features for your organization.

Microsoft 365 E3 is also the entry-level plan to allow access to Windows Virtual Desktop from a non-Windows 10 Pro device. All lower level Microsoft 365 plans require at least Windows 10 Pro to access WVD.

Microsoft 365 E5 Licensing Comparison

Microsoft 365 E5 allows you standardize on the entire Microsoft security and productivity stack for your organization for $57/mo. As previously mentioned, Microsoft 365 E5 adds VoIP integration to the Microsoft 365 E3 + Microsoft 365 E5 Security plan.

The other important SKU that you receive is Azure Information Protection P2. AIP P2 allows you to automatically apply encryption templates to documents based on regular expression templates. Microsoft will be releasing a new unified labeling experience to use across your AIP, DLP, and Cloud App Security policies. Update 5/2019: The new unified labeling experience has been released.

Unless you’re on Microsoft 365 E5, licensing and pricing plans are confusing. Fortunately, Microsoft is trying to simplify and consolidate their bundles around the features that fit common roles across multiple industries.

However, you’re probably asking yourself something like: I already own Windows 10 Pro licenses—do I need Microsoft 365 Business? Or, I have a volume license for Windows 10 Enterprise--- how can I license only Microsoft Defender for Endpoint ? The easiest answer is to schedule a call using the form below to speak with one of our licensing experts. Prices change every month and Microsoft releases new Office 365 plans several times a year. Keeping up to date with Microsoft licensing can feel like a full-time job by itself. Which is why it’s important to select a Microsoft Gold partner to help guide you through the maze of licensing and Microsoft 365 pricing plans.

• 1/2/2019 - Added Microsoft 365 E5 Security and Microsoft 365 E5 Compliance add-ons. Available for Microsoft 365 E3 only.
• 6/12/2019 - Microsoft 365 Business Premium adds Conditional Access .
• 12/31/2019 - Added feature names, grouped add-ons by SKU, and replaced matrix image with HTML table.
• 4/1/2020 - Added Microsoft 365 F1 plan and updated previous F1 to M365 F3 .
• 4/2/2020 - Updated Microsoft 365 Business Premium to include full AAD P1 .
• Office 365 Business Essentials  will become  Microsoft 365 Business Basic .
• Office 365 Business Premium  will become  Microsoft 365 Business Standard .
• Microsoft 365 Business  will become  Microsoft 365 Business Premium .
• Office 365 Business  and  Office 365 ProPlus  will both become  Microsoft 365 Apps.
• 11/9/2020 - Corrected statement that Microsoft 365 E5 Security/Compliance add-ons can be purchased with Office 365 E3 and EM+S E3.
• 12/28/2020 - Added SharePoint Syntex and Insider Risk Management to the matrix. Updated Microsoft Defender XDR product names.
• 3/17/2021 - Pricing updates for M365 F1 and M365 F3.
• 6/16/2021 - Added Universal Print. Updated M365 BP to include unlimited archiving.
• 3/1/2022 - Pricing updates.
• 9/21/2022 - Pricing updates.
• 7/20/2023 - Pricing and Product Updates

Reference Material

• Microsoft 365 and Office 365 Plan Options
• Microsoft 365 and Office 365 Platform Service Description
• Microsoft 365 Business Service Descriptions

Chat With An Expert

162 comments.

This is really great! Nice job! Very comprehensive. Could I get a copy of the Excel spreadsheet to socialize internally?

Thanks for your help.

Hi Dan, excellent job, I have same question as Jesse. Is there some posibility to get such xls file for internal usage? Thank you for your help Adam

I update this matrix every month, so I do not allow it to be downloaded since it becomes out of date frequently. Aaron Dinnage has several PDFs that are similar that you can download though: https://github.com/AaronDinnage/Licensing Keep in mind that Aaron’s spreadsheets are usually updated 1-2 times a year. He just updated them 5/18, so now is a good time to grab them.

Absolutely! It’s in Excel format here: https://infusedinnovations.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/Public/EcWcoHQRZzVNnoo8GAYLqDwBj01kz2j3VKXaJHNOhFZQjw?rtime=sUuLgEvT1kg

If you’d like to partner on EM+S deployments, I can have my COO provide the original spreadsheet with price lookups.

Hi Dan! The link is expired. Could you please send an updated link? Much appreciated!

typo in the chart e1 / f1 for 1 drive usage

Thanks! I swapped the 2 GB / 1 TB values.

Hi, your spreadsheet says, that conditional access is not included in Microsoft 365 F1 and later, that conditional access is one of the main reason for upgrading from O365 to M365. Is conditional access included in M365 or not?

Thank you in advance. Best regards, Alexander.

Conditional Access is included in the following Microsoft 365 SKUs: F1 / E3 / E5.

Microsoft 365 Business does not include conditional access at the moment. The spreadsheet has been updated.

Dan – I love this! Awesome work! I love the Executive Briefing Center, meeting great customers like you, and talking about epic stuff. I’ll definitely brush up on those CASB nuances for next time 😉

Looking forward to it. Talk soon.

Dan, from now on, you are my Avenger. Awesome work here.

Conditional Access is the way to go if you want to phase users into MFA.

Great work here, do you have a legend for the fields ? What does the “-” or “blank” means?

A blank means that I’m fairly certain it’s not included but I don’t have a reference to a Microsoft document one way or another yet. The “-” means not included with a verified statement from Microsoft.

We’ve purchased E3 + EMS E5 and then were surprised to find out that Defender ATP wasn’t included.

We can’t seem to find any information regarding EMS E5 including Defender ATP other than this blog. Can you confirm if the above table/content is incorrect about ATP being included in EMS E5?

Defender ATP is only included with Windows 10 E5, Microsoft 365 E5, or Microsoft 365 E3 + Microsoft 365 E5 Security as correctly indicated on the table. EMS E5 does not include Defender ATP and the table above does not state that it does either. (EMS E5 is a green column, currently 4th from the right side of the table.) I believe you are looking at the Microsoft 365 E3 + E5 Security column, which is different from Office 365 E3 ($20) + EMS E5 ($14.80).

If you purchased Microsoft 365 E3 ($32) (you didn’t specify which E3 was purchased) and bought EMS E5 as an add-on, then I would swap EMS E5 with Microsoft 365 E5 Security ($12) instead to get access to Defender ATP. M365 E5 Security can only be purchased as an add-on to M365 E3 and no other SKUs. Feel free to request a licensing review at the bottom of the page if you would like assistance from our sales team.

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly and your response is very helpful. I can see where we went wrong now as we were confusing E5 Security with EMS E5. We’ll look at swapping those add-ons. Thats great.

This is actually not true. M365 E5 Security and M365 E5 Compliance can also be purchased as add-ons to Office365 E3 together with EMS E3. This seems to be somewhat hidden but can be seen on the M365 Compliance Licensing Comparison chart, see footnote 2, https://opdhsblobprod04.blob.core.windows.net/contents/e0993bf6e82e4fa8ac18b48839521869/93969b96fb41733347b4dbb8bba02771?sv=2018-03-28&sr=b&si=ReadPolicy&sig=sCkjASidX%2FW6V3HGJmaVUXfQ28an2Kl%2B85kcHfAQMWs%3D&st=2020-11-09T11%3A28%3A11Z&se=2020-11-10T11%3A38%3A11Z .

Microsoft have confirmed the same for M365 E5 Security.

It was true last year when this comment was made. You are correct that earlier this year Microsoft made the E5 Security/Compliance add-ons available if you already own O365 E3 and EM+S E3.

Azure AD Premium P1 is not included in M365 Business. They have a new version called “Small Business”, but i can’t seem to find any information about it. I first noticed this when i tried accessing Sign ins in a tenant with M365 Business licenses. I have compared M365 Business and AAD P1 in the Office-portal to verify.

Thanks for pointing this out. I’ll get the spreadsheet updated this week.

This is the best information on security and its financial considerations that I have ever seen in a one place. Thank you for sharing. Do you know of any product/service that analyzes Microsoft audit logs and combines it with information from the dark web so that you know how many of your accounts are already compromised? how many bots/websites are impersonating your credentials to spam or phish your customers? how many of your users have weak password/practice? how many of your vendors/suppliers logins are already compromised?

Azure AD Premium 2 (Part of EM+S E5) scans the dark web for compromised accounts. If a compromised account is detected, the user will receive a “High” security risk rating. If you have Azure AD Identity Protection enabled, you can force an immediate password reset as soon as this is detected–there is no human interaction required for this once the protection policy is enabled.

AAD logs will tell you that an account breach was detected, but it doesn’t state where on the dark web it was discovered.

Phishing spam via domain impersonation can be completed via DMARC monitoring. We have a guide on how to setup DMARC with free Valimail monitoring here: https://www.infusedinnovations.com/blog/secure-intelligent-workplace/step-by-step-guide-to-configure-valimail-for-dmarc-monitoring-with-office-365-and-azure-sso

As for supply chain risk, Cloud App Security will tell you if any websites or SaaS tools you’re using have been compromised. This either requires shipping firewall logs to CAS or using Microsoft Defender ATP on Windows 10 with CAS integration enabled.

Do you have any information on how SCCM/Intune/Microsoft Endpoint Management fits into the stack? My understanding is it is included with anything that includes the EMS E3/E5 license.

Thank you for this resource. It’s incredibly helpful!

MileIQ is now available as part of the Office E* Plans

Wow! This is, quite frankly, the single best summary I’ve found regarding this topic on the Web. Thank you very much for the great aggregation, and I agree with many of the suggestions made.

Office 365 is a solid product. Also, I am a huge fan of Azure AD. While Microsoft is clearly delivering best-of-breed solutions in many aspects, it’s disappointing that it’s such a chore to collect this data and then come to an understanding of what each of the myriad of licenses will or will not include. There’s a tool to help me estimate Azure spend for a whole slew of services, so why doesn’t Microsoft just provide a tool that will suggest the best licenses based on the features I select as necessary?

A bit of context regarding the situation that lead me to this article:

1. My organization is a SMB well below the limits of the 300 user mark. A few users here and there need full-on O365 E5 licenses for the VoIP, and a couple use Power BI. Otherwise, it’s just E3 level capabilities. 2. We have Windows 10 Pro endpoints, all of which roam. Our endpoints just “happen” to authenticate against a DC the times the employee is working onsite and is connected to the network, otherwise, it’s just cached credentials (and stale Group Policies). I would be absolutely thrilled to get them all Azure AD device joined, as we have absolutely no systems requiring internal auth. 3. I really want to harness the powerful identity and data protection capabilities offered, such as Azure AD conditional access and user risk assessment, and Office 365 DLP and ATP.

I’m thinking the M365 Business license, +add-ons for the few users that need them, might be the best option.

1. We’ll be able to Azure AD join devices and manage them wherever they may roam using Intune. 2. User/endpoint authentication will be performed against Azure AD, thus unifying the individual to the identity that actually matters when it comes to security. 3. While my goal is to eventually utilize any and every feature Microsoft offers that can help us better manage and secure our identities…my organization doesn’t move very quickly. Sure, it’s only a subset of the functionality provided by a P1 license, but the chances that we’d actually utilize the ones that are missing anytime soon are slim. The benefits we would get, such as conditional access policies, are ones that we are currently missing the most. In addition, the device management features are quite complete, and I feel that we would lay a perfect foundation for a future P1/P2 by migrating our endpoint model to utilize them.

Maybe you can help ensure I’m deciphering this information accurately and am on the right track? Any input would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks again for a solid slice of insight.

Hey Simon! Sounds like an exciting project! A few tips: get at least one license of Microsoft 365 E5 or Microsoft 365 E3 + E5 Security. The latter option is missing customer lock box, automated AIP labels and a few advanced governance features, but will unlock Microsoft Cloud App Security and risk-based conditional access.

Absolutely start with Microsoft 365 Business as the minimum license for your all your users to get access to Intune, Conditional Access with MFA, and Office Business desktop apps.

The Azure AD P2 license is helpful because it automates the response to breached accounts, and forces a password reset immediately. With the single M365 E5 license, you’ll get this benefit for everyone in your tenant, although you’re officially supposed to license each user for it. Microsoft does not currently restrict Azure AD Identity Protection to licensed users only.

If you’d like to actually chat, just submit a contact us form below. If you buy your licenses from us (same cost as from Microsoft), we have free proof of concepts available to help accelerate your onboarding.

Hi Dan, great overview! I want to share another observations which is about “MyAnaltics”. Based on your chart its included in section “Add-Ons” and listed in E5 suites only. In January 2019 however it was announced that MyAnalytics will be included in every Business& Enterprise Plan of Office365/ Microsoft365. You may want to update your chart accordingly?

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2019/01/02/myanalytics-the-fitness-tracker-for-work-is-now-more-broadly-available/ Thanks and regards simon

[…] https://www.infusedinnovations.com/blog/secure-modern-workplace/complete-office-365-and-microsoft-36&#8230 ; […]

Thanks for this chart. I had seen this last year when I was researching moving a bunch of our clients from E3 to M365 Business, and had lost the link for it. Thankfully found it via an old reddit thread. This is far better than the documentation that Microsoft puts out for their stuff. Thanks for keeping this up to date!

Thanks for the compliment! Bing has the page as the first search result, but Google has us buried on the second page and only as the Reddit link. I haven’t figured out why Google is hating on this post yet.

This is the holy grail of license comparisons. My question is two fold. I’m a little confused here when it comes to Office 365 E3 and Office 365 E1 licensing.

I’ve confirmed with Microsoft that Office 365 E3 is compatible with the Microsoft 365 E5 Security Pack. I have the option to add this to the license when I purchase it for 12.00 per user per month.

I’ve also been told….Office 365 E1 is fully compatible with the 12$ Microsoft 365 E5 Security Pack but when I purchase the license it doesn’t have an option to add this feature Directly. However, I’ve been told you can just purchase extras of the security pack under the office 365 E3 license category and apply those to the E1?

Due to volume we purchase Most things through a distributor and don’t pay list but I’m including list price instead.

Thanks! And, unfortunately, your source at Microsoft is wrong. Microsoft 365 E5 Security can ONLY be added to Microsoft 365 E3. I’ve been bugging the product teams to open this up to other plans for over a year, but no movement yet.

Would you allow the current spreadsheet to collapse columns so it is easier to directly compare some of the plans and their features to one another?

I am interested in really being able to show off and derive the value between Office E3, EM+S E5, Microsoft E3, and Microsoft E3 + EM+S E5 bundle.

It can be difficult to inspire some small/medium businesses to double their per-user license costs without concise understanding that can be derived from the great work you’ve provided here!

Check out the diagram on this post: https://www.infusedinnovations.com/blog/secure-modern-workplace/youre-on-the-wrong-microsoft-365-license-for-your-business

Good blog! I have a question for you regarding EMS: what’s the difference between Enterprise Mobility and Security E3 Full Kiosk and E3 Full?

First, let me thank you for really good licensing spreadsheet. This really simplifies a lot.

But I have a question regarding the licensing that I cannot find a answer to anywhere: Do the M365 packages (especially the M365 Business) also include Client Access License (CAL) rights. I understand that you get the Exchange, Sharepoint and Teams “CALs” for the licensed users, but how about the CALs for other, basic, on-premise services like AD and Fileshare servers and SystemCenter products? Do customers which have hybrid infrastructure with users covered by M365 licenses, still need to buy Core CAL / Enterprise CAL for their users, in order to be able to use on-premises infrastructure in a formally licensed way?

Most of your on-prem CALs are not included with online licensing. EMS includes some SCCM and MIM CALs, but that’s about it.

If you run AD or a file server in Azure, user CALs are included with the compute cost.

On this page, it says that EMS includes a “Windows Server Client Access License (CAL)” https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise-mobility-security/compare-plans-and-pricing

Is this also included in some of the M365 licenses or do i only get this with the EMS license?

I am familiar with that page, and it is worded poorly. It does not state that a Windows Server Client Access License (CAL) is included with EMS. EMS only includes CALs for specific workloads, such as Microsoft Active Directory Rights Management Services or SCEP. These are not Windows Server CALs, which need to be purchased separate from the service CALs.

To answer your question, yes these service CALs are included in the Microsoft 365 SKUs that contain the EM+S E3 feature set.

Hi, what a great page full of detailed information. One question though, what does the 0.75 mean in the M365 Business license under AD P1. I’m torn between M365 E3 and M365 Business for my company. I don’t need Win10 cloud licenses as everyone works in the office with a desktop that will be licensed. What would you recommend E3 or Business?

M365 Business just received full AAD P1 this month. I would get M365 Business plus Microsoft Defender ATP Standalone and Cloud App Security for everyone. Pickup one or two seats of full Microsoft 365 E5 to get automated threat responses and Power BI for the tenant.

Hey Dan, I think Power BI Pro is not a tenant level service so a single E5 license doesn’t do the trick unfortunately. Would you be able to confirm? Many thanks!

Hello, Will you be updating this with new Microsoft plans renaming? Great work. Thanks a lot.

New naming for business plans is live!

What do the P1 and P2 values indicate? I don’t see a key or reference to them in the documents you link to…I may just be missing them. Thx.

Microsoft SKUs have different levels. Premium 1 / Premium 2 = P1 / P2. Enterprise 3 / Enterprise 5 = E3 / E5.

Great resource – will you be updating to include the new MS security and compliance packages?

These updates? https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/partners/news/article/important-compliance-sku-update I’m waiting for the May price list to update. It’s not 100% clear on how AIP P2 is being replaced yet.

Thank you so much for this blog. We use this comparison a lot!

One question that comes to mind: in row 5 you say M365 E3 + E5 SEC. Do you mean EMS E5 with E5 SEC? because according to this comparison I would get ATP P2 as wel. But according to MS, EMS E3/E5 does not include ATP..hope you can clear this for me..I struggle with choosing the right licences from time to time..also because they change a lot..Ideally we would choose for M365 E3 because we dont use the VoIP options..but than again you need a lot of add ons to get the good stuff still (EMS E5, ATP P2).

Ps. they are also changing the AAD P1 license to a full one soon!

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/small-and-medium-business-blog/azure-active-directory-premium-p1-is-coming-to-microsoft-365/ba-p/1275496

Column 6 (previously 5, but F3 was just added) is Microsoft 365 E3 + Microsoft 365 E5 Security. I did not mean EMS E5 plus Microsoft 365 E5 security as that bundle would be a waste of money, since you’d be paying for the same features twice.

M365 E5 Security is a different SKU from EMS E5 and is only $12, but can only be added-on to M365 E3. There are three ATP’s but I’ll assume you’re referring to Office 365 ATP P2, which is included with the M365E5 Security add-on.

M365 BP has been updated to include full AAD P1.

Thank you so much for clearing that up! That was the missing piece of our puzzle..

One more small thing we came across that might be interesting with the current crisis..with any E of A license you have the functionality to broadcast live events in Teams..with M365BP you do not..we found this out the hard way when we downgraded a customer to M365BP. Hope this is usefull!

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/stream/live-event-overview

Thanks for that caveat! I wasn’t aware of that. If you keep one M365E3 or O365E3 license, will it allow you to stream Live Events by all or just the licensed user?

Disclaimer: If a user is using a feature, the Microsoft Terms of Service require you to license that feature for that user even if it is available ‘gratis’.

Sorry! did not see your reply till now.

We upgraded only the users that needed to use live events and the feature became availible again for them. The other users which were still on M365BP still can’t use it!

This is a fantastic license comparison chart and by far the most comprehensive and accurate that I’ve found to date – please keep up the excellent work!

A couple of points of feedback for consideration… 1. Windows Virtual Desktop licensing entitlement is provided with Windows 10 E3/E5, but only when the WVD is accessed from the Windows 10 E3 instance (i.e. no BYOD/HTML5 access) – https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-desktop/ 2. Whilst the Office 365 ProPlus client is provided in the M365 Business plans, Group Policy and Cloud-based Policy control of the Office 365 ProPlus Client is not supported in the Microsoft 365 Business plans – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/office-applications-service-description/office-applications-service-description?redirectedfrom=MSDN . This is quite critical for a lot of organisations, so it would be good if this could be distinguished in the table. 3. The Screenshot at the top of this blog post is updated to reflect the new license changes, but the Excel it hyperlinks to is outdated. 4. Desktop Analytics should be added as a Service, since its licensing is dependent upon the Online Service SKUs (Win 10 E3/E5 + Intune/ConfigMgr) – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/configmgr/desktop-analytics/overview#prerequisites

Thanks for the feedback! I’ll find a way to clarify the WVD exceptions. Microsoft 365 Business is meant to be managed with Intune, not Group Policy. Although I suppose there are still folks that care about having a Microsoft supported ADMX file. And Desktop Analytics is only available if you have SCCM, so I left it out of the chart. The Excel file will be updated next month when I get a new pricing sheet since there are a lot of lookups in the file based on license name.

I just want to say thank you and bless you for putting this together. This is absolutely amazing!

Thank you for this very clear comparison. I’ve just seen today that Microsoft has updated again information on this page: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/news/m365-firstline-workers They have added the “User Eligibility” frame for M/O365 F-SKU users. If you have a way to display eligibility in this license comparison, it could be helpfull.

Do I understand correctly, that if we buy Microsoft 365 Business Basic + ATP Plan 1 licenses, we will get the same Advanced Threat Protection as for Microsoft 365 Business Premium?

For Office 365 ATP P1, yes, they are the same in both of those scenarios. (There is also Azure ATP, and Microsoft Defender ATP, but those SKUs are not included in M365 BP.)

M365 Business Basic does not include EMS E3 or Windows 10 Pro licensing.

This is brilliant. Definitely highlights why there is so much confusion over the licencing! Is there any way I could get the excel file so I can share this with my organisation?

I update this matrix every month, so I do not allow it to be downloaded since it becomes out of date frequently. Aaron Dinnage has several PDFs that are similar that you can download though: https://github.com/AaronDinnage/Licensing Keep in mind that Aaron’s spreadsheets are usually updated 1-2 times a year. He just updated them 5/18, so now is a good time to grab them.

Really nice spreadsheet – thank you. Do you have a version for GCC High? Struggling with the actual licenses we need.

I was working on a GCC High version right before the massive work from home movement started. It’s not ready yet, but I’ll give you this advice, if you’re in GCC High and need to be NIST-800 compliant, you need the automated security plans:

At least 1x Microsoft 365 G5 license for advanced compliance reporting if needed. EM+S E5 as an add-on for any of the Office SKUs. Windows 10 E5 for MD ATP and virtualization based security. Minimum of Office 365 G3.

I’m not sure if Microsoft 365 G3 + G5 Security exists, but that would be the plan to get if it’s available.

Hi Dan. I must say – really great work. The best I have seen on the Internet.

Would you be able to add (or share of you already have it) which of the products get ticked/enabled for the E5 Compliance add-on and E5 Security add-on? You have the columns for E3 + E5 Compliance and E3 + E5 Security but it would be nice to know separately what products each of the add-on’s unlock interdependently. I appreciate you are saying E3 + E5 Security is the Hero SKUs, but it would be good to see what other combinations you can create – so having E5 Security and E5 Compliance in separate columns would help massively!!

For example, if a user has an Exchange Online or Office 365 E1 license – could they just add E5 Security add-on (but I think that lacks intune?), so would they need both EM+S E3 and E5 Security (which seems a big cost and overlapping licenses). If you have/add E5 Security and E5 Compliance in separate columns – you would be able to clearly see what you need/get.

Looking forward to your reply! Thank you!

At the moment, the M365 E5 Compliance and M365 E5 Security add-ons can ONLY be added to Microsoft 365 E3. So the scenarios you described are not possible. I have a request to the product team to make these SKUs available to all Microsoft 365 plans, but there is no movement on that yet. (To my knowledge.)

According to the product terms, you can also add Microsoft 365 E5 Security if you have both O365 E3 + EMS E3. You don’t need M365 E3. Look at table with license prerequisites on page 60 ( https://www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/Downloader.aspx?documenttype=PT&lang=English ).

We’ve done this for several customers already. Works like a charm.

Wow, thanks for this gem! I’ll start updating my guidance.

Can you point me to a documentation which outlines the differences between the different Whiteboard plans (F1/P1/P2/P3)

I wish I could provide a link. My best guess is that F1 is read-only, and I have no idea what the differentiation for the other plans would be. There’s no official “Service Description” page for Whiteboard. I’ll bring it up with my PDM, and post if I receive an update.

Fantastic chart! Thank you. One potential correction: I believe that Microsoft 365 Business Premium is now free for qualified nonprofit tenants.

Thanks! And Non-profits receive 10 free Microsoft 365 Business Premium licenses. If the nonprofit needs more than 10 licenses, then it’s $5/u/m.

Excellent Blog. Can you please share the link to download the latest updated license matrix. Appreciate your help.

Is there anything that would keep someone from using a G1 license and an M365 Apps for Business license, instead of getting G3? I see that G3 has some security features not found in G1. Is there anything else?

No technical limitations on doing this. It’s purely a choice of desired feature set. Although I would test if a G1 license works with desktop Outlook before you commit to that bundle.

This was really helpful, but I also have some users on older E2 plans which I of course can’t find any information on anywhere. Any idea what is gained/lost by switching to E1 or to one of the Business plans (this is a smaller company, well under the 300 limit).

You do not lose any features when switching from Office 365 E2 to E1. You gain a few new features, like To-Do and Whiteboard but nothing to write home about. They’re mostly the same license.

Dan this is awesome, thanks for making this list. I am confused.. The excel sheet displayed on this website seems the correct one with new M365 naming etc, but when I click the link to your sharepoint excel sheet I see the older plans. What is up with that? Should I bookmark the website rather than the sharepoint link?

Sorry, the webpage is more current than the Excel document at the moment. I will try to update both resources this month.

Brilliant overview – I currently have 1900 M365E3 licenses to cover our 1900 users who are sourced from AD On Premises. I have a requirement to onboard 600 M365 F3 users. Am I able to source the First line workers from the on premise Active Directory (to keep the same Starter Leavers Process) without purchasing any additional ECALS. The F3 users will never need to authenticate on premise, as we use PHS not ADFS/PTA/

Hi Chris, if you sign up for CSP with us we can get you a definitive answer. Are asking about if you need to license CALs for your AD DS box if they’re only going to be using AAD joined devices? M365 F3 includes EM+S E3, which includes AD DS CALs, so you’re probably fine. And if those users are never going to interact/authenticate against a Domain Controller, you don’t need Windows Server CALs for the users either.

Hi Dan, I believe M365 Business Premium includes unlimited archiving through ‘Exchange Online Archiving’ – see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/microsoft-365-service-descriptions/microsoft-365-business-service-description note 3.

M365 Business Basic – Is there a specific reason why you only note “X” for Exchange Online, but not “P1”?

According to the Microsoft page ( https://docs.microsoft.com/de-de/office365/servicedescriptions/office-365-platform-service-description/office-365-plan-options ) M365 Business Basic includes “Exchange Online Plan 1”, just as M365 Business Standard.

Dan this is awesome! I may have missed it, but are the storage allocations for the Standard Services are calculated separately? For example, the storage allocation for SPOL as part of Government E3 (currently 1 TB plus 10 gig per entitlement) is in addition to the storage provided via Premium 2 (P2) for OneDrive, correct?

Correct, the 1 TB plus 10 GB per user is for shared storage in Teams / SPO sites. This is separate from the 5-25+ TB per user in their personal OneDrive accounts.

Hi Dan, Thank you for this information. It is certainly very useful. I am curious to know if EMS E3 a Technical or Licensing prerequisite to M365 E5 Security? Can’t find that information anywhere. Thank you.

Microsoft 365 E3 is the only license that you can add M365 E5 Security to. EMS E3 is included in the Microsoft 365 E3 license, so don’t purchase EMS E3.

Right now I see that a couple of my Microsoft 365 E5 users have an unusual license configuration.This crept in as we needed more security and compliance features for a certain project.

1. Microsoft 365 E3 ($32 / month) 2. Microsoft 365 E5 Security Add on ($12 / month) 3. Enterprise Mobility and Security E5 ($14.80 per month) Total, $58.80 per month

This is actually more than the $57 E5 license. Question, what features do we lose by just having the first two licenses? Is there a chart anywhere that would show this?

Get rid of EM+S E5. The only thing you would lose is AIP P2, which you can either buy standalone or as part of the M365 E5 Compliance add-on for $10. The M365 E5 Compliance add-on also includes Insider Risk Management, which isn’t part of EM+S E5.

Hi Dan, does the E5 licence provide sufficient rights in SharePoint to create TeamSites and Template laydowns, or do we have to revert to Enterprise licencing for SP?

Thanks in advance.

The ‘E’ in E5 stands for Enterprise, so I’m not sure what you meant by the alternative. But Office 365 E5 and Microsoft 365 E5 both include rights to create Microsoft Teams sites and SharePoint sites. A number of the SMB SKUs include Teams/SharePoint rights as well.

I have a question regarding the operating system license of the VM in Azure. Let’s say I want to deploy WVD for 5 users and I deploy 1 Win 10 multi-session VM. My 5 users have a Microsoft 365 Business Premium license. For the OS license of that VM, can I check “Azure Hybrid Benefit” (“I confirm I have an eligible Windows 10 license with multi-tenant hosting rights.”) ? Or should I add “Windows E3” license to my users to have virtualisation rights?

Many thanks.

VMs that are used for WVD are eligible for the Hybrid Use Benefit. If this was not automatically enabled during deployment, you should be able to safely check the box now.

Could you help me to understand what did you mean with “RO”, “EOK1”, “SOK1”, “OME”, “CAD”? Also, why for Forms there are “F1”, “E1” “E3” etc.? And is there “P3” plan for “To-Do” and “Yammer”?

RO = Read Only. EOK1 = Exchange Online Kiosk Plan 1. SOK1 = SharePoint Online Kiosk Plan 1. OME = Office Message Encryption. CAD = Cloud App Discovery.

In all honesty, I don’t understand the different SKUs for To-Do and Forms, but they exist. So I noted them.

Hi, I have a number of questions regarding O365 licensing. Our organisation has bought a combination of E1, E3 and F3 O365 licenses as part of their Enterprise licensing on a 30/30/40 split accordingly. Firstly I cannot find any reference to F3 licenses altho’ I do find reference to F1 and E5 licenses. Is F3 the same as one of these under a different guise? Secondly it is my understanding that those who are accessing O365 via a thin client (e.g. Citrix) would require access to a shared activation code which is available for users with E3 licenses only, ergo all Thin Client users would require an E3 license (if I have understood that correctly). However I am being told by our technical teams that in our environment that is not the case because we have VDI installations of Windows 10 on eac of our desktops therefore negating the requirement to access O365 apps. This does not sit well with me and this does not feel right: why would you bother giving Citrix users O365 accounts if they are not going to use O365 apps and surely this will mean that we would essentially be double paying: once for the O365 licenses and also for Win10 licenses? Would welcome some further insight into this.

The old F1 licenses are now called F3. The new F1 licenses are geared towards Teams-only users. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/f3

I’m not sure I follow your second question. You need Microsoft 365 Business Premium or Office 365 E3+ to get the shared activation license for VDI. You can use the same O365/M365 license on your desktop/laptop/phone and your VDI session–you don’t need to buy it twice. If you’re running Office 365, you’ll need a legacy Windows 10 VL for Citrix. If you’re using Microsoft 365, you get Windows 10 licensing in WVD when you run it in Azure. Hope that helps.

Dan – If I have an M365 Business Premium license, that is good for 5 Windows 10 Pro activations correct? If I want to add a 6th Win10 Pro activation can I add another M365 Business Premium license or do I have to buy individual Windows 10 Enterprise E3 licenses? I have searched high and low for the answer to this question.

Windows 10 subscription licenses are per user, so a single user cannot have both W10 Pro and W10 E3. If you need to license 6 devices, you’ll need at least two users for that. You can purchase up to 300 M365 BP licenses in a single tenant.

Thanks for this excellent table, it simplifies understanding MS licensing a lot 🙂

My organization is a SMB (around 40 users), and currently we have all on-prem (AD, Exchange, Sharepoint and Dynamics). We have plans to move everything to 365, but I’ve some doubts after checking the table:

– To get anti-phising/spoofing/malware detection etc… do all the users need to be licensed on (for instance) M365 BP? It looks like the best license for us anyway.

– Our on-prem SharePoint is being used as a commercial management solution for externals. With that in mind, I guess our best option would be to have P2 for SharePoint Online. We probably need InfoPath as well. Do we need to license all users for this? Or is it enough to have just one license in our tenant?

– Aside from the 40 internal users, we “sell” access to our customized SharePoint. At this time, all we have to do is create a user in our AD and add it to the appropriate pages. What (minimum) license would we need for this, bearing in mind that ideally we want to have 2FA for all of them, but being externals they don’t really need anything else?

– Regarding Exchange, our version is 2013. We have several public folders, all of them contained in a single public folder mailbox, which is about 250GB right now. Before migrating I know we need to do a massive cleaning on that, but anyway… what would you recommend? I’ve seen that the (supported) limit for public folders is 100GB. Maybe splitting them?

– Again for public folders: do these need any special license? If so, I think a good alternative would be shared mailboxes, as they don’t consume any license, is that correct?

– It’s quite confusing how the archiving feature works/is licensed. I recall reading somewhere that it’s unlimited, in the sense that when it needs more space, it just grows. Is that right? Or is it hard-limited to 50GB for M365 BP?

Basically, we don’t have anything that requires local auth, so I think we can move everything to AAD and 365, only pitfall is Dynamics, CFO doesn’t quite like D365 🙂

Adding some info:

It seems that archiving for M365 BP is unlimited. See here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/microsoft-365-service-descriptions/microsoft-365-business-service-description

“Microsoft 365 Business Premium includes Exchange Online Archiving subscription. Each Exchange Online Archiving subscriber initially receives 100 GB of storage in the archive mailbox. When auto-expanding archiving is turned on, additional storage is automatically added when the 100 GB storage capacity is reached. For more information, see Overview of unlimited archiving.”

Another thing I find confusing is this:

“Microsoft 365 Business Premium subscribers are licensed to use full Intune capabilities for iOS, Android, MacOS, and other cross-platform device management. Features not available in the admin center in Microsoft 365 Business Premium, like third-party app management and configuration of WiFi profiles, VPN certificates, etc., can be managed in the full Intune console.”

What license do you need to get the “full Intune console”? Is it deliberated that they are omitting Windows on that description?

We plan to use M365 E3 with M365 E5 Security addon but we also have around 100 users with M365 F3, How can we have the same security and compliance for those users? We plan to use DLP, Sign in risk policys, ATP plan 2. We know that M365 E5 Security can´t be combined with M365 F3….

Hello Daniel,

I have the same question, about M365 F3 users and the M365 E5 security add-on. Do you already know the answer?

It is my understanding that the M365 E5 Security/Compliance add-ons are only available for M365 E3 or O365 E3 with EM+S E3. I do not believe you can purchase the add-ons for M365 F3 users.

Great comparison. Just want to verify the difference of being tagged as “X” as against “P1”. This is for example – Outlook and Sharepoint. Thanks

[…] compare costs of cloud-based services with on-premises services […]

Hi Dan, Does this table apply for Australia Region Please? It would be very helpful if you could let us know what are the changes in this table for Australian region. Thank you so much.

The features are the same for Global Commercial Office 365 tenants. (Meaning that features may be different for GCC High, 21Viacom, and German clouds.) Pricing for AUD is not the same as USD pricing and would be the only difference in this chart.

[…] * FRÅN DANIELGR: För er som jobbar med O365-licenser (frivilligt eller ofrivilligt) så verkar den här vara shysst. https://www.infusedinnovations.com/blog/secure-modern-workplace/complete-office-365-and-microsoft-36&#8230 ; […]

This was tremendously helpful. I think I can cut costs by a good 6 grand a year without cutting corners, so thank you for putting the time into this. BTW, Microsoft is misspelled in the M365 F1 for frontline workers section (spelled micorosft) (I prefer to go by alt-write rather than grammar nazi)

Haha, thanks for alt-write check! I can’t believe we’re not the #1 search result for Micorosft though. 🙁

Which Plan includes On-Prem Gateway (Used for PowerApp, PowerAutomate, & PowerBI)?

Any of the plans that include Power BI also include the on-premises data gateway.

Hi Dan, this is a great resource. Thanks for creating it. There is an update needed now though. Microsoft 365 Business Premium now includes Exchange Online Archiving SKU. This provides an unlimited Archive mailbox instead of the 50 gigs that was previously included. Could you update the document to include unlimited on Microsoft 365 Business Premium Archive Mailbox size instead of 50 gigs?

M365 Business Premium now shows unlimited archiving.

[…] Details and public pricing (in dollars) of the various Microsoft 365 licensing plans, by Dan Chemistruck (Infused Innovation). […]

Hope everything is well. As I still use your site very often I was wondering when you might add Universal Print..it took me a while to understand that it comes included with the most imprortant sku’s. I thougth we had to pay a few dollars extra for every user..

Universal Print for Windows 10 has been added to the licensing comparison.

Great comparison chart, thank you for keeping this up to date! I notice that Stream is not listed as part of M365 Business Premium, yet people with that license can use Stream (i.e. when recording Teams meetings). It seems to be included.

Stream has been added to all Microsoft Business SKUs.

Hello, Great chart. I see in the that you have Azure AD join and Manage with Intune (In the Windows 10 section) checked under Business Premium but shouldn’t they be checked in the EM S E5 also? EM S E5 comes with AD Premium P2 which has those features (and more)

EMS E5 allows you to join a device to Azure AD, but it does not include the Windows 10 Pro license. Whereas Microsoft 365 Business Premium includes Windows 10 Pro.

This is by far the best pricing matrix I’ve seen for Microsoft 365 services. Thank you for putting this together and maintaining it with a changelog!

Thank you for this great overview, it is very helpful. We have 30 users with a mix of Business Basic and Business Standard. We would like to deploy Intune and conditional access. Instead of upgrading everybody to Business Premium, we could just purchase Microsoft 365 F1 at a quarter of the cost?

Yes, I believe you can combine those two SKUs.

The Exchange Archiving Mailbox size in M365 Business Premium is 100 GB (initially) and unlimited – not 50 GB as noted in the table. Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/exchange-online-archiving-service-description/exchange-online-archiving-service-description

This is an awesome table thank you! However it is two years out of date now.. Has there been any updates since 2019?

It is not out of date. Please see the change log at the bottom of the post.

[…] Prior to today’s announcement, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint was primarily available for companies that signed up for a Microsoft 365 E5 license or a E3 license with a E5 security extension tier, both of which are some of the most expensive tiers in Microsoft’s enterprise licensing scheme. […]

Exellent thank you!

This is an awesome chart that we use weekly when trying to demystify 365 licensing for our customers. Thanks again for all your hard work. This is hands down the best licensing matrix we’ve seen.

Can you please update a few things?

1. EM+S E3/E5 have increased in price as of 08/01/2021: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise-mobility-security/compare-plans-and-pricing#:~:text=Take%20your%20business%20further%20with%20Microsoft%20365%20Enterprise,%20%20%20%2021%20more%20rows%20

2. Office 365 F1 has been renamed to Office 365 F3: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/office-365-f3?activetab=pivot%3aoverviewtab

Thanks again! DC

Hi Dan, Does this table apply for Middle East Parts (Dubai) Please? It would be very helpful if you could let us know what are the changes in this table for Middle East . And is it possible to get the Pricing detail too please? Thank you so much.

Dan – The SharePoint link for the file has broken. Would you mind posting a new one or renewing the link? I’ve used it consistently and recommended it to people. I’d really like to have it available again, even in read only form, please.

Thank you for the presentation of this licensing information. It is very informative. Does Office 365 E3 + EMS E3 + Microsoft 365 E5 Security Add-on include Defender for Endpoint?

We’re seeing Exchange Online Kiosk being included in M365 F1 licenses now. Can this be updated in the matrix here?

Does anything change with the addition of Microsoft Defender for Business to Microsoft 365 Business Premium?

Great article

This is amazing, thank you Dan! We refer to this a lot internally.

Are you intending to update this with the NCE pricing?

[…] The Complete Office 365 and Microsoft 365 Licensing Comparison. An excellent blog post was forwarded to me this week by a colleague. It really is worth its weight in gold. […]

Is the government pricing updated in this matrix? It is a different number than what I am getting from my reseller.

Hi Dan, thanks for this!

I’m having a little argument with our CSP provider at the moment about the MS F1 licence.

Effectivly what I want is, Teams, Sharepoint (read only), Stream (training videos) and an AD identity with MFA. My CSP are saying I can’t use the F1 license because it’s limited to a 10.1 inch screen. However, I’m looking at Online versions of Sharepoint mainly here and stream. I.E our intranet is on Sharepoint and best viewed via a browser.

Any advise, I would be grateful.

Can you update this with something about the Windows Defender for Endpoint Business that now comes with Business Premium. It’s a hybrid mix of Defender for Endpoint P1/P2 just for those using the Business SKUs.

Thanks for the great guide.

We are looking at Remote Help add on for Intune, but need some info about the licencing.

Is this included in any licence package? Who needs to be licenced? Helpers, Sharers, or both?

Thanks Pip.

Thank you for this comprehensive table. I use it regularly and a link to this page lives in my Chrome toolbar! Please let us know if you ever update it! 🙂

Hi Dan, thanks for this awesome resource. It’s my go-to summary of Microsoft 365 plans when I am discussing options with customers. I have just provisioned an environment with Microsoft 365 Business Premium licences and I have discovered that in the Compliance Manager I have options for Data Lifecycle Management. On here – https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise-mobility-security/compare-plans-and-pricing , I think it’s the ‘Persistent data protection’ option. I’m just checking before I commit to customers that data retention is part of Business Premium. I don’t see this listed under EM+s E3 on your table. Any ideas/advice? Thanks

[…] The Complete Office 365 And Microsoft 365 Licensing Comparison. This is a real gem. No kidding. Check it out. […]

I really love this overview, but with the recent changes from Microsoft I would love to see an updated version of it. Would you be so kind?

Would you mind updating this with the new pricing since NCE?

Any chance I could buy the Excel version from you? This is so helpful but would be great if I could move the columns around too.

Can you add the Defender for Endpoint Plan 1 and Plan 2?

Thank you for sharing this wonderful and informative blog with us.

Why are add-ons like App Governance not included in the table overview of the licenses? I know this is not part of the largest license model, E5, but still, a feature that can be purchased and, therefor, part of this overview, like a few others.

The overview supports nicely a comprehensive overview of (all) user-based licenses of Microsoft. Expanding this to all (latest) features, make it the perfect reference to use.

Not all ‘Heros’ wear capes. You are definately doing a social service. Thank you for compiling this list for the rest of us.

Thank you for keeping this up to date. It’s been a resource to me for literal years now.

This is excellent information, thank you very much. You are providing something that should be front and center for Microsoft

I’ve been looking for something exactly like this for a long time, so thank you for putting this together end keeping it updated. This is going to be a great help for us now that Microsoft is discontinuing the Office 365 E1 product. As a nonprofit we were getting this at no cost, and had added on ES+M E3, so now we are going to determine how to proceed, and this will help tremendously.

One note – the nonprofit pricing for ES+M E3 has increased to $2.70.

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Office 365 E1 Vs E3 Vs E5: Plans Breakdown And Security Comparison

Office 365 is available in three distinct business plans, e1, e3 and e5. which is right for your organization.

Microsoft 365 is the market leader in cloud productivity suites for business, providing businesses with Microsoft Office applications, cloud storage, email, instant messaging, video conferencing, and more, all in one monthly subscription.

Office 365 is available in three plans: E1, E3, and E5. E1 is the most basic plan, offering essential business services like email, file sharing, and storage. E3 provides the full suite of enterprise functionality with Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) and additional security functionality. E5 is the most advanced package, with all the features of E3, alongside advanced email security functionality, analytics, and phone systems.

Commonly asked questions are: which plan offers the best value for money? Is it better value to use E3 and implement third-party email security? Do I need the additional security and analytics functionality offered in E5?

In this article, we’ll attempt to answer these questions and recommend which service is the best fit for your organization. We’ll start with a breakdown of each plan and what it has to offer. All pricing shown is the current information found on Microsoft’s pricing grid . 

Before we get started, there’s one thing to be aware of: in this article, we’re just looking at Office 365’s pricing options. Microsoft recently renamed it’s enterprise productivity suite as a whole from Office 365 to Microsoft 365, but still advertizes Office 365 plans for SMBs. Microsoft 365 (a suite for large enterprise organizations of over 300 users) also offers E3 and E5 solutions, but these are more expensive and offer even more advanced security technologies, including identity and access management, and Microsoft’s Defender antivirus.

For the purposes of this article, we’re looking at the Office 365 packages on this page . These are aimed at small to mid-sized organizations and cover all Office 365 functionality outside of endpoint management and the Windows operating system.

Office 365 E1 Vs E3 Vs E5: Key Takeaways

E1: The best option if you’re looking for basic email and file sharing capabilities, and you absolutely do not need to use the Office 365 application suite. Best for a very small team of users.

E3: The best all-round option if you don’t need audio-conferencing or advanced compliance features. Includes the full Microsoft Office 365 suite and better storage for email and file sharing. We recommend using it alongside third-party email security , which is often more cost-effective than E5.

E5: The best option for businesses with more enterprise needs looking for telephone conferencing and additional compliance features. Additional security features are an important consideration, but third-party email security can be more powerful and cost-effective.

Let’s take a look at each of these plans in more detail. 

Office 365 E1

Price: $10.00 Per User Per Month

The E1 package is the most basic of the three packages we’ll consider on this list and, as you would expect, the cheapest. It provides the “core” cloud business functionality, including email with Microsoft Outlook, file storage and sharing with OneDrive, and some security controls like multi-factor authentication.

• Office: You can only access Microsoft’s Office Suite (Word, PowerPoint, and Excel) on the web and on mobile devices. You cannot use the desktop versions of these applications.
• Email: Email is available with Outlook, with a 50GB mailbox size. You have access to the calendar and contacts functionality, as well as email archiving. Be aware you cannot install the desktop client for Outlook, and will only be able to access email in the web-based portal.
• Meetings: Microsoft’s instant messaging and meeting app Teams is included, as well as live events. Audio functionality and phone systems are not included.
• File Sharing: SharePoint and Yammer are included, allowing users to share and collaborate on files (again, this is only possible on mobile or in the web version of cloud office applications). Up to 1TB storage is included for each user.
• Productivity: Power Automate, Planner, and To Do are all included.
• Analytics: Some basic analytics are included, such as Productive Score and compliance management.
• Email: Emails are protected by Exchange Online Protection, Office 365’s basic layer of email security. This will block basic spam, but will not be effective against more sophisticated email attacks.
• Identity and Access Management: Supports single sign-on and multi-factor authentication.

Recommendation

We would recommend E1 only for businesses who do not wish to use Office cloud applications, but require basic email and file sharing functionality. The service is more cost-effective when considering this use case than E3.

However, when it comes to security—particularly email security—this solution is lacking. If you’re investing in E1, we recommend that you implement third-party email security solutions to protect your business against sophisticated phishing and ransomware attacks.

Office 365 E3

Price: $23.00 Per User A Month

Microsoft Office 365 E3 is the middle option for Office 365 users, including all the features of E1, with the full desktop suite of Office 365 applications and greater storage for email and SharePoint. Office 365 E3 can broadly be considered the “Goldilocks” plan: it’s not too basic and not too advanced.

The main missing features here are the enhanced email security functionality provided by Defender for Office 365, and audio-conferencing. There are numerous third-party email security solutions that provide more powerful email security than Defender (for a more cost-effective price), so the decision between E3 and E5 may come down to whether you need those audio-conferencing features.

• Office: The full suite of Microsoft cloud applications is included.
• Email: Email is included with mailbox sizes up to 100GB, with the full range of features.
• Meetings: Microsoft Teams is included, but not the phone system or audio-conferencing.
• File Sharing: SharePoint is included with unlimited personal OneDrive storage for each user.
• Productivity: Power Automate, Planner, and To Do are all included. Power BI Pro is not included.
• Analytics: There are analytics included, such as Productive Score and compliance management. Admins can also manage group policies that are not available in E1.
• eDisovery and Auditing: Content search, eDiscovery and basic auditing features are included. Advanced auditing and records management are not included.
• Email: Emails are protected by Exchange Online Protection. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is also included for emails and files. Basic email encryption functionality is provided, as well as email retention policies and audit logs.
• Identity and Access Management: Supports Single Sign-On and Multi-Factor Authentication.

E3 is a strong option for most small- and mid-sized businesses looking for Microsoft Office applications, emails, cloud-file management, and file sharing, with strong enterprise analytics and compliance controls. The service provides all the basic enterprise controls that most small businesses require, at an affordable price-point. However, there are two main areas where this solution is lacking.

The first is security. When it comes to protecting email, this solution only provides Exchange Online Protection (EOP), which filters email for malicious links, spam and basic phishing attacks. However, this level of protection is very limited, and will not protect your business against sophisticated email attacks such as social engineering (or “spear-phishing”) and ransomware. These attacks are increasingly common and should be a core consideration for your business when deciding which plan to invest in.

However, there are third-party email security solutions available that can offer a far higher level of protection than EOP and indeed Microsoft’s own email security solution, Defender for Office 365 (available on the E5 plan). These services can be more cost effective than the price difference between E3 and E5, and are often very easy to install. This is because they use the Microsoft Graph API, so users can be easily onboarded with no MX redirects or new configurations necessary.

You can read our guide to the Top Email Security Solutions for Office 365 here.

The second area in which Microsoft E3 is lacking is audio-conferencing and the phone system. Teams is included, but you can only use it to communicate with other Teams users, and not to make external phone calls. If you need to regularly make phone calls—to support a sales team for example—and prefer the convenience of using one solution for all your users, Microsoft E5 may be the better plan to go for. If this is not a consideration, or only small numbers of your employees need telephone functionality, E3 is a good all-rounder.

Office 365 E5

Price: $38.00 Per User A Month

Microsoft Office 365 E5 can be described as the “Premium” Office 365 option, providing the most advanced functionality for businesses. It’s more expensive, has more features, and is also split into two plans.For the purposes of this article, we’ll just be considering Plan 2.

The core differences between E3 and E5 are audio-conferencing features and security functionality. But there are also other benefits, including advanced analytics, compliance and information protection, and advanced retention policies for email. E5 is the best option if you want everything Office 365 has to offer—but it may not always represent the best value.

• Meetings: The full suite of meetings, calling and chat functionality is included. This means you get Teams, Live Events, a business phone system, and audio conferencing.
• Productivity: Power Automate, Planner, and To Do are all included. Power BI Pro is included for more granular analytics and automation.
• Analytics: There are analytics included, such as Productive Score and compliance management. Admins can also access advanced analytics and auditing unavailable in E1 or E5.
• eDisovery and Auditing: Advanced eDiscovery and advanced auditing features are supported.
• Email: Emails are protected by Exchange Online Protection and Windows Defender for Office 365, which provides advanced protection against phishing and ransomware, as well as more advanced reporting and admin controls. Data Loss Prevention is included for emails, Teams, and files. Advanced email encryption functionality is also provided, as well as email retention policies. Customer keys for Office 365 are supported.
• Identity and Access Management: Supports Single Sign-On and Multi-Factor Authentication. Cloud App Security Discovery is also provided to manage third-party application security.
• Information Protection: Automatic sensitivity labels are applied and DLP is also applied to Teams. Rules-based automated archiving and advanced auditing are supported.
• Insider Risk Management: Communication compliance, information barriers, and Privileged Access Management are included.

E5 provides the most features and functionality of the three plans, so from the perspective of getting the best possible version of Office 365, this plan is the way to go. It provides all the Office 365 applications, advanced email control and functionality, better auditing and analytics, and the telephone system and audio-conferencing capabilities.

So, the question for your business has to be: do you need those additional features and, if so, do they need to be part of Office 365?

As we’ve covered, there are numerous extremely powerful third-party solutions dedicated to providing organizations with email security and compliance functionality. This covers security, but also encryption and archiving—two of the other advanced features present in E5 but not E3. These solutions are often more cost-effective than E5 and will often have more extensive security features and reporting. In most cases, for example, we’d recommend that Office 365 E5 users implement a third-party email security solution to augment the security offered by Defender.

However, it is a clear benefit to have one system from which users can access all applications and services. It’s far easier to manage and can boost productivity. This is especially important with the phone system, and adding audio-conferencing to Teams makes it easy for users to make calls and speak to colleagues—especially remotely.

Our final recommendation is that, if you need a telephone system and audio-conferencing, E5 is the best plan. If you’re considering E5 just for the additional security functionality, we’d instead recommend that you invest in E3 and implement a third-party email security, archiving or encryption solution.

Email Security For O365

If you are looking to implement an email security solution for O365 as an alternative to the Office 365 E5 license, there are a number of solutions on the market. You can read our guide to the top email security solutions for Office 365 here.

Let’s wrap up by recapping our recommendations for each Office 365 plan:

E3: The best all-round option if you don’t need audio-conferencing or advanced compliance features. Includes the full Microsoft Office 365 suite and better storage for email and file sharing. We recommend using it alongside third-party email security, which is often more cost-effective than E5.

Finding the most relevant plan for your organization will come down to your unique business needs and use cases. If you don’t need a telephone system, using a combination of E3 with an additional layer of third-party security is the best option. If you do need a telephone system, E5 would be our recommendation.

If you’d like to take a look at the best email security systems for Office 365, we’ve put together a useful guide, which you can read here:

• The Top Email Security Solutions for Office 365.

Content Director

CEO and Founder

7.5 min to read Digital Workplace

Easy guide to comparing Office 365 licensing plans

Many companies face the same challenge as they switch to the cloud – understanding Office 365 licensing options.

There are many services and service bundles to choose from depending on your business size, needs and goals.

Selecting the right option is crucial to maximise your investment's value. However, this task can be challenging, especially since it's not something you typically do frequently, on a weekly or monthly basis.

This article will give you a broad overview of this topic, focusing on the most frequently chosen options. Please Note that all information can change and is subject to Microsoft updates and agreements.

Read on to learn about Office 365 licensing options for enterprise, the services available in each of them and some tips for choosing the right license for your business.

Microsoft 365 or Office 365?

The most important thing to understand is that Office applications have become an integral component of the Microsoft 365 platform.

M365 extends the capabilities of Microsoft’s suite of modern workplace products by adding certain security services and features (e.g. Microsoft Defender). It also incorporates the capabilities of Power Platform to allow users to automate repeatable tasks or create custom low-code applications.

While Microsoft 365 is a bundle of services including Office 365, plus several other services including Windows 10 Enterprise and Enterprise Mobility & Security, Office 365 is a cloud-based suite of productivity apps such as Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, and more.

Simply put, Microsoft 365 is more than Office 365, but all the services we all know well are still there. Whether you buy one or the other depends on your needs, so let’s look at the available options.

A quick overview of Office 365 licenses

All Office 365 licenses are subscriptions. It works exactly as in the case of cell phone licenses. You can use them as long as you want to on a pay as you go basis.

To make a long story short, you can buy the suite through several licensing programs such as:

• Enterprise Agreement
• Web Direct (Microsoft Online Subscription Program or MOSP)
• Cloud Solution Provider

Remember that choosing the right agreement is not only about the proper licensing of payment terms. It is also about additional financing for your cloud deployment. There are resources like the Digital Partner of Record or Office 365 adoption funds. We won’t cover them here, but feel free to  get in touch  if you’d like to know more.

Types of enterprise licenses

There are three main types of modern workplace licenses:

• Business plans – limited to 300 users
• Enterprise plans – without feature or user number limitations
• Frontline worker plans – essentials for mobile or remote employees.

There are also special options for government and nonprofit use.

Services available within Office 365 suites

In each suite, there are numerous services and features. Let’s go through the key ones briefly.

• Office apps for PC, Mac, mobile – basic office productivity services, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.
• Office Online – a web version of Office that allows viewing and editing Office files.
• Exchange Online – an e-mail service that provides inbox, calendar, address book, tasks and security features.
• Teams – a communicator with instant messaging, online meetings, as well as file-sharing and collaboration.
• OneDrive – allows you to access, share and sync your personal files in the browser and on any device.
• SharePoint – allows for building intranets, searching content, and analysing data.
• Yammer (now Viva Engage) – your enterprise social network – a great tool for internal communication and offloading your inbox.
• Stream – your internal YouTube with high-performance video streaming and mobile access.
• Planner – if you are looking for a modern task management tool similar to Asana then this is the service.
• Groups – in my opinion, the best enterprise collaboration workspace on the market. It integrates Exchange Online, SharePoint, Skype and Planner. Your team can use conversations, files, notes, calendar, and tasks – all in one place.
• Delve – allows you to search for files and people easily, and is powered by Artificial Intelligence and Office Graph.
• Basic data analytics – gives you the ability to use a free, limited version of Power BI and provides information about your Office 365 usage.
• Advanced data analytics – gives you more capabilities with Power BI Pro, Excel services, and Personal Productivity Analytics.

Additional features

Most plans have basic security features such as multi-factor authentication capabilities.

With Exchange Online you also get a state-of-the-art spam and malware filter. Simple e-discovery, data loss prevention (DLP) and document encryption are also included.

Advanced threat protection gives you more configuration options for data loss prevention, conditional access and advanced malware scanner.

Finally, customer Lockbox included in E5 suites allows you to grant access to your data for the support team.

Office 365 Business plans

Now that we’re clear on the features, let’s see what Office 365 Business suites hide inside.

We have four plans here:

• Basic , which contains web and online versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and 50GB of email hosting.
• Standard that offers all collaboration and communication services, as well as desktop productivity apps.
• Premium , which offers all the features of the previous two plans and advanced security capabilities.
• Apps for Business, an essential business service package that includes desktop app versions and 1 TB of cloud storage per user.

Note that all of these options are limited to 300 users.

Office 365 Enterprise

Now, let’s take a look at the Enterprise plans. There are four main options here:

• E1 – it gives you Office Online and a significant number of communication and collaboration services. Apart from what you got in Business Essentials, you also have Stream and work management apps like Planner or To Do.
• E3 – it extends E1 with data analytics, additional security features and Office client.
• E5 – best all-in-one productivity suite, which adds complete protection, Power BI Pro, Advanced DLP and user activity monitoring.
• Apps for enterprise – includes key business services and cloud file storage but no email.

Office 365 Frontline

For employees primarily using mobile devices, e.g. people working directly with customers or out in the field, there are Frontline plans available. Here, we have two options – one for basic collaboration and another with stronger security and Power Platform capabilities to automate workflows.

There are some questions which are frequently asked by customers. Perhaps the answers to these will help you too.

What is the difference between Microsoft 365 Business and Microsoft 365 Apps?

The Apps suite is a limited option that doesn’t include Exchange Online email or Teams. It is fine if you only need an Office 365 client to work with your files. Depending on your plan, Business suites also have more advanced analytics and security features.

Is the Office client the only difference between E1 and E3?

No – far from it. There are many more security options in E3 such as email and document encryption and DLP (Data Loss Prevention). You also have better control of your inboxes, mail flow, and data analytics. E3 gives you access to on-premises enterprise licenses whereas E1 offers only a standard license.

Which plan is the best for me?

Always start with the users. Are there less than 300? Then Business suites are likely to be ethe most suitable. More than that? Go for Enterprise.

As to which particular plan to choose – it always depends on your business needs. Talk to your people, find out what they use daily, and let that inform your choice.

How best to choose?

Start with a business need or a problem. Then, try to solve it with the cloud. If you do it the other way around – start with cloud features and try to find a need for them – you will fail. It won’t be a spectacular fail, though – you probably just won’t make the most of your budget for the project.

What do others choose most frequently?

The usual mix of plans we recommend is E1 + E3 or E1 + E5. That’s right – you can mix and match if you need to.

Options for buying Office 365 plans

This is just a snapshot of the options available when it comes to buying Office 365. As we’ve seen are three main Office 365 suites (in addition to Microsoft 365 options): Business, Enterprise and Frontline.

Within the Business Suite, 3 plans are available: Basic, Standard and Premium. The Standard plan doesn’t include an Office client but has email and Yammer. Premium also covers advanced analytics and security.

The Enterprise suite has 3 main plans: E1, E3, and E5. E1 doesn’t include Office client or information protection. E3 has most of the necessary features. If you’d like to have additional functionalities, such as Teams phone system or audio conferencing, consider the E5 license.

In essence, the more expensive the plan, the more options you have for collaboration, data analytics and security. But this isn’t necessarily always the case t. It can be difficult to figure out exactly what you need, which is why you can always reach out to us for help.

Take your next step with SoftwareOne

Make the most of your Microsoft 365 and Office 365 investment

Marek Antoniuk Global Service Line Lead – DWP

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Office 2021 vs. Microsoft 365: How to choose

Microsoft office may be the most common productivity tool for corporate users, but it's not a one-size-fits-all suite. here are the differences between office 2021 and microsoft 365 and how to decide which is best for you..

Microsoft Office is how billions of people around the world go to work and school, whether they do it from home, an office, a classroom, or a combination of any of those. This suite of productivity tools is used by people working in 106 languages in nearly every country in the world, and it’s available in versions for personal, small business, enterprise, and educational use.

But there is more than one way to buy Office — or, rather, to buy the license to use it. There’s the “perpetual” version of Office that’s available as a one-time purchase; the most current version is Office 2021 . Then there’s the subscription version that lives in the cloud and for which you pay a monthly or annual fee. When this version was introduced in 2011, Microsoft called it Office 365 , later renaming it Microsoft 365 for personal and small business subscriptions. At the enterprise level, both Office 365 and Microsoft 365 plans are available. In this story, we’ll use “Microsoft 365” as shorthand for all “365” subscriptions unless we’re referring to a specific plan.

Why choose to buy it one way and not the other? The answer can be confusing, especially since each suite of tools includes most of the same applications, give or take.

Microsoft has made its preference clear: The company believes that “ the cloud will power the work of the future ” and would love it if everyone purchased Microsoft 365. There are lots of incentives for doing just that. But you have options.

Office 2021 vs. Microsoft 365: What to consider

• microsoft office: the options (plans and pricing), • how you pay for office, • how each version of office is serviced, • how office hooks up with cloud services.

Here’s help deciding which version of Office is right for you or your company.

Microsoft Office: The options

For personal use.

• Office Home & Student 2021: $150, one-time purchase for use on one computer; includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
• Microsoft 365 Personal: $70 a year or $7 a month (1 user, multiple devices); includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, OneDrive , and Teams.
• Microsoft 365 Family: $100 a year or $10 a month (6 users, multiple devices); includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneDrive, Teams, and Family Safety.

For small businesses

• Office Home & Business 2021: $250, one-time purchase for use on one computer; includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
• Office Professional 2021: $440, one-time purchase for use on one computer; includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, and Access; works with Teams.
• Microsoft 365 Apps for business: $8.25/user/month (up to 300 users); includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneDrive, Publisher, and Access.
• Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard, and Premium: plans range from $6/user/month to $22/user/month (up to 300 users); tools included depend on the level of your subscription. Desktop versions of Word, Excel, and other Office apps require a Standard plan or higher; the Basic plan offers only web and mobile versions. All plans include Exchange email hosting, OneDrive, and SharePoint. The Premium plan adds advanced security and management features.

For enterprises

• Office LTSC 2021: available only through volume licensing ; this Office title stands for Long Term Servicing Channel — it’s the commercial version of Office 2021. According to Microsoft, it’s designed for regulated devices that can’t accept updates for security reasons and for systems that don’t connect to the internet. (Note, however, that it’s the only non-subscription version of Office available for large organizations.) Includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access, and Publisher.
• Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise: $12/user/month (up to 5 devices per user); annual commitment required; includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, OneNote, Access, and Publisher.
• Office 365 E1, E3, and E5: plans range from $10/user/month to $38/user/month; annual commitment required; tools included depend on the level of your subscription. Desktop versions of Word, Excel, and other Office apps require an E3 plan or higher; the E1 plan offers only web and mobile versions. All plans include Exchange Online, OneDrive, SharePoint Online, and additional enterprise services. The E5 plan adds advanced security, compliance, and management features.
• Microsoft 365 E3 and E5: plans range from $36/user/month to $57/user/month; annual commitment required; these plans offer most of the same features as the Office 365 E3 and E5 plans, and also include Windows and additional Microsoft services such as Visio.
• Other plans: Microsoft offers additional Office 365 and Microsoft 365 plans for education , government , and nonprofit organizations, and for frontline workers .

How you pay for Office

One big difference between the “2021” and “365” options is how you pay for them. If you are buying a “perpetual license” (such as with Office Home & Business 2021 or Office LTSC 2021 ), you pay a larger sum than with the subscription’s offerings under the Microsoft 365 or Office 365 brand, but you do so only once. When you subscribe to any of the Microsoft 365 or Office 365 plans, you pay annually or monthly.

Office 2021: a perpetual license

Whether you buy a single copy of Office 2021 in a retail outlet or download hundreds of seats via volume licensing, Microsoft calls this is a “one-time purchase” because you pay only once, not every month. (Labels like “perpetual,” which have been widely used by  Computerworld , technically note the type of license rather than payment methodology, but in this case, the kind of license is tied to whether it was bought outright or simply “rented.”)

Microsoft defines the term as when “…you pay a single, up-front cost to get Office applications for one computer.” Up-front is the key adjective there. You have to ante up the entire purchase price before you get the software.

That purchase of a license to legally run the software gives you the right to use that version of Office 2021 in perpetuity. In other words, the license has no expiration date, and users may run the suite for as long as they want. Pay for Office 2021 this year and use it for the next seven years? Fine. Use it to operate your space portal in the year 2050? Nothing to stop you. (Except hardware compatibility. Though you could probably find an old, refurbished computer and drag that into space.)

But if you want new features that come out with the next update, you will have to pay full price again, whatever that is, when the next version comes out — if one comes out. There are no upgrade options on the perpetual license packages.

Microsoft 365: Office as a service

Microsoft 365, the purchase method Microsoft would prefer you choose, is a subscription service, where you pay the software giant monthly or annually. There is a discount, sometimes a tempting one, for going with the annual payment plan over the monthly one. (All enterprise plans, from Enterprise E1 to E5, require an annual commitment.) And the company is always sweetening this pot by offering more apps than you get with the perpetual license products and with a continuous supply of new features.

Like any subscription, Microsoft 365 provides a service — in this case, the right to run the suite’s applications and access the associated services — only as long as payments continue. Stop paying, and rights to run the apps expire. This happens in a progressive way , giving you time to download your data or update your payment plan, whichever you choose.

For 30 days after non-payment, your plan will be “Expired.” You will still have access to all your apps and files. If you don’t activate it again while it’s in the Expired stage, it moves to “Disabled,” where it will stay for 90 days. You won’t be able to access your apps or data until you pay up. If you still don’t pay for your plan, it will be “Deleted.” At that point, it’s gone.

A Microsoft 365 license, then, is contingent on sustained payments. Halt the latter, and the license is revoked. Restart the payments — but don’t wait too long — to restore the license.

How each version of Office is serviced

Although payments define one difference between Office 2021 and Microsoft 365, Microsoft’s development and release pace is ultimately more important to users — and the IT professionals who support them.

Think of Office 2021 as traditional software — a bundle of tools that typically don’t change much until the next major version. That holds for servicing, too. Microsoft does release monthly security and quality updates for the perpetual license versions of Office. (You can check from within any Office app if there are updates available . From, say, a Word document, go to File > Account and look for Product Information . Then choose Update Options and Update Now .)

But Office 2021 doesn’t get the continually upgraded features and functionality that Microsoft 365 does. What you get when you buy the suite, feature-wise, is it. If you want the updates, at some point in the future, you will have to buy whatever version Microsoft is selling as a perpetual license then.

(The company says of the release of Office LTSC 2021, “While this will not be our last perpetual release, we continue to make investments that make it even easier for customers to adopt Microsoft 365.” And in an online explainer about all Office products, the company says, “We are happy to confirm our commitment to another release of the perpetual version of Office in the future, beyond this release.”)

Microsoft regularly releases feature and security updates for Microsoft 365 apps, though. And it releases them as they happen. As new features and functionality accrete, and the applications in Microsoft 365 evolve, Microsoft will decide it’s time for a new version of Office. It will then package some of those features into an upgraded suite for customers who continue to make one-time, up-front purchases. How long they keep doing this likely depends on how long there is a demand for these “locked in time” versions.

One other important note: Office 2021 and Office LTSC 2021 will be supported with security updates only through Oct. 13, 2026. That’s just five years of support, down from seven years in Office 2019 and 10 years in prior releases. In contrast, with Microsoft 365 subscriptions, support never runs out — as long as you keep paying, of course.

How Office hooks up with cloud services

One reason to choose Office 2021 over Microsoft 365 is internet access. If you don’t have reliable access to the cloud, can’t be connected to the internet for security reasons, or — for whatever reason, maybe you live on a remote mountaintop — your computer is often offline, this is the type of software you need.

In fact, internet access is one of the main reasons Microsoft can’t force us all to subscribe to Microsoft 365. Microsoft 365 runs in apps that are downloaded to your computer, phone, or tablet, but those apps require near-constant internet access, especially if you use OneDrive and store all your files in the cloud.

In standard use, Microsoft 365 stops working if it can’t connect to the internet for 30 days. For some use cases, this is a deal breaker. But the company is making efforts to overcome this objection to the Microsoft 365 products. Last year, Microsoft launched features for enterprise users that allow Microsoft 365 keep working without issue even if it is offline for extended periods of time. An IT administrator has to set it up, but after that, a user can keep working, offline, for up to 180 days.

Office 2021, on the other hand, does not rely as heavily on an internet connection to operate, save files, and self-update. You can connect it when you have access and work offline when you don’t. This, as much as cost and a desire to stick to old-school software distribution models is, perhaps, the most compelling reason to insist on one of the perpetual license products.

Whichever license you ultimately choose, you will get many of the same tools. And the reasons for making one choice over another have less to do with price and features than with how you or your users work, support and security needs, reliability of internet access, online storage and collaboration needs, and how excited (or annoyed) you or your users are likely to be by new features that turn up, like a gift, in the software.

This article was originally published in July 2017 and most recently updated in June 2022.

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Windows 11 insider previews: what’s in the latest build, new law may force apple app store to open up in uk, windows recall — a ‘privacy nightmare’, how to migrate to a new windows pc, from our editors straight to your inbox.

Gregg Keizer covers Windows, Office, Apple/enterprise, web browsers, and web apps for Computerworld.

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How to go incognito in chrome, edge, firefox, and safari, what’s in the latest firefox update 93 improves smartblock, debuts sponsored search suggestions, microsoft lets windows 11 loose on the world, microsoft sets perpetual-license office 2021 prices, reveals new-feature list.

Christina Wood is a freelance writer living in North Carolina. She blogs at GeekGirlfriends.com .

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Is Teams Part of Office 365? Here’s What You Need to Know About Recent Microsoft Licensing Changes

• Written by: Ryan Mosher
• May 23, 2024

Microsoft just made a significant change to how Teams is licensed for enterprise plans.

Microsoft has unbundled Teams from its enterprise Microsoft 365 and Office 365 plans globally. You will no longer be able to purchase Office 365 E1, E3, E5 or Microsoft E3, and E5 suites with Teams included.

This shift, effective immediately for all new enterprise subscriptions, stems from competitive fairness concerns raised in Europe last summer, prompting a reevaluation of how Teams is bundled.

With 320 million monthly users across the globe, Microsoft Teams license news is important to the hundreds of thousands of organizations that use the collaboration tool every day.

We will provide you with the key details of this change, helping you understand the impact on your organization as you navigate the new Microsoft 365 and Office 365 license landscape.

Teams Unbundled from New Enterprise Licenses

For anyone purchasing new enterprise licenses, Teams will no longer be included. Instead, Teams is transitioning to a standalone product known as Microsoft Teams Enterprise .

The key word here is new —existing customers won't feel the impact of these changes until their subscription renewal date , but this also allows for the opportunity to evaluate Microsoft 365 and Office 365 licensing as additional product offerings, like Teams Enterprise, could change your overall strategy.

Additionally, this licensing change does not affect SMB and Frontline licenses. If you are using a Business Basic, Standard, Premium, or Microsoft F1/F3 license, Teams will still be included in your license renewal. Additionally, there is now the option to purchase these licenses without Teams.

Microsoft Teams Licensing Questions

Q: When can existing customers remove Teams from their licenses?

A: Only during your renewal period, unless you choose to upgrade to a specific plan that excludes Teams.

Q: How do I know if I’m an existing customer?

A: If you had an active license with Teams included before April 1, 2024, then you are an existing customer.

Q: What happens if I switch Cloud Service Providers?

A: Currently, switching partners makes you a “new” customer to Microsoft, impacting Teams access upon renewal.

Q: Can I add standalone Teams Enterprise seats now?

A: Yes—and there is no minimum for these add-ons.

Q: Will I be able to mix bundled and unbundled suites?

A: Absolutely. You can have a mix of subscriptions with and without Teams within the same tenant.

Q: Does this affect government, academic or non-profit customers?

A: As of now, these industry sectors are not affected by the unbundling of Teams.

Use This Opportunity to Optimize Your Microsoft Licensing

Microsoft licensing can be complex, and considering switching up your Microsoft licensing strategy can be an added nuisance. However, use this as an opportunity to reassess all of your tools. Teams is great, but it isn’t your only option. There could be a better fit for your organization’s unique demands.

At HBS, we understand that Microsoft licensing can be overly complex. We’ve helped many organizations navigate these changes . We know how to help optimize Microsoft’s tools to best serve your business. If you’re unsure if Teams is right for you, and want to explore other collaboration tools ? Let’s talk.

Our job is to find you the best fit, ensuring your team has exactly what it needs to drive your business forward without overspending. Connect with us today to start mapping out your licensing strategy.

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Try or buy a Microsoft 365 for business subscription

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Microsoft 365 for business is a subscription service that lets you run your organization in the cloud while Microsoft takes care of the IT for you. We manage your devices, protect against real-world threats, and provide your organization with the latest in business software. You can sign up for a free trial subscription for Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Microsoft 365 Business Standard, Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Microsoft Defender for Business, or Microsoft 365 Apps for business and try it out for 30 days.

You must use a credit or debit card when you sign up for a free trial. At the end of your free trial period, your trial subscription is automatically converted to a paid subscription. Your card isn't billed until the trial period ends.

Need help with choosing a plan?

Choosing a plan depends on your specific business needs. The Microsoft 365 plan chooser helps you select a plan. The tool makes recommendations based on your answers to questions about things like the size of your business, your field of work, the devices that you use, and what kind of features, IT support, and security that you're looking for.

Before you begin

You don't need an existing Microsoft account to sign up for a free trial.

For all other procedures in this article, the following items are required:

• You must have a Microsoft account, and you must be a Global or Billing admin for your organization. For more information, see About admin roles .

Find out what type of billing account you have .

• If you have a Microsoft Customer Agreement (MCA) billing account type, you must also be a billing account owner or contributor to do the tasks described in this article. For more information, see Understand billing accounts and Manage your Microsoft business billing profiles .

Payment options for Microsoft 365 operated by 21Vianet in China

International credit cards aren't accepted. You can pay for your subscription by:

• Online payment using Alipay or China UnionPay

Proof of payment is provided in the form of Fapiaos. You can submit your Fapiao request to our Fapiao system about three (3) days after you have paid.

Try a free trial subscription

To create an account and sign up for a free trial subscription of Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Microsoft 365 Business Standard, Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Microsoft Defender for Business, or Microsoft 365 Apps for business, use the following steps.

• Go to the Microsoft 365 Products site.
• Select the plan that you want, such as Microsoft 365 Business Standard , scroll down the page, and select Try free for 1 month .
• On the next page, follow the steps to set up your account.

The sign-up process might take several minutes to complete. After it's complete, you're ready to start the setup wizard for your subscription. For more information about setting up your subscription, see Next steps .

When you start a free trial, we automatically create a billing account for you. You use your billing account to manage your account settings, invoices, payment methods, and purchases. For more information about billing accounts, see Understand billing accounts .

Extend your trial

Do you need more time to try out the features of Microsoft 365 for business before buying? If your trial subscription is within 15 days of expiring and hasn't been extended yet, you can extend your trial for another 30-day period. You can only do this one time.

If you have an MCA billing account type:

• If you're using the Simplified view , select Billing , then select your trial subscription.
• If you're using the Dashboard view , go to the Billing > Your products page and select the trial subscription that you want to extend.
• On the subscription details page, in the Trial subscription section, select Extend trial end date .
• In the Extend your trial's end date pane, review the extension information, and, if necessary, select a payment method.
• Select Extend trial .

If you have a MOSA billing account type:

• On the subscription details page, in the Subscription and payment settings section, select Extend end date .
• In the Extend end date pane, select a payment method to use, or add a new one.

Buy a subscription from your free trial

At the end of the free trial period, most trial subscriptions automatically convert to a paid subscription. The paid subscription defaults to the plan that you currently have. You can buy a different plan by following the steps in Buy a different subscription .

If you want to buy your subscription before your trial is over, use the following steps.

• If you're using the Dashboard view , go to the Billing > Your products page and select the trial subscription that you want to buy.
• On the subscription details page, select Start a paid subscription now .
• In the Start a paid subscription now pane, enter the number of licenses that you want, select a subscription length and billing frequency, then select Change plan .
• On the subscription details page, in the License section, select Buy paid subscription now .
• In the Buy subscription pane, choose a monthly or annual commitment for your subscription, then select Checkout .
• On the Checkout page, verify the information, including Items in this order , then select Place order .

Cancel your free trial subscription

If you decide to cancel your trial subscription before the free trial period ends, go to the Microsoft 365 admin center and turn off recurring billing . The trial automatically expires when your month ends, and your credit card isn't charged.

Try a different subscription

If you already have a Microsoft 365 for business subscription, you can use the Microsoft 365 admin center to try a different subscription.

When you add a subscription through the Microsoft 365 admin center , the new subscription is associated with the same organization (domain namespace) as your existing subscription. This association makes it easier to move users in your organization between subscriptions, or to assign them a license for the other products they need.

• If you're using the Simplified view , select Billing , then select Add more products .
• If you're using the Dashboard view , go to the Billing > Purchase services page.
• On the Purchase services page, find the plan that you want to try, and select Details .
• In the Select a plan drop-down list, select the trial plan.

All trial subscriptions include 25 free licenses for the duration of the trial period.

• Select Start free trial .
• In the Checkout pane, choose the billing profile that you want to use, or add a new one.
• The Product name section lists the cost, subscription term, number of licenses, and renewal date for the trial subscription. To match the renewal date with another subscription paid by the billing profile, select Select a different renewal date .
• If necessary, change the number of licenses that you want to buy when the trial ends.
• When you're ready, select Place order .
• Choose to receive a text or a call, enter your phone number, then choose Text me or Call me .
• Enter the verification code, then select Start your free trial .
• On the Check out page, select Try now .
• On the order receipt page, select Continue .

Buy a different subscription

As your users change roles, they might need features that aren't available in their current Microsoft 365 for business subscription. When this happens, you can add a new subscription that includes those features and assign licenses to the people who need them.

When you buy another subscription through the Microsoft 365 admin center, the new subscription is associated with the same organization (domain namespace) as your existing subscription. This association makes it easier to move users in your organization between subscriptions , or to assign them a license for another subscription they need.

If you want to move all of your users to a different subscription, see Upgrade or change to a different Microsoft 365 for business plan .

You must move users from your free trial subscription to the new subscription before your 90-day grace period ends after your trial subscription expires. By doing this, you keep your data, accounts, and configuration. Otherwise, that information is deleted at the end of 90 days.

• On the Purchase services page, select the plan that you want to buy, then select Details .
• On the product details page, in the Select a plan drop-down list, select the plan, and enter the number of licenses that you want to buy. Select a subscription length and billing frequency, then select Buy .
• The Product name section lists the cost, subscription term, number of licenses, and renewal date for the subscription. To match the renewal date with another subscription paid by the billing profile, select Select a different renewal date .
• Select Place order .

Check out this video and others on our YouTube channel .

• On the product details page, enter the number of licenses that you need, select a billing frequency, then select Buy .
• On the Checkout page, verify the Sold to information. Select a payment method or add a new one. Verify the number of licenses that you need, then select Place order .

If you have a new account and are setting up your first subscription, you can use the guided setup articles to help you get started.

• Set up Microsoft 365 Business Basic
• Set up Microsoft 365 Business Standard
• Set up Microsoft 365 Business Premium
• Set up Microsoft Defender for Business
• Set up Microsoft 365 Apps for business

If you already have a subscription and are adding a new subscription, you can move users to it. To learn how, see Move users to a different subscription .

If you upgraded to Microsoft 365 Business Premium, use the steps in the Business Premium library to set up your new security capabilities.

Visit the Microsoft 365 Business Premium library

Related content

Microsoft 365 for business training videos (video) Add users and assign licenses at the same time (article) Assign licenses to users (article) Upgrade to a different plan (article) Buy or edit an add-on for Microsoft 365 for business (article) Add storage space for your subscription (article)

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6 reasons why i think a microsoft 365 subscription is worth it.

You get a lot of bang for your buck.

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More onedrive storage space, unlimited use of the personal vault, create templates for formatting consistency, more sophisticated tools, offline access and local saving, technical support, what are my subscription options.

Yes, you can get most of Microsoft's programs through 365 for the web, and Google's suite offers a decent alternative. But if you're looking for more storage, security, flexibility, sophistication, and tech support, it's totally worth paying for the Microsoft 365 subscription.

I'm going to run through the perks of the Microsoft 365 Personal plan, but there are other subscription packages for you to choose from.

Compared to the free Microsoft account, which gives you 5 GB of OneDrive storage, and the Microsoft Basic account with 100 GB, the Microsoft 365 Personal plan comes with 1 TB of cloud space. It's unlikely you'll ever fill 1 TB of storage as a personal user, even if you upload high resolution photos, your music collection, and other large files, but you can quickly run out with just 5 GB or 100 GB.

Provided you've signed in to your Microsoft subscription account and activated automatic backup, your files and photos will automatically sync to OneDrive . You can rest assured they're stored for you to access and edit from wherever you like on whichever device you're using.

As there's so much OneDrive storage space with the Personal plan, you don't need to use other programs to rely on your storage. Importantly, though, I would always recommend that you back up your most important files manually to multiple places anyway, as automated tools can't always be trusted. But it's just nice to know that you don't have to worry about your OneDrive storage filling up.

I'd argue that the majority of the Microsoft 365 subscription fee is for the use of the many powerful desktop apps, so I view the 1 TB of storage as a free add-on to my subscription.

OneDrive's Personal Vault is a great place for storing sensitive information—such as a scan of your passport, driver's license, or birth certificate—with an extra layer of protection. Once you've set up your Vault, you can access it through your fingerprint, facial recognition, or an additional passcode, and your Personal Vault locks after a period of inactivity.

This secure feature is only available to people who have subscribed to the Basic, Personal, or Family plan—you can't get it for free.

As a Personal plan subscriber, I can upload an unlimited number of sensitive documents to my Personal Vault (you can only add three files if you're a Basic subscriber). So, as well as those mentioned above, I also save my essential passwords, tax documents, and self-employed contracts to my encrypted storage area, ensuring they're deleted from my regular OneDrive folders to give me that extra peace of mind.

The Microsoft 365 apps, including Word, Excel, OneNote, and Loop, all let you save a file as a template . In other words, if you like to use certain fonts, layouts, or formatting, you can set these up as a template for easy use each time you open the program.

This can be useful even if you're not keen on the Microsoft 365 default font , or if you know that you're likely to use the same multi-level list formatting in many of your Word documents.

While Microsoft 365 for the web gives you access to thousands of pre-made templates, you can't create and save your own using this platform—this feature is only available on the desktop app. Rather than having to set up your layout every time you open the Microsoft 365 program, you can save so much time by deferring to one of your pre-saved templates, especially handy if—like me—you work for various clients who have different style guides, or run a business and want all your letters to look the same.

While Microsoft's free online version of the 365 suite is always improving , the desktop versions of the apps are much more powerful and host many more features than their web counterparts. I feel the benefits of this when I want to personalize my documents, as I know I can use the many tools available to make them perform and look exactly how I want them to.

For example, on Microsoft Word, you'll need the desktop app to add or amend watermarks, create document-specific macros, add section breaks, or insert a caption to an image. Even a quick glance at the ribbon (which you can't modify online like you can in the paid apps) reveals the difference in the options available:

And the same applies to the other Microsoft 365 desktop apps when you compare them to the free online versions.

Subscribing to Microsoft 365 Personal also means I know I'll always have the latest features, fixes, and security updates—so, all things considered, I have no qualms about paying the annual fee for unlimited use of these excellent tools. Admittedly, making full use of these tools can take time to get used to, and if you're running Microsoft 365 programs on a lower-end PC, they can take a bit more time to process. But these are only minor drawbacks that shouldn't pose any real user issues.

I'm old-school—I like to have my files saved locally on my PC, and keep current documents on my desktop so that I can access them instantly as soon as I log on to my computer. It's great that files save automatically to my OneDrive folder, as I sometimes like to view them on my phone, but saving them locally also gives me extra assurance that they won't be lost in the cloud.

Even more importantly, I know that if my internet drops off for whatever reason, or if I'm working on my PC in a remote place (which I often do when I'm on vacation in the middle of nowhere), I can still open and edit my work.

Subscribing to Microsoft 365 Personal means that I can have the apps on my computer for me to use whenever and wherever I want, as long as I have my computer with me.

Whether you need help with a Microsoft 365 app-related problem or simply want to know how to amend your tabIe of contents on Word, having a Microsoft 365 account gives you 24/7 access to the Microsoft tech gurus via the online chat facility, or you can request a callback.

I've personally used Microsoft's technical support for help generating a complex Excel formula, and the online support facility meant that I could keep the chat open in my internet browser while playing around with my Excel spreadsheet in a separate window. What's more, if your problem is particularly complex, the guru will ask you to share your screen, so they can try to fix the issue remotely.

If you have an older one-time subscription to Office 2016, 2019, or 2021, you do have access to the chat service, but you can't request a callback, unless you're having problems with activation. So, subscribing to Microsoft 365 means that you have the best support options out there.

To date, each time I've contacted Microsoft's technical support team, my requests have been addressed almost immediately, and I've always come away with a solution to my queries.

Microsoft offers four options for personal users:

• A Microsoft account —If you don't want to pay a penny, you can access Microsoft 365 for the web (including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and OneDrive), Skype, Outlook online, and Xbox free of charge by signing up to Microsoft with a valid email address . You also get 5 GB of OneDrive storage and 15 GB of mail storage.
• Microsoft Basic —At $1.99 a month or $19.99 a year, you can subscribe to Microsoft Basic, which gives you 95 GB more OneDrive storage space and 35 MB more mail storage space than the free Microsoft account, but you still don't have access to the Microsoft 365 desktop apps. You can also add three files to a secure Personal Vault, and you have access to Microsoft's technical support experts through the online chat facility or a callback.
• Microsoft 365 Personal —The jump from the Basic subscription to the Personal subscription is quite sizable, both in terms of price and what you get for your money. For $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year, you can sign in to five devices at the same time, get 1 TB of OneDrive storage and 50 GB of mail storage, have unlimited use of the Personal Vault, and use all the Microsoft 365 apps on your desktop and other devices, on top of the perks offered by the Basic plan.
• Microsoft 365 Family —This is the same as the Personal plan, but you get 6 TB of storage to accommodate its six-user capacity. For this subscription, you pay $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year.

There are also four business subscription options , which you can choose from depending on the size of your organization.

Though the $69.99 yearly cost might initially seem a little steep, you could make your payments more manageable by opting for the monthly price plan. Ultimately, I think that what you get for this subscription absolutely justifies the price. In fact (and please don't tell Microsoft this!), I'd even be happy to pay a little more.

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May 10, 2024

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Microsoft 365 Business Basic Non Profit Pricing

There is a customer who is in charity whose O365 tenant is registered in charity and would like to purchase Business basic non-profit licenses through us, CSP. When we offer the licenses, as business basic basic non-profit licenses are free of charge, if these licenses get renewed to next year, any cost change in this. Is there any limited period these licenses are offered are free of charge. Would like to have an answer on this.

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• Microsoft Agent |

Hi Pasindu Soysa,

Thank you for connecting with us in Microsoft community.

Microsoft offers Microsoft 365 Business Basic licenses as a grant free of charge for up to 300 users for eligible nonprofit organizations1. This is part of Microsoft’s commitment to providing affordable and accessible technology to help nonprofits achieve their missions.

As for the renewal and potential cost changes, typically, the grant terms, including pricing, are subject to review and may change at Microsoft’s discretion. However, there is no specific limited period mentioned for how long these licenses are offered for free. It’s important for organizations to stay updated with any announcements from Microsoft regarding changes in the grant terms or pricing.

Meanwhile, I have consulted your case with my team member, I would like to share more specific information with you.

Further for the most accurate and current information, it would be best to directly contact Microsoft's support team for Non profit license related scenario. They can provide the latest details on the grant’s availability, renewal terms, and any potential changes in pricing for the upcoming year. Remember, the availability of these offers can vary by country, so it’s essential to verify the details for your specific region.

Since we forum community moderators do not have any permission and resources to involve specific support team from this public forum. For this, certain standard processes are required.

Here are Phone support information article:

1. Find Microsoft 365 for business support phone numbers by country or region - Microsoft 365 admin | Microsoft Learn

2. Global Customer Service phone numbers - Microsoft Support

3. Contact Us (microsoft.com)

Below is just test screenshot to submit request to appropriate support team:

I hope, I have provided you all required process information and direction for your current scenario.

I would really appreciate your precious time. Thank you again for your kind cooperation and contribution.

Have a good day.

Sincerely Vaidya Darpan

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Question Info

• For business
• Subscription and billing
• Norsk Bokmål
• Ελληνικά
• Русский
• עברית
• العربية
• ไทย
• 한국어
• 中文(简体)
• 中文(繁體)
• 日本語

• Manage your subscription
• Manage payment method
• Renew your subscription
• Turn recurring billing on or off
• When subscription expires
• Cancel Microsoft 365
• Microsoft 365 subscription refunds
• Share Microsoft 365 Family
• Stop sharing Microsoft 365 Family
• You received an invitation to share
• Switch between Microsoft 365 subscriptions
• Switch to a business subscription
• Transfer to a different Microsoft account
• About accounts
• Sign in to Microsoft 365
• Why you need to sign in
• Forgot account or password
• Get started at Microsoft 365.com
• Meet the Microsoft 365 app launcher
• Check version
• Microsoft 365 for home or business
• What business product do I have?
• Difference between Microsoft 365 and Office 2021
• Difference between home and business plans
• Difference between Microsoft 365 and free web apps
• Troubleshoot

What Microsoft 365 business product or license do I have?

There are several Microsoft 365 for business plans that you or your organization can choose from when you sign up for one of Microsoft's cloud services. After your organization signs up for Microsoft 365, the admin can assign different Microsoft 365 licenses to each user account. The different licenses include different services, such as SharePoint in Microsoft 365 and Skype for Business Online. See the different Office 365 for business plans .

Note:  This topic is for Microsoft 365 for business. If you have an Office for home product and you're looking for where to install Microsoft 365, see Install or reinstall Office on a PC or Mac . To see what Office for home products you have a license for, sign in with your Microsoft account to Services and subscriptions .

If you experience a problem in Microsoft 365 – for example, you can’t use or install Microsoft 365 on a device – it could be that you don’t have the necessary license that enables that service or you don't have a subscription that includes the desktop applications which require installation. To fix this, you can contact your admin or IT staff for help, or if you're the admin, you can add the license yourself.

What Office 365 business product or license do I have?

If you work in an organization that uses Office 365 for business, use the steps below to find out what Microsoft 365 for business product or license you have. If you're an admin and you want to know what Microsoft 365 subscriptions have been purchased for your organization, follow the steps in What Office 365 for business subscription do I have? instead.

Select your Office 365 plan immediately below, then follow the steps:

• Select your Offic 365 plan
• Office 365 operated by 21 Vianet (China)
• Office 365 Germany

Sign in with your work or school account at www.office.com/signin .

Click Settings , and then under My app settings , choose Office 365 .

On the My account page, choose Subscriptions .

You’ll see the services that you're licensed to use, such as the latest desktop version of Microsoft 365, SharePoint in Microsoft 365 or OneDrive for work or school, and Exchange Online.

You’ll also see the version of the service you're using, such as Plan 1 or Plan 2 .

Tip:  The latest desktop version of Office means you get an Microsoft 365 subscription with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and others. SharePoint Online means you get OneDrive for work or school and team sites. And Exchange Online means you get email.

Sign in with your work or school account at login.partner.microsoftonline.cn .

Sign in with your work or school account at portal.office.de .

What happens if I don’t have an Office 365 business product or license?

A lot of things can happen if you don’t have the necessary Microsoft 365 for business product or license. Here are some examples:

You try to install Microsoft 365 on your PC from Microsoft 365 but discover that there is no installation button.

You try to use Word for the web, Excel for the web, or other Microsoft 365 for the web products and end up on the Microsoft 365 Settings page showing that you don’t have the needed license.

You try to sign in to OneDrive for work or school but can't access the site or get an error message.

You try to install Office for iPad from the Apple App store and get an error that your subscription is not entitled to use the app.

You try to use Office for iPad and find that Microsoft 365 apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are in read-only or view mode.

Tip:  For more about issues relating to installing Microsoft 365, see Troubleshoot installing Office .

What can I do if I don’t have the needed product or license?

If you don’t have the product or license you need, contact your Microsoft 365 admin or IT staff for help in getting that license or finding an alternative.

Or, if you are the admin, you can add the license yourself. See Buy licenses for your Office 365 for business subscription and Assign licenses to users in Office 365 for business .

In some cases, an admin may need to add an Microsoft 365 plan or switch you to an Microsoft 365 plan that includes the services you need. See Switch to a different Office 365 for business plan .

Learn more about the different Office 365 for business plans available to your organization.

Need more help?

Want more options.

Explore subscription benefits, browse training courses, learn how to secure your device, and more.

Microsoft 365 subscription benefits

Microsoft 365 training

Microsoft security

Accessibility center

Communities help you ask and answer questions, give feedback, and hear from experts with rich knowledge.

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Microsoft Tech Community

Windows Insiders

Microsoft 365 Insiders

Find solutions to common problems or get help from a support agent.

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'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean?

ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing.

When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers.

ZDNET's editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form .

Microsoft Copilot vs. Copilot Pro: Is the subscription fee worth it?

Microsoft's Copilot tool is already freely available as a dedicated webpage, mobile app, and built-in Windows tool, offering quick and easy access to an AI chatbot that will answer your questions, generate content, and create images. But Microsoft upped its game with a Pro version of Copilot that kicks in more features and better access for $20 per month.

Also: Microsoft adds Copilot Pro support to iPhone and Android apps

The free flavor offers the following features:

• Copilot use on the web and in Windows, MacOS, and iPadOS.
• Access to GPT-4 and GPT-4 Turbo during non-peak times.
• Upcoming access to GPT-4o .
• Use of text, voice, and images in conversational search.
• Ability to create and edit AI images with 15 boosts (15 images) per day with the Designer tool.
• Ability to use plug-ins and shared GPTs.

Also:  How to use Image Creator from Microsoft Designer

The Pro version kicks in several additional benefits:

• Faster performance and priority access to GPT-4 and GPT-4 Turbo during peak times.
• Copilot availability in core Microsoft 365 desktop and web apps (Microsoft account required).
• Faster AI image creation with 100 boosts (100 images) per day using Designer .
• Ability to resize AI-created images between square and landscape formats without leaving Designer.
• Ability to create and share your own custom and tailored Copilot GPTs via a Copilot Builder tool .

Beyond using Copilot Pro at the Copilot website through any browser, you can launch it directly in Windows 10 or 11. Simply click the Copilot icon on the Taskbar. The Pro flavor is also accessible in the iPhone and Android Copilot apps . You can use Copilot Pro with a Microsoft 365 subscription in Windows, MacOS, and iPadOS. And you can even tap into the Pro flavor with the free Microsoft 365 apps on the web .

You should use Copilot free if…

1. you don't use microsoft 365 on the desktop or on the web.

For most people, the main advantage of Copilot Pro is the support for Microsoft 365. This means you're able to use AI to create and edit text and perform other advanced tasks in Word, Excel, and other apps both in the desktop suite and on the web. If you don't use any of the Microsoft 365 apps, then the other benefits by themselves probably aren't enough to justify the $20-per-month price tag.

2. You can get by with GPT-3.5 and non-peak use of GPT-4

GPT-4 offers some clear benefits over GPT-3.5, including faster and more accurate responses, longer prompts, a better understanding of context and nuance, greater creativity, the ability to solve complex problems, and fewer biased responses and hallucinations.

Also: ChatGPT vs ChatGPT Plus: Is it worth the subscription fee?

You can access both GPT models through the free version, though you may not be able to use GPT-4 during peak load times. In that case, Copilot will drop down to GPT-3.5. For many people, however, the sporadic GPT-4 access should suffice.

3. Your image generation needs are modest

Using the built-in Designer tool with DALL-E 3, Copilot is able to generate images based on your text descriptions. The free flavor limits the number of images you can generate, granting you 15 boosts (15 images) per day. If you don't need more, then the free flavor of Copilot will work just fine.

4. You already subscribe to ChatGPT Plus

ChatGPT Plus duplicates some of the benefits of Copilot Pro and throws in extra features such as the GPT Store and the ability to create your own custom chatbots. If you already pay $20 per month to subscribe to ChatGPT Plus , there's not as much reason to also subscribe to Copilot Pro. Save yourself some money and stick with the free Copilot flavor.

You should use Copilot Pro if…

1. you use microsoft 365 and want generative ai assistance for the apps.

With its AI skills, Copilot Pro will help you write and edit text and summarize documents in Word, generate formulas and analyze data in Excel, create presentations in PowerPoint, compose text in OneNote, and draft replies and organize your inbox in Outlook. If you use Microsoft 365 on the desktop or on the web and those AI smarts will help you write, create, and work faster, then Copilot Pro can easily be worth the price.

2. You rely heavily on GPT-4 and GPT-4 Turbo

With the Pro edition of Copilot, you won't get saddled with GPT 3.5, even during peak times. Instead, you can switch between GPT-4 and the latest GPT-4 Turbo model. 

If you use GPT-4 heavily and frequently throughout the day and require fast and reliable access all the time, then Copilot Pro gets the nod over the free version.

3. You need to generate a lot of images

While the free Copilot limits the number of images you can generate to 15 per day, the Pro version allows as many as 100. Plus, the image creation tends to be much faster. If you need to create batches of artwork, logos, and other images as part of your job, then you won't run into as many roadblocks with the Pro version.

Both the free and paid versions of Copilot let you edit your images inline without leaving the Designer tool. Copilot Pro goes a step further by allowing you to resize and regenerate images between square and landscape formats.

Also: The best AI image generators

4. You don't subscribe to other premium AI services

Depending on your job and workload, a paid AI service can help you be more productive. If you don't already subscribe to ChatGPT Plus, Google's Gemini Advanced , or a similar service, then Copilot Pro could be just what you need. And remember, you can always try it for a month and then decide if you want to continue or cancel.

5. You'd like to create your own custom Copilot GPTs

With Copilot Pro, you're able to create and configure your own Copilot GPT chatbots . You might try this if you want to design a niche and unique GPT devoted to a specific skill or resource. Using the Copilot GPT Builder, you can either chat with Copilot for AI-infused assistance or manually give your GPT a name, description, and instructions. When done, you can preview your GPT to make sure it works and then either restrict access just to yourself or make it available to anyone with whom you share the link.

Now, let's look at how and where to access the free and paid editions of Copilot.

Free version access at the website

To access the free version on the web, browse to the Copilot webpage . Choose a conversation style and then type your question or request at the "Ask me anything" prompt. On the right, you should see specific Copilot GPTs, including Designer for image generation, a vacation planner, a cooking assistant, and a fitness trainer. The website also offers access to Copilot plugins, such as Instacart, Kayak, and Open Table.

Free version access in Windows

More easily, click the Copilot icon on the Windows 10 or 11 toolbar. A similar interface appears where you choose the conversation style and then dive into your questions.

Free version access in the mobile apps

To use Copilot on your mobile device, download the app for iOS or Android. Choose your preferred conversation style and then submit your requests.

Paid version access at the website

To sign up for the paid version of Copilot, browse to Microsoft's Copilot Pro webpage . Click the button for Get Copilot Pro. At the subscription page, confirm your payment method, and then click the Subscribe button. 

Also: This iPhone app fuses AI with web search, saving you time and energy

After the payment process finishes, click the "Get started" button. You're taken to the Copilot webpage where you'll see Pro as part of the Copilot logo. The Copilot GPTs and plugins are all accessible in the Pro model.

Paid version access in Windows

After subscribing on the website, log back into Windows 10 or 11. Click the Copilot Taskbar icon, and the Pro version will pop up.

Paid version access in the mobile apps

Open the iOS or Android Copilot app and you'll see that Pro is now part of the logo, indicating that you're tapping into your Pro subscription.

Artificial Intelligence

Copilot pro vs. chatgpt plus: which is ai chatbot is worth your $20 a month, chatgpt vs. copilot: which ai chatbot is better for you, what is copilot (formerly bing chat) here's everything you need to know.

Office 365 E1 (no Teams)

Office 365 E1 includes enterprise-level, web-based apps such as Excel and Outlook, integrated with cloud services such as OneDrive that enable productivity from anywhere.

• The latest web-based Microsoft 365 apps and business services. Microsoft 365 desktop apps not included. 
• Email, file storage, and file sharing. 
• Five layers of security and monitoring to help keep your data safe. 
• Financially-backed 99.9% uptime guarantee.

System requirements>

Microsoft Teams licensed separately. Learn more about the new subscription structure>

Originally starting from $7.75 now starting from $7.75

$7.75 $7.75

Annual subscription—auto renews 1

Empower your teams

Help your teams accomplish more faster with simple file sharing and real-time coauthoring—all accessible anywhere.

Features included

Microsoft 365 for mobile

Get Microsoft 365 apps on iOS, Android TM , and Windows devices with screen sizes of 10.9” or less. Each user can install Microsoft 365 apps for mobile on up to five tablets and five phones. Microsoft 365 desktop apps are not included. 2

Microsoft 365 on the web

Use Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote to create, share, and collaborate from wherever you are.

Outlook on the web and mobile

Connect and stay organized with email, calendar, and contacts all in one place.

Exchange Online Plan 1

Get secure and reliable business-class email with a 50 GB mailbox per user. Work smarter, anywhere, with hosted email for business.

Microsoft Bookings

Simplify how customers schedule and manage appointments.

Microsoft Delve

Manage your Microsoft 365 profile with Delve. Plus, discover and organize the information that's most relevant to you right now across all your Microsoft 365 apps.

Microsoft Whiteboard

Collaborate on ideas and content with a freeform digital canvas.

Microsoft 365 Groups

Use this service, along with the Microsoft 365 tools you already use, to collaborate with teammates when writing documents, creating spreadsheets, working on project plans, scheduling meetings, or sending email.

SharePoint Online Plan 1

Share and manage content, knowledge, and apps with 1 TB of OneDrive storage per user. Empower teamwork, quickly find information, and seamlessly collaborate across the organization.

Microsoft OneDrive for work

Access 1 TB of personal cloud storage from anywhere, on any device. Easily share documents with others inside and outside your organization and control who can see and edit each file.

Microsoft Stream

Upload, organize, and share intelligent video content companywide.

Microsoft Sway

Create visually striking newsletters, presentations, and documents in minutes.

Microsoft Forms

Easily create surveys, quizzes, and polls.

Power Apps for Microsoft 365

Build the business apps you need and extend or customize the apps you already use.

Power Automate for Microsoft 365

Make repetitive tasks easy with workflow automation.

Microsoft Planner

Organize teamwork, create new plans, assign tasks, share files, chat, and get updates on progress.

Microsoft To Do

Plan your day and manage your life.

Microsoft Viva Insights (personal insights)

Help employees thrive with data-driven, privacy-protected insights and personal wellbeing experiences. 3

Microsoft Viva Engage (community and conversations)

Build meaningful relationships at work by giving employees a place to connect, express themselves, and find belonging. 3

Microsoft Graph

Use this unified programmability model to access data to build apps for organizations and consumers that interact with millions of users.

On-premises Active Directory sync for single sign-on (SSO)

Visio for the web

Create, edit, share, and coauthor professional diagrams and flowcharts with Visio for the web.

Add-on services

Copilot for microsoft 365.

Use AI to help your organization achieve more than ever before.

Microsoft Teams Enterprise

Add Microsoft Teams as a standalone solution to chat, meet, share files, and work with business apps within a shared workspace.

Microsoft Viva

Create an engaged and productive workforce.

Microsoft Priva Privacy Risk Management

Help identify and protect against privacy risks, and automate and manage subject requests at scale.

Support resources

Get help quickly from experts, delivered when and how you need it.

Detailed service descriptions

Get a detailed look at the Office 365 services and features.

Microsoft 365 roadmap

Get the latest updates on our best-in-class productivity apps and intelligent cloud services.

Deployment resources

Get information on Office 365 planning, deployment, and more.

Frequently asked questions

Will office 365 e1 work with my copy of office.

Office 365 E1 works best with the new Office, Office 2013, and Office 2011 for Mac. Previous versions of Office, such as Office 2010 and Office 2007, may work with Office 365 with reduced functionality. You do not need a desktop version of Office to use Enterprise E1. However, you will receive a much richer experience and be able to work offline if you do connect a desktop version of Office to the Office 365 services.

What forms of payment can I use?

You can pay with all major credit cards, and your subscription amount will appear on your credit card statement. You also have the option to receive an invoice and, depending on your choice of services, you will be billed monthly or annually. You receive an email message when your invoice is ready to be viewed and, if a purchase order (PO) number is entered when you buy your subscription, that number will be included in your invoice.

What payment options are available? Can I pay monthly or annually?

Annual commitment payment is available for Office 365 Enterprise plans. With annual commitment, you sign up for a one-year subscription, but you can choose to pay month to month or pay for the entire year at the time you sign up.

Do you offer volume discounts to businesses?

Yes, discounts are available for Enterprise agreement customers who want to purchase through volume licensing. A Microsoft partner can help you explore the purchasing options for large enterprises and help you determine which is best for you. Learn more about  volume licensing . Find a  Microsoft partner .

Can I cancel my subscription at any time?

You can cancel your subscription at any time. For annual commitment subscriptions, such as Office 365 E1, there is a penalty for cancelling before the end of your contract. Read the complete  Microsoft Online Subscription Agreement .

What happens to my data if I cancel my subscription?

Your data is yours. If you decide to cancel your Office 365 subscription, you can download your data—for example, your email and documents on team sites—and save it to another location. You should save your data before you cancel. After you cancel your subscription, data associated with your Microsoft 365 account will be available to your administrator(s) in a limited function account for 90 days.

Can I switch to other Office 365 plans?

Yes. If you need to upgrade, you can transition your account to a different plan. For example, you can upgrade from a Microsoft 365 Apps for business plan to an Office 365 Enterprise plan.

In most cases, you can use the Switch plans wizard in your Admin center to upgrade your plan. If your subscription has more than 300 users or if you used a prepaid card to purchase your plan, the Switch plans wizard is not available. Plans that are not eligible for the Switch plans wizard can be upgraded manually. Learn more about  upgrading Microsoft plans .

NOTE: When you upgrade your account, your domain name is transferred to your new account, whether you brought your own domain name to the Microsoft 365 account or you set up a domain name with Microsoft 365.

I will need extra help setting up my Office 365 subscription. Who can help?

Microsoft partners are trained IT and development companies that can help you move to Office 365 or develop custom solutions for your business. You can find  a listing of all of our Microsoft partners .

What if I already own a domain name?

You can add the domain name you own to Office 365 to create domain-based email addresses.  Find your domain registrar or DNS hosting provider .  Compare domain management in Microsoft 365 subscriptions .

What is Microsoft FastTrack?

FastTrack for Microsoft 365 is the customer success service that helps you move to Microsoft 365, smoothly and with confidence, and deliver business value faster.

The FastTrack Center is a team of hundreds of engineers around the globe, committed to providing IT professionals and partners with a successful Microsoft 365 experience.

Our FastTrack engineers will provide you with remote and personalized assistance to help you prepare your technical environment and ensure a smooth onboarding and migration experience.

The FastTrack Center will contact eligible customers within 30 days of purchasing an Office 365 E1 subscription. FastTrack resources and services are included in subscription plans for customers with at least 50 seats of Microsoft 365 Apps for business and Office 365 Enterprise plans, as well as paid Government, Kiosk, and Nonprofit plans.

Learn more in the  service description  and  FastTrack FAQ .

• [1] Cancellation policies for paid subscriptions may vary based on factors such as your customer status, your product, and your domain selections on Microsoft. You may cancel your subscription at any time in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Certain subscriptions may incur a cancellation fee. Learn how to cancel your Microsoft 365 subscription . When a subscription is canceled, all associated data will be deleted. Learn more about data retention, deletion, and destruction in Microsoft 365 .
• [2] Availability of mobile apps varies by country/region.
• [3] Premium features require a Microsoft Viva license. Microsoft Teams-integrated features require a Teams license to enable but can be used without Teams via web or other in-app experiences. Learn more .

Connect with Microsoft 365 :

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Available M-F 6 AM to 6 PM PT.