Microsoft 365 comes in three business tiers, and picking the wrong one either wastes money every month or leaves your team without tools they need. Here's the practical breakdown.
Business Basic — email and cloud essentials
Business Basic gives you professional branded email, 1 TB of OneDrive storage per user, Teams, and the web and mobile versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. If your team works mostly in a browser and needs reliable email on your own domain, this is the affordable starting point.
Business Standard — the full desktop experience
Standard adds the installed desktop versions of the Office apps on PC and Mac, plus extras like webinar hosting. If your team lives in Excel or builds real documents daily, the desktop apps alone justify the upgrade — web versions only go so far.
Business Premium — security and device management
Premium includes everything in Standard and layers on advanced security: Microsoft Defender for Office 365, and device management through Intune. If your team handles sensitive client data, works on personal devices, or needs to meet compliance requirements, Premium is where you should be. One prevented phishing incident pays for years of the price difference.
Quick recommendations
- Just need branded email and basic collaboration? Business Basic.
- Team works in Office apps all day? Business Standard.
- Client data, compliance needs, or a mix of company and personal devices? Business Premium.
Still not sure — or dreading the migration itself? Setting up branded email, moving mailboxes, and configuring security correctly is exactly what our IT team does. Book a free discovery call and we'll map out your setup.