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Business Premium vs Microsoft 365 E3
Business Premium and Microsoft 365 E3 look alike on a feature sheet: Office, mail, Intune, Entra ID P1, Conditional Access. The differences are a seat cap, Windows Enterprise, eDiscovery and how much you pay for roughly the same security. Most companies under three hundred people should be on Premium; most above it have no choice.
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You have fewer than three hundred users and expect to stay there. You want laptops managed and mail protected without buying add-ons. Your compliance needs stop at retention, data loss prevention and sensitivity labels. The price per user is roughly half, for a security bundle that is, for a small estate, arguably stronger than E3’s.
Business Premium in full, with every buying option →…
You are above three hundred seats, or about to be: the Business plans stop there. You need Windows Enterprise rights — long-term servicing, virtual desktops, Autopatch. Legal has asked for eDiscovery. You plan to grow into E5 components, which attach to E3 and not to Premium. Or you are a regulated group and the compliance reviewer expects the enterprise line.
Microsoft 365 E3 in full, with every buying option →| Feature | Business Premium… | Microsoft 365 E3… |
|---|---|---|
| Apps and productivity | ||
| Desktop Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Web and mobile Office apps | ✓ | ✓ |
| Install on 5 PCs or Macs, 5 tablets, 5 phones per user | ✓ | ✓ |
| Microsoft TeamsIn the EEA, most plans are also sold without Teams at a lower price. Teams is then bought separately. | ✓ | ✓ |
| SharePoint | ✓ | ✓ |
| Microsoft Bookings | ✓ | ✓ |
| Email and storage | ||
| Business email hosting (Exchange Online) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Mailbox sizeBusiness Premium moved from 50 GB to 100 GB in summer 2026. | 100 GB | 100 GB |
| Auto-expanding archive mailboxBasic and Standard include a 50 GB archive that does not expand. Business Premium (through Exchange Online Archiving), E3 and E5 expand up to 1.5 TB. | ✓ | ✓ |
| OneDrive storage per userdiffers5 TB+ applies from five seats and can be raised on request to Microsoft. | 1 TB | 5 TB+ |
| Identity and devices | ||
| Microsoft Entra ID P1This is the line that most often decides between Office 365 E3 and Microsoft 365 E3. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Microsoft Entra ID P2 (identity protection, PIM) | — | — |
| Conditional Access | ✓ | ✓ |
| Microsoft Intune Plan 1 | ✓ | ✓ |
| Windows 11 Enterprise upgrade rightsMicrosoft 365 E3 only | — | ✓ |
| Security | ||
| Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 (Safe Links, Safe Attachments)Included in Microsoft 365 E3 from July 2026, with the E3 price change; earlier E3 had Exchange Online Protection only. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Defender for Office 365 Plan 2 (attack simulation, threat hunting) | — | — |
| Defender for Business (endpoint protection)Business Premium onlyThe SMB endpoint product. Enterprise plans use Defender for Endpoint instead. | ✓ | — |
| Defender for Endpoint Plan 2 | — | — |
| Defender for Identity | — | — |
| Defender for Cloud Apps | — | — |
| Sensitivity labels and information protection | ✓ | ✓ |
| Compliance | ||
| Data loss prevention for email and files | ✓ | ✓ |
| Retention policies and litigation holdLitigation hold is a feature of Exchange Online Plan 2, and of Plan 1 with Exchange Online Archiving, which Business Premium includes. Basic, Standard and E1 need the Archiving add-on, around EUR 2.60 per user per month. | ✓ | ✓ |
| eDiscovery (Standard)Microsoft 365 E3 only | — | ✓ |
| eDiscovery (Premium) | — | — |
| Insider Risk Management | — | — |
| Communication Compliance | — | — |
| Customer Lockbox | — | — |
| Voice and analytics | ||
| Power BI Pro | — | — |
| Teams Phone (phone system)A calling plan or direct routing is still needed on top, and is bought separately. | — | — |
| Limits | ||
| Maximum usersdiffersThe 300-seat cap is the most common reason a growing company has to move off the Business plans. | 300 | No limit |
highlighted rows differ included. The same rows, for every plan at once, are on the full comparison; prices are Microsoft’s list per user a month on a one-year commitment, in the currency of the region chosen at the top of the page.
Yes. A group of four hundred can put three hundred on Premium and the rest on E3, or split by role. One tenant, one invoice, different licences per person. The three-hundred cap applies per tenant to the Business plans, not to the company.
For endpoints, Premium carries Defender for Business, which does most of what the enterprise Plan 2 does; E3 carries Defender for Endpoint Plan 1. For mail, Premium includes Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 and E3 does not. What E3 has that Premium lacks is Windows Enterprise and eDiscovery Standard, which are not security features at all.
Both take it: Premium pairs with Copilot Business, E3 with Microsoft 365 Copilot, at different prices. The Copilot hub has both, in your currency.
A written answer with the arithmetic, in your currency, usually within one business day.