What is actually in each plan — and what it costs you.

The rows, explained in plain English

Hover or tap a row name in the table for the same explanation. Rows with their own product page link to it, with the price in your region.

Desktop Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook)

The full applications installed on the computer, with everything the browser versions leave out: macros, add-ins, mail merge, offline work and the Outlook that finance and sales expect. This is the single row that separates Business Basic from Business Standard, and Office 365 E1 from E3.

Web and mobile Office apps

Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook in the browser and on phones, included in every plan. Enough for someone who reads, comments and edits the occasional document; not enough for someone who builds spreadsheets or presents for a living.

Install on 5 PCs or Macs, 5 tablets, 5 phones per user

A licence follows the person, not the device: each user may sign in to Office on up to five computers, five tablets and five phones at once. Shared computers in a warehouse or clinic are licensed differently, through shared computer activation.

Microsoft Teams

Chat, meetings, calling and the channels where documents live. In the European Economic Area Microsoft sells most plans in two versions, with Teams and without, after the competition settlement; the without version is cheaper and Teams is bought as a separate licence, so the comparison of prices between regions is never quite like for like.

SharePoint

The document platform under Teams and OneDrive: sites, libraries, permissions, versioning and the search that Copilot later relies on. Every plan includes it; what differs is the storage pool per organisation and the governance features that come with the enterprise compliance tools.

Microsoft Bookings

An appointment-scheduling page that customers or colleagues use to book time, with the calendar behind it kept in Exchange. Useful for clinics, advisers, sales calls and internal helpdesks; it removes the small third-party tools many teams pay for separately.

Business email hosting (Exchange Online)

The mail platform: mailboxes, shared mailboxes, calendars, contacts and Exchange Online Protection against spam and malware. Every suite includes it; on its own it is Exchange Online Plan 1 or Plan 2 for the users who need mail and nothing else.

Mailbox size

The primary mailbox quota per user. Fifty gigabytes lasts most people for years; a hundred matters for people who never delete, for shared mailboxes that receive customer traffic, and for organisations that must keep mail for audit rather than archive it.

Auto-expanding archive mailbox

A second mailbox for old mail, separate from the primary quota. Basic and Standard include an archive that stops at fifty gigabytes; Business Premium, Exchange Online Plan 2 and the E3 and E5 suites include one that grows as needed, up to one and a half terabytes, which is what a retention policy for legal purposes usually needs.

OneDrive storage per user

Personal file storage in the cloud per user, a terabyte on every plan. On the enterprise plans with five or more licences Microsoft raises it to five terabytes and, on request, beyond; on the Business plans the terabyte is the limit.

Microsoft Entra ID P1

The identity tier that turns a directory into a security control: Conditional Access, group-based licensing, self-service password reset with write-back to on-premises Active Directory, and dynamic groups. The line that most often decides between Office 365 E3 and Microsoft 365 E3, and it is inside Business Premium.

Microsoft Entra ID P2 (identity protection, PIM)

Everything in P1 plus risk-based sign-in policies that react to a leaked password or an impossible journey on their own, Privileged Identity Management so administrators hold rights only for the time they need them, and access reviews an auditor can see. Included in E5; sold as an add-on for the users who need it.

Conditional Access

The policy engine of Entra ID P1: who may sign in to what, from which devices, from where, and with which second factor. Without it, multi-factor authentication is a blanket prompt; with it, a compliant company laptop in the office signs in quietly and an unknown device abroad is challenged or blocked.

Microsoft Intune Plan 1

Device and application management from the cloud: enrolment, compliance rules that feed Conditional Access, encryption, remote wipe, app deployment and Windows Autopilot provisioning of new laptops out of the box. Included in Business Premium and the Microsoft 365 enterprise suites; an add-on for everyone else.

Windows 11 Enterprise upgrade rights

The right to run Windows Enterprise on a device that came with Pro, with the features only Enterprise has: long-term servicing, virtual desktop rights, Autopatch and a set of security controls. Included in the Microsoft 365 enterprise suites and in Business Premium as Windows Business; not in the Office 365 suites, which carry no Windows licence at all.

Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 (Safe Links, Safe Attachments)

Mail protection beyond the baseline: links are checked at the moment of the click rather than at delivery, attachments are opened in a sandbox first, and impersonation of your own executives is flagged. Included in Business Premium and, since July 2026, in Office 365 E3 and Microsoft 365 E3.

Defender for Office 365 Plan 2 (attack simulation, threat hunting)

Plan 1 plus the tools a security team works with: phishing simulations against your own staff, automated investigation and response, threat explorer and hunting across mail and collaboration. Included in E5; usually the point at which an organisation has someone whose job it is to use it.

Defender for Business (endpoint protection)

Endpoint detection and response for organisations under three hundred seats, built on the same engine as the enterprise Defender for Endpoint and managed in the same portal. Included in Business Premium; the add-on for users on Basic and Standard. Above three hundred seats the product is Defender for Endpoint Plan 1 or 2.

Defender for Endpoint Plan 2

The enterprise endpoint product: detection and response, automated investigation, threat hunting and vulnerability management across Windows, macOS, Linux and mobile. Microsoft 365 E3 carries Plan 1, which prevents; Plan 2, which also detects and responds, is in E5 or bought as an add-on.

Defender for Identity

Monitoring of on-premises Active Directory for the moves an attacker makes after a first foothold: reconnaissance, lateral movement, credential theft. Relevant only where domain controllers still exist; included in E5 and E5 Security.

Defender for Cloud Apps

Visibility and control over the cloud services staff actually use, sanctioned or not, with policies for risky sharing and unusual behaviour. The cloud access security broker of the Microsoft stack; included in E5 and E5 Security.

Sensitivity labels and information protection

Labels on documents and mail — internal, confidential, restricted — that carry encryption and sharing rules with the file wherever it goes. Manual labelling is in every suite from Business Premium up; automatic labelling at scale, and the governance around it, comes with the E5 compliance tools or the information protection add-on.

Data loss prevention for email and files

Policies that stop a credit-card number, a passport scan or a customer list from leaving in an email or a shared link, with a warning to the user or a hard block. Basic coverage of mail and files is in Business Premium and the E3 suites; endpoints, Teams chat and the richer classifiers need the E5 compliance tools.

Retention policies and litigation hold

Retention keeps content for a set period whether or not a user deletes it, and disposes of it on schedule; litigation hold freezes a mailbox for a legal matter. Retention is in every plan from Business Premium and E3 upward; hold needs Exchange Online Plan 2 or the archiving add-on, which Business Premium and the E3 and E5 suites include.

eDiscovery (Standard)

Search across mailboxes, SharePoint and Teams for a legal or HR request, with the results placed on hold and exported. Enough for an occasional request handled by one person; included in the E3 suites and above.

eDiscovery (Premium)

The case-management version: custodians, review sets, analytics, near-duplicate detection and a workflow that runs an investigation end to end without exporting everything to outside counsel. Included in E5; the eDiscovery and Audit add-on brings it to E3.

Insider Risk Management

Correlates signals — a resignation, a bulk download, a copy to removable media — into a risk score with pseudonymised investigation, so a departing employee taking the customer list is seen before the last day. Included in E5; an add-on to E3, and one that works councils and data-protection officers will want to review.

Communication Compliance

Detection of harassment, threats, regulated-industry language and data leakage in Teams and mail, reviewed by designated people under policy. Required in some regulated sectors; included in E5 and in the insider-risk add-on to E3.

Customer Lockbox

Microsoft's own engineers cannot open your content during a support case without your explicit approval, logged. A control regulators and procurement teams ask for by name; included in E5 and E5 Compliance.

Power BI Pro

The licence to publish and share reports and dashboards in the Power BI service; Power BI Desktop itself is free. Viewers need Pro too unless the content sits on Premium or Fabric capacity. Included in E5; an add-on to everything else.

Teams Phone (phone system)

The PBX inside Teams: numbers, call queues, auto attendants, voicemail and transfers, with the Teams client as the desk phone. Minutes to the public network are separate — a Microsoft calling plan, Operator Connect or your own carrier through Direct Routing. Included in E5; an add-on elsewhere.

Maximum users

The Business plans stop at three hundred users per tenant; the enterprise plans have no cap. A growing company usually meets the cap first with Business Premium, and moves the extra users — or everyone — to Microsoft 365 E3.