Come October, Microsoft is changing the inclusions and pricing on its Office 365 subscription plans for small businesses. Here’s what you need to know.
Currently, Microsoft offers three small business versions of Office 365: Small Business (for up to 25 users, and not actually including the core desktop applications), Small Business Premium (also for up to 25 users, and including Office desktop apps) and Midsize Business (for up to 300 users).
From 1 October, Microsoft will replace these with three roughly equivalent new plans: Business Essentials, Business and Business Premium. The features of each are outlined in the chart below (note the prices are in US dollars — Australians will undoubtedly pay a little more, just as they do now):
From that date, customers on the existing plan will also see changes: the cap on user numbers will be raised to 300 across all plans, and the pricing for Midsize Business will be reduced.
Customers who are already signed up to one of the old plans can stick with that option for 12 months, which effectively means that they’ll have to switch by October 2015. New customers will only be able to buy the revamped plans from 1 October.
In Australia, Office 365 plans for business are sold in a partnership with Telstra. We’ll update this post when we know details of local pricing and rollout arrangements.
Evolving Office 365 plans for small and midsized businesses [Office Blogs]
Comments
11 responses to “How Office 365 Plans For Business Are Changing”
Office 365 is sold through ALL Microsoft volume licensing resellers, not just Telstra.
Essentially any computer shop in the country can sell it.
Not the business or enterprise editions. Up until the last month or so Telstra was the only reseller.
All partners have been able to sell it since APRIL
This includes all the Personal, Business and Enterprise plans…….
LSP/LARs have been able to sell it for about two years.
I wouldn’t know anything, I’ve only sold about 20,000 seats of Office 365 in that time.
@anguskidman can you please do just a tiny bit more research in the future?
Wow, fair enough. We only just signed up with Telstra for E2… Admittedly it did take forever and a day to get things processed and signed off on our end, we were doing the research long before April… You seem like the go to guy for 365 related information.
Office 365 E2 was discontinued on the 1st of September 2013.
All functionality was rolled into E1 at not additional cost.
Depending on when you signed up you may have been taken for a ride by Telstra.
Aha, my bad. E3. Proplus, lync, sharepoint etc.
Cool bananas. E3 is the most common although virtually everyone is going for E4 now that its been released.
E4 gives voice functionality with Lync, so virtually everyone is going down that path replacing their old telecoms or using it to supplement functionality of existing systems.
Ah yes, that’ll be an option for us when we replace our PABX system over the next year or two.
Yes but the hosted side of Office365 is only provided by Telstra at this point in time.
I believe that is changing soon too though.
No, what dre_ said is correct – Office365 can be purchased through authorised resellers now; since April 1st actually. It is purchased under volume licensing agreements. I purchased 20 seats yesterday for a customer 🙂
Nope.
Telstra is the only way to get the Office 365 and have it hosted in Australia (in a Telstra DC)
All partners can sell Office 365, but that is hosted in Singapore by Microsoft.