Microsoft 365 Business plans vs. Office 365 E plans

In this episode, I would like to share with you information’s insides and descriptions of the most popular Office 365 plans today we are at the moment where licensing of the Office 365 platform become a little more complex than at the very beginning. We have multiple plans which are from the perspective of the naming convention, very similar to each other. We have Microsoft 365 plans. We have Office 365 plans. It could be a little confusing for the users who would like to buy the licenses, especially when you’re thinking about the large organization and different requirements from the perspective of the Office 365 end users today, I would like to focus to describe what are the main differences between Office 365 Microsoft 365 plans. What you should focus on when you will choose the right plan for you and I will share with you few tips on how you can do some kind of savings from perspective. Of the subscription costs, thanks to mixing the plans or choosing the correct license for your organization in the notes to this episode, you will found the links to the articles that could navigate you to the detailed descriptions of the plan or additional comparisons between the plants in the business or enterprise model. So feel free to get there. You will be navigated to Office 365 at work block, where I putting additional more detailed information about. Licensing of Office 365. Remember that you can subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Google Podcasts, Spotify Anchor, YouTube, or whenever you listen right now, let’s start from very basic aspect of licensing of Office 365, and the reason why I think this podcast will be useful for you, and it’s important when you starting to discuss licensing and subscription models of Office 365. Today when you thinking about it. Office 365 subscription plans. From my perspective, I see there at least five types of licenses you can buy. You can be surprised about that. Why five? We know the Business, we know E licenses. What’s murder? I classified the licenses of Microsoft 365 into five categories. The first one is the apps for business or apps for Enterprise. So very basic license that could be used to deliver them office supply and suit for. End user’s business licenses. So basic standard and premium business license Office 365 E1 E3 E5 so enterprise licenses for the bigger organizations have licenses so licenses for frontline employees, blue-collar employees, so people who do not work on in the office may be does not have own PC to work on Office 365 and Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 very premium. Versions of enterprise licenses for the organizations. At this point, you can already see we have five categories of different licenses which have separated plans inside them. It’s a lot, and there’s a lot of differences from the perspective of what kind of features are or aren’t included inside the licenses. In this episode, I will focus just on general business and Office 365 E licenses to show you what are the main differences there. What do you need to remember from the perspective of having licenses? These are the licenses for frontline employees, quite rare to be bought, but it’s good to know that if you want to deliver a very simple license without maybe sometimes without an email account with something like kiosk access. This is something for you and Microsoft 365 E licenses so E3 and E5 there. These are very complex, very premium licenses. When you need a high level of. Advanced security and management features. This model is used by a very large organization for the premium users inside the company. Let’s start with Office 365 apps license. We have two different types of license in this model, apps for business and apps for enterprise both deliver more or less Office 365 client suit. So the Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote, Outlook for your desktop so you can install it on your PC or on your Mac on your mobile devices. And you getting access to one drive with one terabyte of data and general. That’s all of course you have some additional access to additional applications like suede whiteboard graph API. But still, when you thinking about when to choose this license, it is the case when you just do need access to the office apps for your desktop which you want to install there. If you will need any additional licenses then go for the full business or full enterprise plans. If you’re looking for just office applications for your PC or Mac, choose one of these plans. One more difference I would remind it of during the discussion about the business plans. Business plans are limited to just for 300 users. Apps for business license also consume that number, so this is also something that you should take into consideration when you planning which license you should choose. Microsoft 365 business licenses are prepared for the small and middle organizations that need to get access for the Office 365 applications and optionally for the office suite for PC or for Mac. All these licenses cover the crucial Office 365 applications like exchange online, share point, Skype. One drive teams and Yammer and much more other applications that could be used in the organization. But when you will think about these licenses, you can assume this is something standard. You can start from in the business licenses you have three plans: Basic, Standard, and Premium. Basic covers only web-based applications so you get access to Office online. You get access to SharePoint Exchange and other major Office 365 applications but you do not get it. Office for your client, for your desktop. From the perspective of the standard, it is exactly the same like basic but additional access to the Office suite. So apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, outlook. From the perspective of Microsoft 365 business premium, you get access to additional advanced security features like Microsoft Intune, eDiscovery, auditing, DLP and more. This is the license for the premium users like VIP users that would like to have a more secure environment from the perspective of the small or middle organization. You need to remember that all business plans are limited. In summary, for maximum number of 300 users. You cannot extend this number and also apps for business includes to that part. Pricing of these licenses is also. Different for an annual and monthly commitment. If you will do the annual commitment, you will get the license in a cheaper way and all business subscription offers the trial license for 30 days so you can try this licenses and check how they work for you. The last group of subscriptions I would like to describe for you are the licenses Office 365 E1, E3 and E5 licenses. The naming convention could be a little tricky here because you have Office 365 rather than Microsoft 365, but there’s no much difference. In general. What you need to remember, the model is very similar. E1 license offers access to all applications only in web-based model, so you get access to the office online. Office suite for client, desktop or Mac is not included. You get access to additional applications that are not included in the basic But the most important Office 365 apps are included in this plan. Office 365 E3 is a very similar license, but it also includes Office suit for your desktop or Mac. So you can install the office applications on your workstation. E5 license is an extended version of the Etree for Advanced Security and Auditing, functionality’s, plus you get access to the Power BI Pro license included there you can see that this is very similar model to the business basic, standard and premium licenses, but the major differences between E in enterprise licenses. And business licenses are that E licenses are not limited monthly and annual costs are exactly the same, so you have more flexibility in switching these licenses and you have more advanced functionalities from the perspective of the integration with on-premise, the environment included and you have client access licenses for the services like Exchange, SharePoint or Skype for Business included in these licenses. So this is some kind of. The additional value you get from more expensive plan or subscription for the Office 365. Of course, shared differences between Apps, Business and Eenterprise licenses for Office 365 in this podcast are very general, very high level on the Office 365 edward.com blog you will find a detailed comparison matrix between these plans so you can see exactly which features are present in what plan. It could be tricky, it could be a little confusing. Let’s check the articles that describes in very detailed way what is and what is not included in the business enterprise or apps license and choose right subscription for you. You can find out the shell materials like links, notes or articles in episode notes. You will also found there transcription and useful tools that will help you in your journey through Office 365 applications. At the end I would like to share with you few tips which you can use to save some money from perspective of choosing the correct plans, correct licenses from the Microsoft 365 environment. The first thing you need to remember that you can start from trial license Microsoft 365 business plans and Office 365 E licenses offer trial licenses. Start with them. Check how they work for you. Do you missing any kind of features and decide do you want to extend the usage of the subscription? Or maybe sweet the second tip? I would like to recommend you can mix the licenses so you don’t have to follow that. All users use the license or all users use. Business license you can mix the licenses, mix the plans between the users, so if you going for the E license you can easily get savings on your environment by switching up to 300 users to the business licenses. Of course the number of available features will be smaller, but you can save money monthly basis based on that without any additional work. Of course you can switch people between licenses, so this is also something very easy. You can just assign the subscription for the business user. Or switch somebody from the enterprise license to their business. This is something that could give you a few $100 per month on savings. The last tip I would like to recommend you is to take care about the people who does not work the whole year for organization. Select the monthly subscription for them. Or if you decide for the annual subscription you can cancel them and request for Microsoft to get not used amount of money back to you. So this is something that can give you some kind of savings for the people who just working like 3-4 months per year for you. So you don’t have to follow annual subscription for the whole year for every person in the organization, you can use monthly subscription, cancel them during the time, but remember to do that. You have to analyze what kind of subscription you already using, by whom in the organization.