Microsoft's cloud subscriptions were confusing enough; but then they decided
to rename some of their Office 365 plans to Microsoft 365. Now that would be fine, except
Microsoft 365 already existed and was well understood to mean
"Office 365 plus additional services". Now some of the Microsoft 365 plans include
those additional services, and others don't.
They're basically just Office 365; except Office 365 still
exists as well! There are now about 20 different plans before you consider
government, nonprofit, or individual services. Let me help you break those
down so you know which subscription to buy.
Welcome back to the Pro Tech Show - the place for tech, tips, and advice for IT
Pros and decision-makers. To help you find the most cost-effective solution
for you, I'm going to split the subscriptions into five categories. We've
got home use, small business, enterprise, first line workers, and I'll also do a
bit on education. As we go through the different plans, I'll introduce the
different features as we go. First of all, let's start with the home subscriptions.
As the name suggests, these are for personal use at home. The home
subscriptions give you access to the client apps, but you're not licensed for
business use. The client apps are the familiar Microsoft Office applications -
your Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and the like; and their mobile equivalents. Now the
mobile bit is a little bit interesting, because you can download and use those
mobile apps for free anyway; but you get past a 10.1 inch screen size they
become read-only without a valid subscription. In addition to client apps
these plans also come with personal online storage in the form of OneDrive
for Business and you get 60 minutes of Skype time a month. The difference
between the Microsoft 365 Personal plan and the Microsoft 365 Family plan is
that the Personal plan allows just one person to use it, whereas the Family plan
allows up to six people to use it. Now, a point of note there - the limit
is on actual people, not devices. If you want to know how these apps compare to
the Microsoft Office 2019 apps, then I'll link a video at the end that does that
comparison for you.
Next up we've got the small business tier. Now an important note here is that
all of the small business plans include a 300 user limit. If you've got more than
that many people, you're going have to up at least some of them to an enterprise
plan instead. The first small business plan we've got is Microsoft 365 Apps for
Business. As the name suggests, this only includes the client apps. It's very
similar to Microsoft 365 Personal in fact. You don't get the Skype minutes, but
you are licensed for business use. Next we've got Microsoft 365 Business Basic.
Now this doesn't include any of the client apps, so no Word, no Excel, no
PowerPoint, no Outlook; but you do get the cloud productivity services. So you get
Exchange, you get SharePoint, you get Teams, OneDrive and the like. This gives
you file sharing, document management, workflow, email, collaboration, unified
communications, etc., etc. These are the core services that most people think of
when they hear "Office 365". By the time you look through all of the services
included, you'll probably find that you've covered most of the business
services used by organisations today. Microsoft 365 Business Standard
basically combines Apps for Business with Business Basic, so you get both the
client apps and the cloud productivity services. Microsoft 365 Business Premium
takes everything in Microsoft 365 Business Standard and adds on a few
extras as well. The apps in Business Premium include shared computer
activation. This bypasses the normal 5 computers per person limit. Now that's
very important if your people share devices - for example if they hot desk or
they use different servers in a Remote Desktop or Citrix farm. Business Premium
also includes Virtual Desktop Access rights. This allows users to access a
virtual desktop running in Azure or in an on-premises virtual desktop
infrastructure. Now to be clear, this does not give you a free desktop in Azure. You
still have to pay for the desktop itself. This just scratches one licensing fee
off the list in order to use it. Business Premium also includes what I'm
going to call the "security and device management services". This column in
the table is essentially the E3 tier of Microsoft's Enterprise Mobility and
Security suite. As the name suggests that is a security focused
selection of products aimed at securing your data and devices against
the modern threat landscape. Enterprise Mobility and Security is not dependent
on the cloud productivity services, but the two are complementary. The cloud
productivity services make your data available to you almost anywhere.
EM&S protects that data, wherever it ends up. So if what I'm calling "security
and device management" is really Enterprise Mobility and Security E3, why
not just call it that? Well, the reason I'm differentiating is that some of the
Microsoft 365 plans include a subset of features that don't map directly to an
EM&S product that you can actually buy. Microsoft 365 Business
Premium is an example of this. It includes some, but not all of the
security and device management features. By way of warning, everything I'm saying
here is to my knowledge correct at the time of recording; but I did a video about
this about six months ago, and some of the plans I mentioned in that video no
longer exist. So in six months, who knows? This might have changed again. If you
want to be kept up to date then go ahead and hit that subscribe button, because
when Microsoft rename things again, I'll probably have to do another video;
and if you're enjoying this one then you'll probably enjoy some of my other
content as well.
Now we're moving up to the Enterprise tier, and here you going to see the old
Offices 365 branding start to make a return. First off we've got
Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise. Just like Apps for Business, this gives you
the client apps, but no cloud productivity services. Compared to Apps
for Business, Apps for Enterprise has no 300 user limit,
it includes shared computer activation, and it enables a few additional features
that are used by the higher tier cloud productivity services. Office 365 E1
is next, and yes that's Office 365 - not Microsoft 365. Office 365 E1 is the
Enterprise equivalent of Microsoft 365 Business Basic. You get the cloud
productivity services, but you don't get any of the client-side apps. The
Enterprise cloud productivity services do you bring a few extra features
compared to the Business cloud productivity services. If you're used to the
on-premises servers, then it's like the Business version gives you Standard
CALs, and the Enterprise version gives you Enterprise CALs. It's roughly the
same feature difference. Speaking of on-premises services... whilst we tend to
think of Microsoft 365 and Office 365 as cloud subscriptions, their Enterprise
versions also give you Client Access Licenses for the equivalent on-premises
services. You get Exchange Server for Exchange Online, SharePoint Server for
SharePoint Online, and Skype for Business for Teems. The E1 plans give you standard
CALs, and the E3 and E5 plans give you
Enterprise CALs. These come with the Enterprise plans because large
organisations are more likely to be running a hybrid infrastructure. This
is handy because it means you don't have to license your cloud services and your
on-premises services separately. In fact, because Microsoft are really trying to
push people towards their cloud services, quite often you can find a
cheapest way to license your on-premises services is actually to buy the cloud
subscriptions. Even if you don't intend on using the cloud services. Now on to
Office 365 E3, and you might get a sense of déjà vu
here, because Office 365 E3 does what Microsoft 365 Business Standard did
before it - it takes the previous two subscriptions and mashes them together.
So Office 365 E3 is the equivalent of Office 365 E1 plus
Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise. You get both the client apps and the cloud
productivity services. Office 365 E5 takes Office 365 E3 and adds additional
security, compliance, and productivity features. These extra security
features are different from the ones further to right of the table, that come
from Enterprise Mobility and Security. These advanced features add
additional layers of security and compliance controls specifically to the
cloud productivity services. Unlike EM&S you can't use these standalone.
Some examples include zero day protection for email attachments, and
automatic classification of documents. They also give you more advanced
analytics and reporting, and they enable the use of telephony in Microsoft Teams.
Still within the Enterprise tier, in addition to Office 365
E1, E3,I and E5; we have Microsoft 365 E3 and E5; but not E1. If you find the
numbering confusing then remember: this is the same company whose desktop
operating systems go seven, eight, ten. The Microsoft 365 Enterprise subscriptions
are essentially the same thing as the Office 365 Enterprise subscriptions with
the same name, plus additional security services, plus Windows 10 Enterprise. The
additional security services are the equivalent tier of Enterprise Mobility
and Security, and the Windows 10 licence is (again) the equivalent Enterprise tier as
well. So Microsoft 365 E3 equals Office 365 E3, plus Enterprise Mobility and
Security E3, plus Windows 10 Enterprise E3; and Microsoft 365 E5 equals
Office 365 E5, plus Enterprise Mobility and Security E5, plus Windows 10
Enterprise E5. The E5 subscription adds a few additional security features
compared to the E3 subscription, such as Azure Advanced Threat Protection, Cloud
App Security, and Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection. Because both
the E3 and E5 plans of Microsoft 365 come with full editions of Enterprise
Mobility and Security, they also come with on-premises Windows Server CALs.
Now add that to the on-premises productivity CALs you get from the
included Office 365 subscription, and Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 are kind of
like your one-stop shop for both on-premises and cloud services.
Now we're on to the Firstline worker subscriptions, and these are intended for
people who only occasionally use a computer as part of their job. Now as a
result, they are a lot cheaper than their Enterprise equivalents, but also a
lot more limited. The first of these is Office 365 F3. You might have expected
Office 365 F1, but that doesn't exist. Now, confusingly, at the time of
recording F1 does exist an F3 doesn't exist; but by the time this video goes
live they'll have swapped around. That's
because Office 365 F1 is being renamed to Office 365 F3. It's not a new
subscription, it's F1, just renamed. The reasons will become clear shortly, but
for now let's talk about what an Office 365 F3 licence actually gives you. A user
with an F3 licence can access the same sort of services as a user with an
Office 365 E1 licence, but they can only use the web apps. They can use the
mobile apps as long as their screen size isn't any bigger than 10.1 inches, but
they can't use the desktop apps at all. They do get an Exchange Online mailbox,
but it's limited to 2 GB in size, and they can't use Outlook with it. They can
join Teams meetings, but they can't create meetings. So it wouldn't really be
suitable for a normal desk-based worker, but it is roughly half the price of E1.
In addition to Iffice 365 F3, you've also got Microsoft 365 F1 and F3. There's a
similar story going on here. The current Microsoft 365 F3 is the old
Microsoft 365 F1 that's been renamed, and the current Microsoft 365 F1 is a new
subscription. Are you getting confused yet? Well, the Microsoft 365 F3 that
exists now is the equivalent of the Office 365 F3 that exists now, plus
additional security services, plus Windows 10 Enterprise and Virtual
Desktop Access. Microsoft 365 F1 is a new, and even more limited subscription. As
with all of the Firstline subscriptions, the cloud productivity services are
stripped down, but this time you only get some of them. So you do get SharePoint
and Teams, for example; but you don't get Exchange, so
no email. You do get the additional security services that come with F3, but
you don't get the Windows licences. Microsoft 365 F1 is the reason that
Office 365 F1 got renamed to F3. Microsoft wanted to introduce a new,
lower tier Microsoft 365 subscription but they'd already used the F1 name, so they
had to bump that one up to F3. Now that left them with an Office 365 F1
subscription with more features than the Microsoft 365 F1 subscription. So they
had to bump that one up as well, because remember; Microsoft 365 is supposed to be
the more premium brand. The final tier of subscriptions that I'm going to briefly
mention are the Education ones. These all use the letter "A" their name. You
can remember it as "E" for "Enterprise", "F" for "Firstline", and "A" for "Academic". Now I'm running
out of space in the table here, but the Education plan all roughly line up as
free or heavily discounted versions of Enterprise equivalents. You've got A1
for E1, A3 for E3, A5 for E5; and you've got the Microsoft 365 and Office 365
variants. They don't line up exactly though. There are some Education-specific
features that you won't find in other plans; and when we talk about A1, these
days it might well be A1 Plus, which is an additional licence that also includes
the client apps. The on-premises access rights work a bit differently as well.
You don't get them with the Office 365 plans; but with the Microsoft 365
plans, not only do you get the CALs; you also get server licences.
A word of advice. With all of these product suites, the higher tiers can
represent really good value compared to buying all of the services individually;
but that only works if you actually use the services. With big suites such as
these, it's very easy to end up paying for a lot of services you never actually use.
So be realistic about what you're going to use, as well as how long it's going to
take to implement it. If it's going to take you several years then there's no
point paying for it all in year one. See if you can get away with a cheaper tier
subscription. Also remember to take stock of what you've already got when you buy
some of these subscriptions. It's incredibly common that I'll come across
companies who are paying two different vendors for the same service, because they
didn't realise it was included in one of their subscriptions. I was speaking to a
company the other week, and after five minutes in the phone to them I was able
to save them 30 grand in recurring licensing fees - just by getting rid of
duplication. It's not bad for five minutes work, though - is it? If you want to
check out any of the Office or Microsoft 365 plans in greater detail, or if you
want to see current pricing, then I'll put links in the video description.
If you've already got a licensing partner, you should speak to them; and if
you're a large business with an Enterprise Agreement they should be able
to get you preferential pricing. Hopefully that helps you understand where
the current range of Microsoft cloud subscriptions fits together. If you've
previously seen my older video about Microsoft 365 versus Office 365 then let me
know what you think of the format change. Up here I've got the video I mentioned
earlier about Microsoft 365 versus Office 2019, and down here is another video that
YouTube thinks you'll enjoy. If you found this one useful then don't forget to
give it a thumbs-up before you go; and of course, subscribe for future videos.
Thanks for watching, guys. See you next time!