Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard or Premium: which does your team need?

Business Basic gives your team business email, Teams and storage with the web and mobile versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Business Standard adds the full desktop apps. Business Premium adds the security and device management a business needs once it holds sensitive data or has staff working on company laptops away from the office. Most businesses of 5 to 200 people need Standard for most of the team, and those holding sensitive data or managing company laptops should look closely at Premium.

What's the difference between Business Basic, Standard and Premium?

All three plans share the same foundations. Each person gets business email on your own domain with a 100 GB mailbox, 1 TB of OneDrive storage, Microsoft Teams for chat, calls and meetings, SharePoint for shared files, and spam and malware filtering. Microsoft sells all three to businesses of up to 300 people. The difference is what sits on top: the apps people work in and how far Microsoft 365 protects your devices and data.

What does Business Basic include?

Business Basic is the cloud core of Microsoft 365. Your team gets email, calendars, Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint, and works in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook in a web browser or on a phone or tablet.

Basic suits people who mainly need email, Teams and shared files: warehouse and field staff, people on the shop floor, and office staff who rarely build complex documents. Through us it costs £8.50 per user a month, billed monthly, including our management of it.

What does Business Standard add?

Business Standard adds the desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote, plus Access on Windows PCs, which each person can install on up to 5 PCs or Macs, 5 tablets and 5 phones. That matters for anyone who works with large spreadsheets, long documents with tracked changes, or Outlook rules and shared mailboxes that work better on the desktop.

Through us, Business Standard costs £15.50 per user a month, billed monthly with no annual commitment, including our management of it.

What does Business Premium add?

Business Premium includes everything in Business Standard and adds the security a growing business usually ends up needing. Intune lets you manage company laptops and phones, so you can push settings and updates, require a PIN or encryption, and wipe company data from a lost device or one that belonged to someone who has left. Defender for Business protects those devices from ransomware and malware, and Defender for Office 365 adds stronger protection against phishing in email and Teams. Premium also brings policy-based sign-in controls through Microsoft Entra ID, so you can block sign-ins from unmanaged devices or unusual locations, and Microsoft Purview tools that find and protect sensitive information in email and files. Each person's email archive grows from 50 GB to 1.5 TB.

Microsoft describes Business Premium as its plan that combines productivity with protection against phishing, ransomware and data loss for businesses of up to 300 people. The tools only protect you once they're set up for your business, and that set-up is most of the work. Through us, Business Premium is priced on application.

Can you mix Basic, Standard and Premium in one business?

Yes. Microsoft lets you combine its business plans in one organisation as long as the total stays within 300 licences. Mixing plans is often the sensible choice, because there's little point paying for desktop apps for someone who only reads email and joins Teams calls on a phone.

Take an illustrative 20-person firm where 6 people only need email, Teams and shared files, and 14 work in Excel and Word all day. Putting the 6 on Business Basic and the 14 on Business Standard costs £268 a month through us, against £310 a month for Standard across the whole team. We do this ourselves for Market Jar, whose team runs on a mix of Business Basic and Business Standard licences that we manage alongside its IT support, phones and domain.

Security is the exception to mixing freely. Business Premium's device management and sign-in controls protect the people and laptops they're applied to, so if company data sits on laptops across the team, the protection is only as strong as the least protected device.

How do you choose the right plan?

Start with how each person works. Anyone who lives in desktop Excel, Word or Outlook needs Standard or Premium, and anyone who mostly reads email and joins calls can usually stay on Basic. Then look at your data and devices. If your team handles client financial records, personal data or contracts, works from home on company laptops, or you'd struggle to say which devices hold company files, Premium's protection is worth a serious look.

When you compare providers, ask what the monthly price covers beyond the licence itself, whether someone sets up and checks the security settings or simply hands over the licences, and whether you're tied into a contract. We're an official Microsoft partner, we work month to month with no contract, and every client we've signed has stayed with us. We support businesses of 5 to 200 people remotely, wherever they work, so if you need someone on site to set up every desk, a provider with field engineers will suit you better.

Which plan should you start with?

For most small and growing businesses, Business Standard is the right default for anyone who works at a desk, with Business Basic for people who don't need the desktop apps. Move up to Business Premium once you hold sensitive data, manage company laptops, or need to know you can lock out a leaver and wipe their device on the day. Licences can be changed as your team changes, so the best choice is the one that fits how your people work now.

Our Microsoft 365 page sets out what Business Basic and Business Standard include through us, how we move a team onto Microsoft 365, and the monthly price for your team size.