Office 365 Plans Overview – 2014

logo-O365Microsoft has been updating the range of Office 365 plans and introduced some significant changes throughout 2014 for businesses of all sizes across commercial and non-commercial sectors

The following presentation outlines the range of Office 365 plans as of 1st October 2014. This is actually an updated version, the original deck was as of 1st September 2014 and then Microsoft went and made another round of changes.

 

Some key highlights:

  • Office-only plans have been introduced across the range, providing Office client and mobile apps but without the online services
  • The Small Business and Midsize Business plans have been merged and are now just called the Office 365 Business Plans, available for up to 300 users. There are three variations: Business Essentials (Online services only), Business (Office-only) and Business Premium (Online services and Office):
    Business
    Essentials    		 Business Business
    Premium
    Office 365
    web apps    		  Yes  Yes  Yes
    Office 365
    client apps    		  No  Mostly1  Mostly1
    Office 365
    online services    		  Limited3  No2  Limited3
    Monthly fee
    per user ($US)    		  $5  $8.25  $12.50
  • The Enterprise plans also now include an Office-only plan – Office 365 Enterprise ProPlus, that is priced between the Enterprise E1 and E3 plans. They are available for an unlimited number of users. The main differences are:
    Enterprise
    E1    		 Enterprise
    ProPlus    		 Enterprise
    E3/E44
    Office 365
    web apps    		  Yes  Yes  Yes
    Office 365
    client apps    		  No  Yes  Yes
    Office 365
    online services    		  Limited3  No2  Yes
    Monthly fee
    per user ($US)    		  $8  $12.00  $20 – 22
  • Government (G) and Academic (A) plans are essentially the Enterprise (E) plans at a discount. Government plans do not get Access Apps5 within SharePoint Online
  • Previously, we would recommend smaller organisations (< 300 users) to consider an Enterprise E1 plan if wanting to use online services because the older Small Business (P) plans had very reduced functionality and no upgrade path. That is no longer the case

Footnotes:

  1. Business plans that include Office client apps do not include the Access database client (or Lync client for some reason but not convinced that will stay the case)
  2. Office-only plans get a OneDrive for Business allowance with 1TB for storing files but no other online services
  3. E1 has reduced functionality across Exchange, SharePoint and Lync Online Services. No eDiscovery, self-service BI, advanced data services and web content management, or hosted voicemail. The Business plans are limited to 20 SharePoint site collections and 20TB storage. Enterprise plans can have up to 500K site collections
  4. The only difference between Enterprise E3 and E4 is the inclusion of full unified messaging including PBX integration
  5. Access Apps within SharePoint Online is an online service, different to the Access client application included with Office. The use of ‘Apps’ within SharePoint can be a little confusing. Apps within SharePoint are web-based solutions that use SharePoint as the underlying platform. Office apps are productivity tools that are installed on desktop and mobile devices. It’s an app-y world now 🙂

Yes, the naming conventions are more than a little confusing. We think it would help if ‘Business’ was called ‘Business Office’, and ‘Enterprise ProPlus’ was called ‘Enterprise Office’, with E1 renamed Enterprise Essentials and E3 renamed Enterprise Premium to at least be a bit more consistent… And drop E4, just include the PBX features into E3 to simplify.

Note to Digital Subscribers: A more detailed overview and executive summary of the plans are available under Client Papers (login required)