When it comes to choosing the right Microsoft 365 subscription for your organisation, you have a number of options. The package you choose always needs to be dependent on how your business operates and what you are trying to achieve. You need to make sure that what you choose is the best option for your business.
Each of the different plans comes with a set of different products and services and, of a course, a different price dependent on what is included. Some plans will only include email and others will include the full offering.
It’s important to remember that Microsoft 365 is a user-centric product. You don’t need to choose the same plan for everybody in your organisation. You might have some members of staff who are field workers and only need access to email or the browser versions of the Office suite. You might have some staff who work in Analytics and therefore need an Microsoft 365 license with Power BI included.
In this blog, we’re going to look at some of the different Microsoft 365 plans available and what’s included in them. Following Microsoft’s rebranding of Office 365 to Microsoft 365, we want to help you get the right subscriptions for your business.
Microsoft 365 Business Basic
Formerly Office 365 Business Essentials
Business Basic is the entry level Microsoft 365 plan. It does not come with the desktop versions of any of the Office suite such as Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint. This means that the user can access Word through the browser but not through an installed application on their PC.
Business Basic offers your business the essentials. It comes with Exchange, which means that you have your email hosted in the Cloud but it does not come with the Outlook application, so you have to access your emails via Outlook on the web – similar to how you would access your Gmail or Hotmail.
The plan also comes complete with OneDrive which is a personal storage service of 1TB. With OneDrive you can access all your documents and files from the Cloud. It also comes with communication and collaboration tools: SharePoint and Teams.
Microsoft 365 Business Standard
Formerly Office 365 Business Premium
Business Standard is the plan that we recommend the most to our clients. It comes complete with Exchange so your emails are hosted in the Cloud, along with the ability to install the Office applications across your devices. This plan is only available for a maximum of 300 users in your organisation.
The Office applications that are included with this plan are: Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and OneNote, as well as Access for PCs only. The plan then also comes with the new communication and collaboration tools including OneDrive, Yammer, Teams and SharePoint.
Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Formerly Microsoft 365 Business
The original Microsoft 365 subscription, and the one the previous ones have joined to form the Microsoft 365 family. Microsoft 365 Business Premium combines the best in class Office applications from Business Standard with powerful cloud services, device management, and advanced security to transform the way you work.
Business Premium includes Advanced Threat Protection, a cloud-based email filtering service that helps protect your organization against unknown malware and viruses by providing robust zero-day protection, and includes features to safeguard your organisation from harmful links in real time. ATP has rich reporting and URL trace capabilities that give administrators insight into the kind of attacks happening in your organisation.
Microsoft 365 Apps for Business / Enterprise
Formerly Office 365 Business / ProPlus
Microsoft 365 Apps are interesting plans if you don’t want to put your email in the Cloud yet but still want the benefit of a subscription model for your Microsoft Office licensing.
They come with all of your Office applications available to be installed on your devices (Word, Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint, Outlook) as well as OneDrive for storing your documents.
The Microsoft 365 Apps are built around the Office suite rather than the collaboration and communication tools that you find in Business Premium.
Microsoft 365 subscription costs
The table below shows the cost of each Microsoft 365 subscription, per user per month with an annual commitment. Price does not include VAT.
| Name | Price |
|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Business Basic | £3.80 |
| Microsoft 365 Business Standard | £9.40 |
| Microsoft 365 Business Premium | £15.10 |
| Microsoft 365 Apps for Business | £7.90 |
| Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise | £11.50 |
Build the Microsoft 365 plans around you
As we mentioned previously, you can build Office 365 around your organisation and its operations, choosing certain plans for certain individuals based on their role. In this blog, we have looked at just some of the primary plans available for Office 365. If you are interested in knowing more give us a call on 01675 469020 or email hello@acutec.co.uk.
