Your organization needs to license the first 300 users under the Business Premium plan if you plan to use Microsoft 365. This particular plan offers exceptional cybersecurity features that cannot be found in any other M365 license, providing significant cost savings and peace of mind.
The surge in remote work has resulted in various gaps in organizational cybersecurity. However, despite these challenges, the trend of remote work is anticipated to continue growing without any signs of slowing down.
In the current scenario, ensuring the security of your organization’s perimeter is no longer enough. You need to strengthen the security measures for every remote employee, including their endpoint devices, other devices they use, and the data stored on each device, as well as the employees themselves.
The most efficient way to ensure protection is to have a robust defense system as close to the data as possible. This involves having top-notch security measures at the application layer, which starts with your cloud.
Your cloud and its functions are probably the most heavily utilized technology in your organization. Therefore, it is crucial to acknowledge that it should also be the most secure and well-protected.
Microsoft 365 is a collection of applications that utilize the Azure cloud technology developed by Microsoft. This suite of applications is available in various plans tailored to meet the needs of home, business, and enterprise users, each offering different levels of pricing and features.
To illustrate, Microsoft 365 provides business plans such as Business Basic, Business Standard, and Business Premium, whereas enterprise plans include E1, E3, and E5. In addition, Microsoft has an Apps for a Business plan that offers its standard Office applications. These plans are available at different price points based on a per-user, per-month (user/month) fee structure with an annual subscription.
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At the time of writing this post, Microsoft 365 Business Premium is priced at $22 per user per month. This fee has been recently increased from the previous rate of $20.
Microsoft 365 Business Premium offers excellent value for money, with several distinct features that set it apart. Although it may not have as many features as the high-end E5 plan, Business Premium is priced at only 39% of an E5 license.
Moreover, the features available in Business Premium are superior to those found in the lower-tier Business Standard plan and even outdo those in the higher-tier E3 plan, as we will delve into further.
To start with, Microsoft 365 Business Premium includes a comprehensive suite of productivity applications, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint Online, Planner, and Teams, among others. One of the standout features in Business Premium is Microsoft Intune, which is also available in M365 E3 and is a personal favorite of ours.
Microsoft 365 Business Premium also offers a 50 GB mailbox storage limit in Outlook, along with a 1 TB storage limit in OneDrive. Additionally, it includes Azure Information Protection, which encompasses Microsoft Purview Email Encryption.
Above all, Microsoft 365 Business Premium stands out for its advanced built-in cybersecurity features, which are not available in the adjacent plans. Let’s take a closer look at them:
With Microsoft 365 Business Premium, users can benefit from enterprise-level protection for both their data and themselves. This level of protection is not available in most other M365 plans, including the E3 plan, which is specifically designed for enterprises.
The majority of these features are included in both Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 (previously known as Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection) and Defender for Endpoint Plan 2 (previously known as Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection). Both of these defenders are integrated into Microsoft 365 Business Premium.
To begin with, Microsoft 365 Business Premium incorporates additional anti-phishing measures, such as user and domain impersonation intelligence, along with unusual character and sender alerts.
Microsoft 365 Business Premium also includes Safe Links and Attachments, a feature that checks potentially malicious data by subjecting it to a virtual environment. These capabilities provide coverage for Outlook, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams under Defender for O365 Plan 1.
All of these alerts are consolidated into real-time reporting that enables you to monitor the security of your environment.
When compared to Business Premium, Microsoft 365 Business Standard is simply a standard offering. Although the applications are available for use, they lack the advanced protection that Business Premium offers.
Business Standard doesn’t offer the security features that are typically expected by businesses as a standard.
| Plan | M365 Business Premium | M365 Business Standard |
|---|---|---|
| Price per user, per month | $22 | $12.50 |
| User limit | 300 | 300 |
| Outlook storage | 50 GB | 50 GB |
| OneDrive storage | 1 TB | 1 TB |
| Teams | Yes | Yes |
| SharePoint | Yes | Yes |
| Intune | Yes | No |
| eDiscovery | Yes | No |
| Azure AD | Yes | No |
| Anti-Phishing | Yes | No |
| Real-Time Reports | Yes | No |
| Safe Attachments | Yes | No |
| Safe Links | Yes | No |
| Single Sign-On (SSO) | Yes | No |
| Endpoint Analytics | Yes | No |
| Conditional Access | Yes | No |
| Multi-Factor Authentication | Yes | No |
Business Standard will save you money but should cost you a lot of peace of mind because it costs $9.50 per user less per month than BP.
Keep in mind that it would take about 131 years to recoup the money you save with Business Standard at the average cost of a data breach ($4.24 million, per IBM).
The seatbelts should function if you paid extra for a decent automobile, right?
Unfortunately, upgrading from Microsoft 365 Business Premium to Microsoft 365 E3 does not work like that (Not to be mistaken for Microsoft OFFICE 365 E3).
Only standard anti-phishing technologies, such as spoof intelligence, are included with E3. The remaining security measures are disregarded.
E3 license holders must acquire extra licenses for Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 ($2/mo) and Defender for Endpoint Plan 2 ($5/mo) to receive the same security capabilities as BP.
The price for a fully defended E3 license is just under twice as much as BP when combined with E3’s standard $36 per user/month fee.
| Plan | M365 Business Premium | M365 E3 |
|---|---|---|
| Price per user, per month | $22 | $36 |
| User limit | 300 | Unlimited |
| Outlook storage | 50 GB | 100 GB |
| OneDrive storage | 1 TB | Unlimited |
| Teams | Yes | Yes |
| SharePoint | Yes | Yes |
| Intune | Yes | Yes |
| Endpoint Configuration Manager | No | Yes |
| Litigation Hold | Yes | Yes |
| eDiscovery | Yes | Yes |
| Credential Guard | No | Yes |
| App Locker | No | Yes |
| Azure AD | Yes | Yes |
| Azure AD Premium | No | Yes |
| Anti-Phishing | Yes | No |
| Real-Time Reports | Yes | No |
| Safe Attachments | Yes | No |
| Safe Links | Yes | No |
As you can see, E3 offers some advantages, such as access to Azure Rights Management in the premium edition of Azure AD. The on-premises version of Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, is also included in E3.
Defender for Endpoint Plan 1, which contains Block At First Sight, Endpoint Defender for Mac, Improved ASR, Tamper Protection, and Web Content Filtering, is included with E3 in terms of security. All are already included in Business Premium via Defender Antivirus, except Defender for Mac and Web Content Filtering.
For small businesses with up to 300 employees, Microsoft 365 Business Premium is the best choice, to put it simply. Unfortunately, E3 and its required add-ons are the sole choices for every additional employee at 301 employees and above.
Business Premium offers the required security capabilities that are not present in either Business Standard or E3 for organizations with less than 300 users to license.
Businesses that need to license more than 300 users should do so by assigning Business Premium licenses to the first 300 users and additional enterprise licenses to those who want the extra capabilities.
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