Office 365 Small Business Plan (P1)
The headline Office 365 price that Microsoft advertise is £4 per user each month.
This is their P1 plan for professionals and small businesses. It’s one of several Office 365 plans that are available to trial free for 30 days.
This option includes:
- Mobile & web calendars from most devices including Blackberry & iPhone
- A 25GB mailbox for each user with a hefty 25MB capacity for sending attachments with Exchange Online
There’s also the option to connect with client editions of Microsoft Outlook 2007 / 2010.
The P1 Plan also includes:
- Office Web Apps enabling basic editing of Word doc’s, Powerpoint presentations, Access databases & Excel or OneNotes sheets. As well as browser access this is available by mobile and also connects with client apps but again only using Office 2007/10.
- Sharepoint Online to organise documents and information with library, sharing and archiving options.
- Sharepoint wizard tools can also be used to create simple yet professional looking websites. A low cost option if you can’t justify the cost outlay for the services of a web developer.
- Lync Online for instant messaging, desktop sharing and web meetings to create new ways of connecting with people. This embeds with other applications, for example, if you're work in Dynamics CRM or are about to send an Outlook email, a presence indicator shows when colleagues, customers and other contacts are online, away, busy, back soon…
In line with Dynamics CRM Online, Microsoft are committing to a 99.9% up-time guarantee that’s financially backed so they’ll provide a rebate if they fall short.
There’s no phone help with this plan but Office 365 online forums and community are freely available to find answers.
This subscription also includes Microsoft Forefront Security for Exchange to protect emails from span and virus attack.
There’s no upfront cost so this plan is simply £4+VAT for each user every month.
This P1 small business plan supports up to a maximum of 50 users but teams approaching 25 people are likely to need extra resources which are available with higher plans. These include email archiving, active directory sync, dedicated support and full featured Office applications online
Office 365 Medium & Enterprise (E) Plans
The Enterprise Plans feature virtually all the benefits as the Office 365 P1 starter plan. They include a 25GB personal mail box, Lync Online communications, Sharepoint document directories, email virus & spam protection.
Compared to the starter P1 plan, E Plans also provide:
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24/7 IT-level Microsoft support
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A more advanced admin console to precisely manage Office 365 deployments including active directory synchronisation
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No restriction of user volumes
Each E plan includes on-premise and hosted access rights so you can choose to be all in the cloud or opt for a hybrid deployment combining on-premise and cloud.
E1 Plan
We mentioned above that the E Plans include virtually all the functions of the starter plan.
The exception is that the Office 365 E1 plan doesn’t include Office Web Applications. As a result, there's no capability to view or edit Word, Excel and other MS Office content online with this plan.
It's an important point as this is the default plan if you migrate to Office 365 from the BPOS accounts (the predecessor to Office 365).
E2 Plan
For the extended Enterprise benefits listed above and online access to Office applications E2 or a higher plan is needed. The inclusion of Office Web Apps is the only significant difference between E2 (@£9+VAT per user each month) and the E1 package (£5.25 per month).
E3 Plan
This takes us to E3 (@ £13.25 per user / per month).
Microsoft call this the Office 365 'hero plan' as it's the one they believe will have the broadest appeal.
In additional to the E2 plan this adds:
- Office Pro Plus - full client installations of Office applications on up to 5 devices per user. Because it's a pay as you go service the latest versions will always be available.
- Extended Sharepoint tools - including forms and database publishing
- Advanced email archiving - unlimited email storage for organisations that need to retain data for legal compliance.
The E3 package is another Office 365 plan that can be evaluated online for 30 days.
The trial account can be shared with as many as 25 people but like all the Enterprise plans there's no upper limit on paid subscriptions.
E4 Plan
The E4 option remains in development at the time of writing so we’ll move on but it’ll include on-premise enterprise voice management with Lync Server.
Kiosk (K) Plans
In addition to the 4 enterprise plans, Microsoft also offer a light Office 365 packages for what they term 'kiosk workers'.
These are people who only need to spend less than 10% of their time on a PC that is typically shared with other users.
These desk-less workers could include warehouse staff, couriers and shop workers who want to keep up to date with organisation news and information. They might also need to carry out some basic data entry on documents like job sheets or rotas.
Rather than paying a premium for Office 365 functions that aren’t needed, Kiosk plans provide just the essentials at a reduced subscription, these start from £2.60+VAT per month.
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Kiosk plans give users:
- 500MB email storage
- Access to company news and documents via Sharepoint Online
- Web access to email, contacts and calendar using the Outlook web app. There’s also POP support with Exchange Online to access this detail in other clients & devices
There are 2 kiosk user plans for Office 365.
The basic K1 option includes the ability to view Office documents online.
The K2 Plan adds Office Web Apps enabling users to make basic edits to Office documents online for £6.50+VAT per month. This plan can also be evaluated for 30 days.
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Customising Office 365 Subscriptions
It’s important to note that Enterprise (E) and Kiosk (K) plans are available on a mix’n’match basis.
A combination of plans can be allocated to teams of users in line with roles and responsibility (this doesn't include the starter P1 plan).
Standalone and add-on components can also be purchased.
If the standard Office 365 plans don’t meet your exact requirements selected services are available as bolt on's or can be activated in isolation.
For example, separate 30 day trials are available for Office Professional Plus and Exchange Online Archiving.
Packaged Office 365 plans like E3 do savings of 30-40% compared to individual components so these combined packages will create the better value in most cases.
Office 365 Licence Agreements
When you sign up to Office 365 the default contract is the Microsoft Online Service Agreement. Like all Office 365 agreements and plans this includes services upgrades at no additional cost.
The MOSA is a 12 month agreement with default monthly payments by credit card.
Bank transfers can be made instead but a minimum monthly spend of approximately £200 will apply and this is subject to a Microsoft credit check.
The agreement is automatically renewed but can be cancelled either in the last month or in month 11 (by paying 25% of the remaining value of the agreement).
Charity and education Office 365 agreements are also available from Microsoft.
Larger sites with 250 or more user seats can subscribe to Office 365 through an existing Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (not to be confused with the Office 365 enterprise plan!).
If an existing on-premise enterprise agreement is in place it enables a transition to Office 365 to be started at no additional extra cost until the agreement renews. E
nterprise agreements run for 3 years.
Enterprise agreements also provide extra flexibility where there's a need to temporarily increase and decrease Office 365 licences for seasonal workers.
We hope this guide has given you some useful pointers and clarity to help you to find the best value Office 365 options for your requirements.
To recap, the following Office 365 trials available for 30 days:
