Microsoft 365 Business Basic vs Standard vs Premium (2026)

Microsoft sells small businesses three main Microsoft 365 plans: Business Basic, Business Standard and Business Premium. The names sound like coffee sizes, and the trouble is that the differences between them are nothing like small, medium and large. Basic and Standard are mostly about productivity: email, Teams, files and Office apps. Premium adds a whole security and device-management toolkit that, frankly, most offices handling patient records, tax returns or payroll should have had years ago.

This guide walks through what each plan includes, what changed in Microsoft's licensing in 2025 and 2026 (there was a lot), who should buy which plan, how to mix licenses without leaving holes, when the Enterprise E3 and E5 plans are worth it, which add-ons matter, and how all of this fits with HIPAA. Prices are as of October 2026 and come from Microsoft's own announcements. Microsoft changes them more often than most of us change our passwords, so check before you budget.

If you'd rather answer a few questions and get a recommendation, try our free Microsoft 365 Plan Picker. If you want the reasoning behind the answer, keep reading.

What's the short answer: Basic, Standard or Premium?

For most small offices with sensitive data, Business Premium is the right default. Choose Standard only if you truly have no regulated data and will manage security another way. Choose Basic for people who only need email, Teams and browser-based Office.

Here's the one-paragraph version of each plan:

• Microsoft 365 Business Basic gives each person a business email mailbox (Exchange Online), Teams, OneDrive cloud storage, SharePoint and the web and mobile versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. No installed desktop apps.
• Microsoft 365 Business Standard is everything in Basic plus the installed desktop apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and others) on up to five PCs or Macs, five tablets and five phones per user, plus a few extras like webinars and Bookings.
• Microsoft 365 Business Premium is everything in Standard plus Microsoft's security stack for small business: Intune (device management), Defender for Business (endpoint protection), Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 (advanced email protection), Entra ID P1 (Conditional Access and identity protection) and Purview information protection and data loss prevention.

Microsoft's own FAQ puts it plainly: Business Premium "includes everything in Microsoft 365 Business Standard," plus Defender for Business and Defender for Office 365 Plan 1, with "next-generation protection, endpoint detection and response, and threat & vulnerability management" (Microsoft Learn, Business Premium FAQ).

How much do Microsoft 365 business plans cost in 2026?

As of October 2026, Microsoft lists Business Basic at $7, Business Standard at $14 and Business Premium at $22 per user per month, with an annual commitment, for the versions that include Teams. Those prices took effect on July 1, 2026.

Microsoft announced the change on December 4, 2025, in a post titled "Advancing Microsoft 365: New capabilities and pricing update," stating that "the following list price changes will go into effect on July 1, 2026" (Microsoft 365 Blog). The price changes in that announcement, as reported by The Register and other trade press, look like this:

Per user per month, US list price. Your actual price depends on whether you buy direct or through a partner, your billing frequency, and any promotions.

Notice something? The gap between Standard and Premium shrank from $9.50 to $8.00 per user per month. For a 15-person office, that's $120 a month, or $1,440 a year, to go from "Office apps and email" to "Office apps, email, device management, endpoint detection and response, phishing link protection and Conditional Access." Buying those security tools separately from other vendors would typically cost more than that, before anyone even sets them up.

Microsoft says the increases pay for new capabilities, including Copilot Chat enhancements and security features moving into the suites. Business Basic and Business Standard, for example, gain "URL checks" that protect people when they click links in email and Office apps (Microsoft 365 Blog, Dec 2025). That's a welcome improvement, but it's not the same as Premium's full Defender for Office 365 protection.

What about the plans without Teams?

Microsoft also sells each business plan without Teams, at a lower price. Microsoft's December 2025 announcement notes that suites without Teams "will also have an equivalent dollar value increase." In practice, that means the no-Teams versions went up by the same dollar amounts as the with-Teams versions. Confirm the exact current price with your provider before you buy.

What does each plan actually include? (Full comparison table)

The biggest dividing lines are desktop apps (Standard and up) and security and device management (Premium only). Here's the side-by-side view for the features that matter to a typical office.

A few of those rows deserve a plain-English explanation, because they're where the real value of Premium lives.

Intune: control over every company device

Microsoft Intune is Microsoft's cloud service for managing laptops, desktops, phones and tablets. It pushes security settings, turns on encryption, installs apps, controls Windows updates and lets you wipe company data from a lost device. It's how a new laptop can set itself up when an employee signs in for the first time (that's Windows Autopilot). We cover it in depth in our Microsoft Intune guide for small business, and there's a short definition in our glossary under Intune.

Without Intune, every PC in your office is configured however the last person who touched it left it. With Intune, you can prove every PC is encrypted, patched and protected. That's exactly the kind of proof an auditor, an insurer or a large client's security questionnaire will ask for.

Defender for Business: antivirus that also investigates

Defender for Business is Microsoft's endpoint security product for companies up to 300 users. EDR (endpoint detection and response) is software that watches what happens on a computer, spots suspicious behavior such as ransomware starting to encrypt files, and can isolate the machine or roll back the damage. Defender for Business includes next-generation antivirus, EDR, automated investigation and remediation, and vulnerability management that tells you which PCs are missing patches (Microsoft Learn, Defender for Business overview). The built-in Microsoft Defender Antivirus on every Windows PC is good, but it doesn't give you this central view, the investigation tools or the response actions. See Defender for Business and EDR in our glossary.

Entra ID P1: sign-in rules that actually stop attackers

Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) is the sign-in system behind Microsoft 365. The P1 level adds Conditional Access, which Microsoft describes as its "Zero Trust policy engine" that brings signals together to make decisions and enforce policies (Microsoft Learn, Conditional Access). In plain terms, Conditional Access lets you write rules like:

• "Everyone must use multi-factor authentication, every time, from anywhere outside the office."
• "Patient records in SharePoint can only be opened from a company-managed, encrypted computer."
• "Block sign-ins from countries we don't do business in."
• "Block old email programs that can't do multi-factor sign-in."

Basic and Standard include "security defaults," which turn on multi-factor authentication for everyone. That's a good baseline. But security defaults are all-or-nothing, and you can't tie access to device health. If you're serious about multi-factor authentication, Conditional Access is where it gets precise. Glossary: Conditional Access, Entra ID.

Defender for Office 365 Plan 1: the email bodyguard

All plans include Exchange Online Protection, which catches the bulk of spam and known malware. Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 adds:

• Safe Links, which checks links at the moment someone clicks them, not just when the email arrives (attackers often swap a link's destination after delivery).
• Safe Attachments, which opens attachments in a sandbox to see what they do before delivering them.
• Anti-impersonation protection, which flags emails pretending to be your owner, your office manager or a vendor. That's the heart of business email compromise (BEC), where criminals impersonate someone you trust to redirect a payment.

If your office has ever received a "quick favor, are you at your desk?" email from your "CEO" sent from a Gmail address, you already know why this matters.

Purview: labels and rules for sensitive data

Microsoft Purview is Microsoft's data protection and compliance family. In Business Premium you get sensitivity labels (mark a document "Confidential – Patient Data" and have it encrypted automatically), DLP (data loss prevention) policies that warn or block when someone tries to email a file containing Social Security numbers or medical record numbers to an outside address, and message encryption for sending sensitive email securely. Basic and Standard don't include these.

What changed in Microsoft 365 business licensing in 2025 and 2026?

Quite a lot: Teams became optional, monthly billing got more expensive, Copilot got cheaper and bundled, Premium gained optional security add-on suites, Autopatch opened up to Premium, and Basic and Standard went up in price while Premium stayed put. If your licensing was set up in 2022 and nobody has looked since, here's what's different now.

The old-vs-new licensing table

Let's take those one at a time, because each has a practical consequence.

1. Teams unbundling: "with Teams" and "no Teams" versions

On April 1, 2024, following European antitrust complaints from competitors, Microsoft began selling its Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites without Teams worldwide. For the Business plans, both versions remain available. At launch, the no-Teams versions were priced at $4.75 (Basic), $10.25 (Standard) and $19.75 (Premium) per user per month (Redmond Magazine, April 2024). Microsoft said in December 2025 that no-Teams suites get the same dollar increase as the with-Teams suites in July 2026.

What it means for you: If your office uses Teams for chat, meetings, or Teams Phone, buy the with-Teams version. The no-Teams discount is real but small, and buying Teams separately later usually costs more than the difference. If you run entirely on Zoom and Slack and never open Teams, the no-Teams version can save a little money. Just don't buy it by accident. We've seen a few offices discover on Monday morning that their new hires have no Teams. Not a fun way to start a week.

2. Monthly billing costs 5% more

Starting April 1, 2025, Microsoft charges 5% more when you pay monthly for an annual subscription instead of paying the year up front (Microsoft Tech Community announcement). True month-to-month terms (where you can reduce licenses any month) cost even more. For example, Microsoft's own Copilot Business page lists $21.00 per user per month on an annual plan versus $25.20 on monthly billing, a 20% difference (Microsoft).

What it means for you: Your Microsoft bill has three levers: commitment term (monthly or annual), billing frequency (pay monthly or up front), and plan. The cheapest combination is annual commitment, paid annually. The most flexible is month-to-month, which costs the most.

3. Annual commitments are locked after seven days

Microsoft's "new commerce experience," the licensing system all partner-sold subscriptions moved to by September 1, 2024, lets you cancel a subscription only within the first seven days of its term (Microsoft Learn, New commerce overview). After that, you can add licenses to an annual subscription anytime, but you generally can't reduce them until renewal.

What it means for you: If you have seasonal staff (tax season at a CPA firm, summer interns), buy a core number of annual licenses for your permanent staff and a small number of month-to-month licenses for people who come and go. Paying a premium on three seasonal licenses beats paying for 12 months of empty seats.

4. Copilot got a small-business edition and bundles

Microsoft 365 Copilot is the AI assistant that works inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams using your organization's emails, files and meetings. It launched at $30 per user per month. In late 2025 Microsoft introduced Microsoft 365 Copilot Business for organizations with up to 300 users, listed at $21 per user per month on an annual plan, with a promotional price of $18 running through December 31, 2026 (Microsoft).

On July 1, 2026, Microsoft made two bundles permanent: Microsoft 365 Business Standard with Copilot at $23.50 per user per month and Microsoft 365 Business Premium with Copilot at $32 per user per month, each with a 300-license maximum and annual commitment (Microsoft Learn, Partner Center announcements July 2026). Microsoft also announced a promotional Business Basic plus Copilot Business combination through December 2026.

Separately, every Microsoft 365 plan includes Copilot Chat, the free AI chat that uses the web and the file you're working on. Microsoft has been adding features to it, including access to Word, Excel and PowerPoint agents.

What it means for you: Don't buy Copilot for everyone on day one. Start with three to five people whose jobs involve lots of writing, summarizing or spreadsheets (office manager, billing lead, owner), run it for 60 days, and measure whether they actually save time. And before anyone turns it on, fix your file permissions. Copilot shows people what they already have access to, which is great until it turns out "everyone" has access to the payroll folder.

5. Premium gained optional "E5-lite" security add-ons

In September 2025 Microsoft introduced three add-ons that only work on top of Business Premium:

• Microsoft Defender Suite for Business Premium, which brings in Entra ID P2 (risk-based sign-in protection), Defender for Endpoint Plan 2, Defender for Office 365 Plan 2, Defender for Identity and Defender for Cloud Apps.
• Microsoft Purview Suite for Business Premium, which adds advanced information protection, broader DLP, insider risk management, premium eDiscovery and audit, and more.
• A combined Defender and Purview Suites bundle.

Partners reported launch pricing of about $10 per user per month for each suite and about $15 for the combined bundle. Treat those as approximate and get a current quote, since add-on pricing varies by channel.

What it means for you: A 25-person practice that needs one or two E5-grade features no longer has to move everyone to E5. Premium plus the right add-on often lands at a lower total cost.

6. Windows Autopatch now works with Business Premium

Windows Autopatch is a Microsoft service that automatically schedules and rolls out Windows, Microsoft 365 Apps, Edge and Teams updates in waves, so a bad update hits a few test machines before everyone. Microsoft's licensing prerequisites now list Business Premium as an eligible license (Microsoft Learn, Autopatch prerequisites). For small offices, that's patch management with less babysitting.

What all this means for a 10–25 person office

For a typical 10–25 person office, the 2026 changes make Business Premium a clearer default than ever, make annual billing more attractive, and make it worth reviewing your license mix once a year. Here's how the math and the decisions play out.

Say you're a 15-person dental practice or CPA firm. Using the list prices as of October 2026 (annual commitment, with Teams):

List prices; actual cost depends on your provider and billing choices. Doesn't include your IT provider's management fees.

The practical takeaways:

1. The upgrade from Standard to Premium costs $8 per person per month. For most regulated offices, that's the cheapest meaningful security upgrade available.
2. Pay annually if your headcount is stable. Paying monthly on an annual term costs 5% more; month-to-month costs more still.
3. Keep a small month-to-month pool for temps so you're not stuck paying for empty seats.
4. Pilot Copilot with a few people first. For most small offices, three Copilot seats beat 15.
5. Check your Teams choice. Make sure you didn't buy no-Teams licenses by accident at renewal.
6. Put a calendar reminder on your renewal date. That's the one moment each year you can reduce licenses or change plans freely.

Who needs which plan?

Match the plan to the work, not the job title: what data does the person touch, and which device do they use? Here are the most common patterns we see.

Business Basic is enough when…

• The person only needs email, Teams and web-based Office (a part-time receptionist, a driver, a volunteer).
• They work on a shared front-desk PC that's already managed under someone else's Premium license, or in a browser on a company device.
• You're a micro-business with no regulated data and nobody needs desktop Excel.

Basic is not enough when the person handles protected health information on their own laptop or phone, because Basic gives you no way to manage or wipe that device.

Business Standard is enough when…

• People need desktop Word, Excel and Outlook (Excel power users really do need the desktop version).
• You don't store regulated data (no patient records, no tax returns, no card numbers).
• You have another way to handle device management and endpoint security, such as a separate security product your IT provider manages, and you're comfortable with that cost and complexity.

Honest note: we see a lot of offices on Standard that think they don't have regulated data. Then we find the scanned driver's licenses in a OneDrive folder called "Misc." Do a quick inventory before you decide.

Business Premium is the right call when…

• You're a medical or dental practice handling patient information (which is all of them).
• You're an accounting, tax, legal or financial firm subject to the FTC Safeguards Rule, IRS data security expectations or client security reviews. Our accounting firm case study shows what that kind of setup looks like in practice: managed devices, strong sign-in and documented controls.
• People work remotely or on laptops that leave the office.
• Your cyber insurance application asks about MFA, EDR, encryption and patching (they all do now).
• You've ever had a phishing incident, a lost laptop, or an employee leave on bad terms.

Decision guide by scenario

Scenario 1: an eight-person dental office. Two dentists, two hygienists, two assistants and two front-desk staff. Everyone touches the practice management system and patient images; the front desk emails insurance companies all day. Recommendation: Business Premium for all eight. Intune encrypts and manages the workstations, Defender for Business protects against ransomware, Conditional Access ensures patient files in SharePoint only open on managed devices, and Defender for Office 365 helps against the insurance-themed phishing emails that hit dental offices constantly. Our dental practice case study shows how device management, encryption and conditional access fit together with internet failover.

Scenario 2: a 20-person CPA firm. Fifteen permanent staff, five seasonal preparers January through April. Recommendation: 15 Business Premium on annual commitment, plus five Business Premium on month-to-month terms during tax season. Turn on sensitivity labels for client tax files and a DLP rule that warns before anyone emails a document containing Social Security numbers outside the firm.

Scenario 3: a 12-person medical practice with a shared check-in kiosk and three part-time billing staff who work from home. Recommendation: Premium for everyone who signs in as themselves. The home-based billing staff are exactly where Premium earns its keep: Intune app protection policies keep patient data inside managed apps on their personal devices, and Conditional Access blocks access from unmanaged home PCs. The kiosk can be configured as a dedicated shared device in Intune.

Scenario 4: a five-person marketing agency with no regulated data. Recommendation: Business Standard is defensible here, if you turn on security defaults (MFA for everyone) and keep Windows Defender and updates running. But if they have big-name clients asking security questions, Premium is still worth considering.

Can you mix Microsoft 365 license types?

Yes. You can combine Business, Enterprise and standalone plans in one Microsoft 365 tenant, but Premium's protections only cover the users who have Premium. Microsoft's service description states you "can combine Enterprise, Business, and standalone plans (for example, Exchange Online Plan 1) within a single account" (Microsoft Learn, plan options).

But Microsoft's Business Premium FAQ adds an important caveat: "the security and management benefits of Business Premium are available only to users with devices managed with a Business Premium subscription," and Microsoft recommends "deploying Business Premium to all users for the best protection" (Microsoft Learn, Business Premium FAQ).

Mixing that works well

• Premium for staff, Basic or Exchange Online Plan 1 for shared mailboxes that need a license (most shared mailboxes don't need any license at all under 50 GB).
• Premium for most staff, Business Basic for a few web-only users who never touch sensitive data and only use company-managed devices.
• Premium for everyone, plus a Copilot add-on for a few power users.
• Premium for everyone, plus Teams Phone for people who need a phone number.

Mixing that creates gaps

• Standard for "most people," Premium for "the important ones." The receptionist on Standard is the person attackers phish first, and their device is unmanaged. Attackers don't check org charts before sending phishing emails.
• Premium licenses for half the staff and Conditional Access policies that "include all users." Technically and licensing-wise, that's a mess. Each person covered by Conditional Access needs an Entra ID P1 license.
• Leaving former employees licensed "just in case." Convert their mailbox to a shared mailbox and remove the license.

What happens when you hit 300 users?

The Business family is capped at 300 licenses combined, across Basic, Standard and Premium. Microsoft's example: if you have 250 Business Premium seats, "the organization is eligible to provision only 50 more seats in total across the Business family of plans" (Microsoft Learn, plan options). Copilot Business, the Business-with-Copilot bundles and the Premium add-on suites carry the same 300 maximum.

What to do as you approach the cap:

1. Clean up first. Remove licenses from former employees and service accounts that don't need them. Many offices find 5–10% of seats wasted.
2. Move some users to Enterprise plans. You can run, say, 280 Business Premium and 40 Microsoft 365 E3 users in the same tenant. The usual pattern is to move the most technical or most regulated groups first.
3. Plan the full migration at renewal. Moving everyone to E3 (plus security add-ons) or E5 is a big budget decision; time it with your renewal date so you don't pay for overlapping subscriptions.
4. Frontline staff can go on F-plans. Microsoft 365 F1 and F3 are cheaper plans for people who share devices or work primarily on phones, and they don't count toward the Business 300 cap.

For a 5–50 person office, this is a "good problem to have" section. Bookmark it for the day you open your fifth location.

When do Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 make sense for a small business?

E3 and E5 make sense when you're over 300 users, need compliance features Business Premium lacks, or need E5-level security across the whole company. For most offices under 300, Business Premium (plus targeted add-ons) is cheaper and covers the same essentials. Here's how they compare in broad strokes.

Feature lists are summarized; check Microsoft's service descriptions for exact entitlements.

Microsoft's December 2025 announcement said Microsoft 365 E3 gains Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 features and Intune capabilities such as Remote Help, Advanced Analytics and Intune Plan 2, and that E5 gains Intune Endpoint Privilege Management, Enterprise Application Management and Microsoft Cloud PKI, plus Security Copilot access (Microsoft 365 Blog).

Choose E3/E5 if:

• You're above or near 300 users.
• You need advanced eDiscovery, insider risk management or communication compliance across the whole company (larger law firms, financial advisors with heavy regulatory oversight).
• A client contract or regulator specifies E5-level controls.
• You want Windows Enterprise features across all devices.

Stick with Business Premium (plus add-ons) if:

• You're under 300 users and the main goal is solid, provable security.
• Only one or two E5 features are on your wish list. The Defender Suite or Purview Suite add-ons for Business Premium usually cost less than the jump from $22 to $60.

Which add-ons are worth knowing about?

Most small offices need zero to two add-ons. The most common are Teams Phone, Copilot, extra email archiving for non-Premium users, and the Defender or Purview suites for Premium. Here's a quick reference:

A word of caution on the last three rows: buying Defender for Business, Intune and Entra ID P1 separately to bolt onto Business Standard almost always costs more than simply upgrading to Premium, and it's messier to manage. It's like buying a sandwich one ingredient at a time and then paying extra for the bread.

Microsoft 365 and HIPAA: which plan does a practice need?

Microsoft signs a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement (BAA) covering Microsoft 365, but a BAA doesn't make you compliant. For most medical and dental practices, Business Premium is the plan that provides the tools to meet the HIPAA Security Rule's technical safeguards.

A BAA (business associate agreement) is the contract HIPAA requires between a healthcare provider and any vendor that handles protected health information on its behalf. Microsoft's HIPAA BAA "is available through the Microsoft Online Services Data Protection Addendum by default to all customers who are covered entities or business associates under HIPAA," and covers in-scope services including Exchange Online, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, Entra ID, Intune and Defender for Office 365 (Microsoft Learn, HIPAA/HITECH).

Microsoft is also clear that "using Microsoft services doesn't on its own achieve HIPAA compliance." You still need a risk assessment, policies and correct configuration. We explain the details in Is Microsoft 365 HIPAA compliant? and our HIPAA Security Rule checklist.

Here's how the plans line up against common Security Rule safeguards:

The HIPAA Security Rule itself may get stricter. HHS proposed a major update in January 2025 that would make things like encryption and MFA explicit requirements. As of this writing, it hasn't been finalized and its timing has slipped. See our article on the proposed HIPAA Security Rule changes and check HHS for the latest. Either way, Business Premium already covers the main technical controls in that proposal.

How do you switch plans without breaking anything?

Upgrading from Basic or Standard to Premium is usually painless for users: their email, files and Teams stay exactly where they are. The real work is configuring the new security features carefully. A sensible sequence:

1. Inventory. List every user, their current license, their devices (company and personal) and what data they touch.
2. Buy and assign licenses at renewal if possible (or add Premium mid-term and let the old subscription expire at renewal).
3. Turn on MFA for everyone if it isn't already, then build Conditional Access policies, starting in report-only mode so nothing breaks.
4. Enroll devices in Intune. Existing Windows PCs can be enrolled; new ones can use Autopilot.
5. Apply baselines: BitLocker encryption, Windows Update rings, Defender for Business onboarding and firewall settings.
6. Turn on Defender for Office 365 policies (Microsoft's "standard" or "strict" preset is a good start).
7. Set up Purview basics: a "Confidential" label and a DLP rule for the data you actually have.
8. Document it. Write down what's configured and why. Your risk assessment and your insurer will both want it.

Plan on a few weeks for a 10–25 person office, not a few hours. Most of the time goes into testing and talking to staff, not clicking settings.

Common mistakes we see with Microsoft 365 licensing

The most expensive mistakes aren't paying too much for licenses. They're paying for Premium and never turning its features on.

• Paying for Business Premium but only using email. Premium's security tools are switched off by default. If nobody configured Intune, Conditional Access and Defender, you're paying for a home alarm system that's still in the box.
• Global admin on everyone's daily account. Admin accounts should be separate, protected with phishing-resistant MFA, and limited to two or three people.
• No MFA "because the owner hates it." The owner's account is the most valuable one to an attacker.
• Buying licenses on a personal credit card in someone's name. When that person leaves, so does your billing access. The tenant and billing should be owned by the business, with documented admin access you control.
• Licensing shared mailboxes unnecessarily. Shared mailboxes under 50 GB without archiving generally don't need a license.
• Former employees still licensed. Every month you pay for a ghost.
• Mixing Standard and Premium "to save money" and leaving the least-protected people as the easiest way in.
• Monthly billing by accident. Check your billing frequency; on a stable headcount, annual saves 5% or more.
• Ignoring renewal dates. Under new commerce, renewal is your one window to reduce seats or change plans freely.

Questions to ask your IT provider about Microsoft 365

If an IT provider manages your Microsoft 365, these questions quickly show whether they're actually managing it or just reselling licenses:

1. Which plan does each of our users have, and why?
2. Are we paying monthly or annually, and on what commitment term? When is our renewal date?
3. Is MFA enforced for every account, including admins and the owner?
4. Which Conditional Access policies are in place? Can we see them?
5. Are all our computers enrolled in Intune and encrypted with BitLocker? Can you show us the report?
6. Is Defender for Business onboarded on every device? Who reviews alerts, and how fast?
7. Which Defender for Office 365 policies are active?
8. Who are the global administrators in our tenant? Do we have a break-glass emergency account?
9. Do we own our tenant and billing, or does the provider?
10. Do we need Copilot, and if so, for whom? Have our file permissions been reviewed first?
11. Does our setup support our HIPAA risk assessment (or FTC Safeguards Rule program)?
12. What would it cost to move from Standard to Premium, and what would you configure first?

For a deeper look at evaluating providers, see how to choose a managed IT provider.

The bottom line

Business Basic is fine for web-only users. Business Standard is fine for offices with no sensitive data and a separate security plan. For nearly every medical practice, dental office, accounting firm and growing small business, Business Premium is the plan that matches the risks you actually face, and at $22 per user per month as of October 2026, it's the one plan that didn't go up in July.

Then make sure someone actually turns the features on. A license is a toolbox, not a security program.

Want a second opinion on your current licensing, or help turning on what you're already paying for? Our Microsoft 365 and identity services cover setup, migration and license reviews, and you can book a free 20-minute call to talk it through.