This blog post was updated on June 13, 2024
It was originally published on Jul 1, 2020
What is Microsoft 365?
Microsoft 365 is the new name for the Office 365 subscription service. It includes everything available in Office 365 plus a bunch of new apps and features. Microsoft 365 differs from Office 365 as it offers cloud-based SaaS products designed for business environments such as hosted Exchange Server, Teams, SharePoint, etc. These features along with the traditional productivity applications such as Word, Excel, etc. make Microsoft 365 an excellent productivity solution for any business.
Microsoft Office also referred to simply as Office, has existed in one form or another since 1988. It is the most popular suite, i.e. a bundled set of productivity applications. Office combined the popular applications Word, Excel, and PowerPoint into a bundle sold with a perpetual license. Microsoft 365, formerly known as Microsoft Office 365, introduced in 2011 is based on a subscription model where you pay a monthly subscription instead of buying a perpetual license.
Microsoft 365 Pricing And Plans
Microsoft 365 for business has the following plans:
| Plan | Microsoft 365 Business Basic | Microsoft 365 Business Standard | Microsoft 365 Business Premium | Microsoft 365 Apps for business |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Annual Commitment With Teams | $6.0 /user/month | $12.50 /user/month | $22 /user/month | $8.25 /user/month |
| Monthly Commitment With Teams | $7.20 /user/month | $15.0 /user/month | $26.4 /user/month | $9.90 /user/month |
| Annual Commitment Without Teams | $4.75 /user/month | $10.25 /user/month | $19.75 /user/month | — |
All of these plans support a maximum of 300 users, which is ideal for small businesses.
For the latest plans and pricing, check out Microsoft’s website.
Key System Requirements For Microsoft 365
Operating system requirements:
Windows: Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2019 or Windows Server 2016
macOS: One of the three most recent versions of macOS. When a new version of macOS is released, the macOS requirement becomes the latest version of macOS plus the previous two versions.
iOS: One of the two most recent versions of iOS and iPadOS.
Android: the last four major versions of Android
Processor:
Windows: 1.6 GHz or faster, 2-core. But 2 GHz or faster is recommended for Microsoft Teams.
macOS: Intel processor
Memory:
Windows: 4 GB RAM; 2 GB RAM (32-bit)
macOS: 4 GB RAM
Android: 1 GB
Hard Disk Space:
Windows: 4 GB of free disk space
macOS: 10 GB of free disk space
Microsoft 365 - Core Services And Features
Office Apps
The familiar Office products Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote are included in each of the Microsoft 365 Business plans. They provide all of the functionalities you are used to with the added benefits of the cloud. The cloud ensures that your applications are always up-to-date, available from anywhere, and on any device. You can install these apps on up to 5 phones and 5 tablets.
Microsoft 365 allows you to collaborate using real-time coauthoring. This means multiple users can simultaneously work on the same document. With the Standard and Premium plans, you can get desktop versions of the apps. In addition, you will also get the Access and Publisher apps, but for PC only. The apps can be installed on up to 5 PCs or Macs per user.
Email And Calendar
Microsoft 365’s email and calendar products include Outlook and Exchange. Microsoft 365 lets you access your email, contacts, and shared calendars from anywhere as long as you have an internet connection. You get a custom domain name (yourname@companyname.com). With Exchange, you can access your email on phones, tablets, desktops, and the web.
You get 100 GB of storage and can send messages of up to 150 MB size. You can also manage your calendar, set reminders, easily schedule meetings, respond to invitations, and share your availability. Microsoft Exchange can be used as a hosted service or you can even run it on your own servers.
Microsoft 365 has a simplified admin center, which allows you to set up new user emails, restore deleted accounts, create custom scripts, etc. from anywhere. It comes with anti-malware and anti-spam filtering to protect. With the Premium plan, you also get archiving and plus eDiscovery capabilities required for legal discovery and compliance needs. For the business development and sales teams, you can connect your LinkedIn and Microsoft 365 profiles to get insights about the people you exchange emails with.
File Storage And Sharing
Microsoft’s cloud storage and sharing solution is called OneDrive. It is included in the Microsoft 365 suite and comes with 1 TB of cloud storage. You will initially get 1 TB of storage per user, but admins can increase it to up to 5 TB per user. You can work on and save files directly to OneDrive and the changes made are updated on all of the synced devices.
You can set access permissions on your folders to ensure security as well as share files with external contacts by providing access or guest links. The Files on Demand feature allows you to view and manage cloud-based storage using File Explorer. This feature allows you to access all your files in OneDrive without having to download all of them to your Windows device.
Teamwork And Communication
Microsoft Teams offers unified communications including video conferencing, instant messaging, and a team-channel-based architecture with much of the same features as Slack. With Teams, you can host online meetings and video calls with 250 users at a time.
The unified communications framework of Teams allows you to bring all of your team’s chats, meetings, and files in one place making collaboration easy. In addition, using SharePoint, you can create team sites to share information, content, and files throughout your intranet. All in all, Microsoft Teams and SharePoint offer a great communication and collaboration solution for businesses.
Security
Microsoft 365 provides Exchange Online Protection to help protect your email against spam, malware, and other known threats. With more than 1,000 security and privacy controls, its security meets key international and industry standards. Administrators can create security groups and custom groups to control who can access key business information. Password policies requiring users to reset passwords after a specified time period can also be created for added security.
Advanced Security And Compliance
With the Premium plan, you get the following advanced security and compliance features:
Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection that protects against sophisticated threats hidden in email attachments, zero-day threats, ransomware, and other malware.
You can remotely wipe sensitive data from devices that are lost or stolen using the Selective Wipe from Intune.
The App protection for Office mobile applications helps restrict the copying or saving of company information to unauthorized locations or applications.
Microsoft Cloud App Security helps you identify high-risk and abnormal usage by setting up detailed anomaly-detection policies and controls.
Unlimited cloud archive with Exchange Online Archiving.
Support And Deployment
Microsoft 365 guarantees 99.9% uptime. In addition, you can get web or phone support at any time. Guaranteed uptime and 24x7 support are essential for ensuring peace of mind for business owners and Microsoft provides that with Microsoft 365.
Device Management
Mobile Device Management (MDM) feature is available only with the Premium plan. Microsoft 365 offers MDM from Intune. Using it, you can apply security policies to company devices including iOS, Android, and PCs. You can easily configure your devices to automatically install Office and Windows updates as well as configure security features and settings remotely.
Full List of Features
Here’s a detailed list of the features included in the different Microsoft 365 plans:
| Payment | Microsoft 365 Business Basic | Microsoft 365 Business Standard | Microsoft 365 Business Premium | Microsoft 365 Apps for business |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Emaill and calendar | ||||
| Use a custom business email (name@yourbusiness.com) | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Host and administer email with a 50-GB mailbox | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Easily schedule meetings and respond to invitations using shared calendars | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Annual Subscription | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Manage your calendar, share available meeting times, schedule meetings, and get reminders | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| File storage and sharing | ||||
| Collaborate in the same file with real-time coauthoring and editing | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Access your files from your computer, tablet, or phone | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Keep your files securely stored, up to date, and accessible across devices | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | — |
| Engage and inform with intelligent video using Microsoft Stream | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | — |
| Teamwork and communication | ||||
| Chat one-on-one or in a group chat, pin chats, and save messages for quick access | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | — |
| Host secure, organized meetings with audio, video, screen-sharing, and the option to record | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | — |
| Create team sites to share information, content, and files throughout your intranet using SharePoint | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | — |
| Invite people outside of your business to your meetings—even those without Teams accounts | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | — |
| Standard security and compliance | ||||
| Help protect your business against spam and malware with cloud-based email filtering | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Manage security threats by creating password policies | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Secure access with multifactor authentication | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Control access to business information with security groups and custom permissions | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Support and deployment | ||||
| Contact phone and online support anytime | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Get technical support for installation, setup, configuration, and general usage | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Access help and troubleshooting tools, videos, articles, and forums | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Have peace of mind with a financially backed 99% uptime guarantee | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Web and mobile apps | ||||
| Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Outlook | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | Partial (No web version) |
| Teams, Bookings, Forms, Microsoft Lists, Planner, SharePoint, Stream | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | — |
| Installable desktop apps | ||||
| Microsoft 365 apps for PC and Mac, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote | — | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| PC-only apps, including Microsoft Access and Microsoft Publisher | — | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| AI powered assistance | ||||
| Get intelligent writing assistance with advanced grammar and style suggestions using Editor | — | ✔ | ✔ | — |
| Boost creativity with Copilot for Microsoft 365 in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and other apps. | Available as an add-on | Available as an add-on | Available as an add-on | — |
| Project and customer relationship management | ||||
| Easily create, manage, and share schedules and tasks with your team | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | — |
| Manage workflow and track important tasks with Microsoft Lists | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | — |
| Quickly and easily create custom surveys and analyze results with Forms | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | — |
| Streamline client scheduling and manage appointments with Bookings | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | — |
| Collaborate in workspaces to organize your projects, both large and small, with Microsoft Loop  | — | ✔ | ✔ | — |
| Video editing  | ||||
| Edit videos using basic tools, such as trimming, cropping, and speed control | — | ✔ | ✔ | — |
| Create high-quality recordings and set dimensions for upload to multiple platforms | — | ✔ | ✔ | — |
| Collaborate live or asynchronously in a video-editing workspace  | — | ✔ | ✔ | — |
| Webinars and live events | ||||
| Schedule and host webinars for up to 300 people | — | ✔ | ✔ | — |
| Host webinars that include attendee registration pages and email confirmations | — | ✔ | ✔ | — |
| Get reporting data on webinar registration and meeting attendance | — | ✔ | ✔ | — |
| Advanced cyberattack protection | ||||
| Enable enterprise-grade endpoint security across devices to protect against ransomware and other cyberthreats | — | — | ✔ | — |
| Help protect against email threats, such as phishing that’s hidden in email attachments and links | — | — | ✔ | — |
| Restrict access to sensitive business information with information rights management | — | — | ✔ | — |
| Help employees securely access business apps wherever they work with conditional access, while helping prevent unauthorized access | — | — | ✔ | — |
| Device management | ||||
| Apply security policies to help protect work data on company-owned and employee devices | — | — | ✔ | — |
| Keep company data within approved apps across iOS, Android, and Windows PCs | — | — | ✔ | — |
| Remotely remove business data from lost or stolen devices | — | — | ✔ | — |
Which Microsoft 365 Is Right For Your Business?
Although all three of the business plans come with yearly commitments, the plan can be upgraded at any time by using the Switch Plans button in the admin center. This gives the flexibility that growing businesses need. Instead of subscribing to the most expensive plan and waiting for your business to grow into it, you can start with the basic plan and upgrade to the higher plans as and when your business needs to grow.
Your Microsoft 365 plans come with access to the Microsoft app store where you can access a variety of applications designed specifically for business audiences. As your business grows, you can explore additional services that Microsoft 365 offers. Its Enterprise plans include Yammer, a social networking service, and powerful business intelligence and automation tools such as Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI Pro.
Microsoft 365 has a wide range of services designed for businesses of all sizes. There is a whole lot you can do with the advanced services it offers that aren’t really necessary for small businesses. But it’s great to know that you can keep growing within the Microsoft ecosystem and won’t have to go around shopping for another service after your business grows beyond a certain point.
Implementing Microsoft 365 For Business
Microsoft 365 offers a 1-month free trial, so you can always test it out before implementing it. The implementation process of Microsoft 365 will vary depending on the size of your team, the technologies you use, and your access to tech support. Because of these variables, the timeline varies from business to business. Small businesses and startups, which don’t already have elaborate systems in place will have a much shorter implementation time than large established businesses.
Migrating to Microsoft 365 requires careful planning that may not be explicitly addressed in the official Microsoft Office 365 Onboarding Guides. Jones IT has extensive experience in migrating businesses to Office 365 and no matter the size of your company or the extent of your data, we ensure that you avoid the common pitfalls and problems associated with Office 365 migrations.
We provide Microsoft 365 Migration as well as post-migration support including training that addresses all the common problems and questions about Microsoft 365. Reach out to us to find out how we can help you.
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About The Author
Hari SubediMarketing Manager at Jones IT
Hari is an online marketing professional with a focus on content marketing. He writes on topics related to IT, Security, Small Business, and Mindfulness. He is also the founder and managing director of Girivar Kft., a business services company located in Budapest, Hungary.