How do you know that you’re using the best Office 365 license for your Broomfield, CO area business?
There are multiple options that include Business basics up to Enterprise-class options, and now Microsoft has come out with an entirely new subscription bundle called Microsoft 365.
The license that a company chooses is often based upon price and what they can afford, but what they may not realize is that a higher level subscription might save them money by eliminating the need for a 3rd party software or by improving their cybersecurity and document handling.
As of February 2020, nearly 596,000 U.S. companies were using Office 365.
As companies migrate to cloud services, they’ve come to realize, once they begin using it that inefficiencies can easily crop up. This includes not fully utilizing all parts of a cloud platform that you’re paying for as well as purchasing a subscription level that doesn’t exactly fit your company needs.
To help you get a handle on the different Office 365 subscriptions and how they differ, we’ll go through each below along with notes on which type of company need each can meet.
Comparison of Office 365 Plans
When choosing between Office 365 licenses for your business, you’ll want to consider several factors:
- Price vs budget
- Features that can eliminate other cloud services
- Security improvements
- Compliance capabilities
- Future needs for cloud support
We’ll go over the Office 365 Business and Enterprise plans as well as what comes with Microsoft 365. Note: All plan pricing is for an annual commitment.
First, let’s go over the main components and what each one is:
- Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook) – Email and office productivity tools
- Exchange – Email and calendaring server
- OneDrive – Cloud storage
- SharePoint – Team based sites for data sharing
- Teams – Team communication hub with audio/video conferencing
- Yammer – Team social chat
- Stream – Video hosting, sharing
- Power BI – Business intelligence dashboard
- Intune – Mobile and endpoint device manager
Access and Publisher, two older programs that some users have become accustomed to, come with many of the subscriptions as well but are for only Windows PCs. We’re not going to list these separately below in each listing.
Office 365 Business Essentials
- For: Those on an extreme budget that are okay with web-only versions of Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel
- Price: $5.00/user/month
- Included Applications:
- Office suite web and mobile versions only
- Exchange
- OneDrive
- SharePoint
- Teams
For smaller companies that want to benefit from the collaboration and flexibility of cloud services, Business Essentials is the lowest rung of the service subscriptions. The biggest disadvantage is not having the desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, but if you’re okay with web-only access to these, you can get a lot of great tools for a price that’s very affordable.
Office 365 Business
- For: Those looking for the business basics but don’t need as much connectivity.
- Price: $8.25/user/month
- Included Applications:
- Office suite
- OneDrive
Companies that are mainly interested in the main Office suite programs and not so much in things like SharePoint or the spam protection available in Exchange, may find this subscription a good fit.
For those wanting to try Teams, the tool is free so you can still get it if you use Office 365 Business, it just has fewer connective features in the free version and without SharePoint.
Office 365 Business Premium
- For: Those looking for full cloud functionality and that don’t need the additional features or security of the Enterprise licenses.
- Price: $12.50/user/month
- Included Applications:
- Office suite
- Exchange
- OneDrive
- SharePoint
- Teams
Business Premium is basically Essentials and Business combined. You get both the desktop Office suite and all the collaborative tools as well for a hybrid workflow that works well for many offices.
Business Premium has two additional tools that make this the best subscription for certain companies, like offices that book client appointments or have sales/service employees driving regularly on business.
These are:
- Microsoft Bookings: Online appointment scheduling
- MileIQ: Mobile-friendly mileage tracking and reporting
Office 365 ProPlus
- For: Those needing enterprise-level security but not business email support.
- Price: $12.00/user/month
- Included Applications:
- Office suite
- OneDrive
- Teams
It’s easy to get confused between Office 365 Business Plus and ProPlus. ProPlus does NOT include business email support or the collaborative tools, like SharePoint or Yammer. It’s designed with enterprise-grade security, which is higher than Business Premium. It also comes with a professional digital storytelling tool called Sway.
Office 365 E1, E3, E5
- For: Enterprise users that need 24/7 support and sophisticated security and compliance features. Companies with more than 300 users.
- Price:
- E1: $8.00/user/month
- E3: $20.00/user/month
- E5: $35.00/user/month
- Included Applications:
- Office suite (E3 & E5 only)
- Exchange
- OneDrive
- SharePoint
- Teams
- Yammer
- Stream
- Power Bi (E5 only)
Anyone dealing with compliance and in need of a higher standard of cybersecurity and controls will want to look at one of the Enterprise versions of Office 365. If you have a few hundred users, you’ll also want to look at Enterprise, because the Business licenses aren’t supported past 300 users.
Some of the other things Enterprise offers are unlimited HD video conferencing up to 250 people and the ability to host meetings using Teams live events for 10,000 people.
E1: Does not come with the Office Suite, which is why many enterprises look to E3 or E5.
With E3, you get sensitivity labels which gives you control over document security by labeling content and placing security policies in place per label, including tracking capabilities.
With E5, you not only get Power BI for intelligent business reporting, but also an automated capability for sensitivity labels and additional compliance features.
Microsoft 365 Business
- For: Those in need of mobile device management and additional security in addition to Office 365 and Windows 10.
- Price: $20.00/user/month
- Included Applications:
- Office 365 Business Premium
- Microsoft Intune
- Additional Security
- Windows 10 Pro
For users of Office 365 Business or Business Premium, upgrading to Microsoft 365 may save them money if they need a mobile device management application and are using a 3rd party anti-malware or other security program.
It includes a versatile endpoint security manager with Intune, that not only can manage mobile devices, but desktops as well. The additional security features can also often negate the need for a 3rd party application.
Get Help with a Smooth Migration to Office 365
You don’t have to choose your Office 365 plan alone. B-Comp Services has a team of experts that can help you choose the best license for your team and help with any data migration and customization needs.
Contact us for a free consultation today at 303-282-4934 or through our contact form.
