Jeremy Wanamaker | Jul 31, 2024
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Microsoft 365 for Business is a widely used business productivity suite designed to meet the demands of modern organizations. Underpinned by popular office apps such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, this feature-rich platform goes much further, offering a full ecosystem of powerful products to fuel business success.
From device management and cloud storage to hosting webinars and instant messaging, Microsoft 365 is a one-stop solution that empowers businesses to work more efficiently, stay organized, and achieve peak results.
Here, we’ll demystify the platform by comparing the core plans—Business Basic, Business Standard, and Business Premium.
In the end, readers will have the understanding and knowledge needed to decide which option best aligns with their business needs, budget, and long-term goals.
Microsoft 365 for Business is available in three unique flavors: Basic, Standard, and Premium. Each one is tailored to provide a specific set of products, features, and capabilities for a diverse range of organizations, from start-ups to multinational corporations to academic institutions.
Business Basic serves as the platform’s foundational plan, providing essential productivity tools and cloud-based services for organizations with basic needs and modest requirements.
Alongside Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, Basic provides products for collaboration and instant messaging, real-time document sharing, virtual meetings, and appointment management.
Business standards take the usefulness of the platform up a few notches. In addition to what we outlined above, this tier offers more robust compliance features, sophisticated no-code automation tools, video editing, and advanced project co-creation tools.
The Business Premium plan is a top-tier offer designed for organizations that demand a comprehensive, full suite of productivity products. It includes all the features of the Basic and Standard plans while adding the benefits of enterprise-grade threat detection, end-point security, data compliance services, and information rights management and protection.
Microsoft 365 Business Basic is all about providing fundamental productivity tools for businesses on a budget.
It gives you access to web and mobile versions of the core Office apps as well as other modern business products, including Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, and OneNote.
Essentially, Business Basic grants teams the power to create, edit, and share documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and emails from virtually anywhere with an internet connection. For most small businesses, especially those with standard security and compliance requirements, this plan offers practically everything you need for day-to-day operations.
While this tier provides simple spam and malware protection, these security features might not meet your needs if your organization deals with sensitive information or operates in a heavily regulated sector like healthcare, finance, or legal.
The Microsoft Business Standard plan strikes an ideal balance between functionality and cost-effectiveness, making it an attractive option for organizations seeking an affordable, well-rounded productivity solution.
One of the key advantages of Microsoft 365 Business Standard is that users have the option to install the desktop versions of certain apps. This enables businesses to utilize a program’s complete capability, which in some cases is more comprehensive compared to the web and mobile-only versions.
Another key differentiator versus the Basic option is the plethora of no-code tools to assist non-technical employees in developing business apps for web and mobile devices and building complex automated workflows.
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Microsoft 365 Business Premium is a comprehensive plan designed to propel medium-to-large organizations toward digital transformation. This option enables customers to leverage cutting-edge technologies while maintaining strong security, compliance, and governance protocols.
For organizations with multi-branch operations or specific industry requirements, Microsoft 365 Business Premium offers additional value through its enterprise-grade services for business intelligence, device management, and security.
For example, data loss prevention, archiving, and legal hold tools are available to help organizations search, identify, retrieve, monitor, protect, or discover information when required for compliance purposes.
There are also tools and services for unified endpoint management and advanced persistence threat detection to proactively detect and neutralize cyber threats, such as malware, phishing attacks, and zero-day exploits.
This section provides IT decision-makers with a list of simple, easy-to-remember facts and tidbits to effectively articulate the features and benefits of each plan when communicating with other stakeholders.
Choose Basic if you need:
Choose Standard if you need:
Choose Premium if you need:
Now that we’ve discussed the core features, capabilities, and benefits of each plan, it’s time to decide. This choice is paramount to ensuring that your workforce has the necessary resources to operate productively while maintaining a secure and compliant environment. Luckily, Microsoft is extremely flexible with its 365 licensing.
Plans are purchased on a “per user” or “per seat” basis, meaning businesses have the freedom to mix and match different tiers based on the needs of each user. Take, for example, a company might opt to provide remote workers or entry-level employees with the Basic plan while executives and managers are given Premium accounts.
Navigating the Microsoft ecosystem on your own is confusing; we know all too well the challenges and obstacles that teams face in choosing the right Microsoft products for their organization and configuring them for maximum impact.
The team of seasoned IT professionals at Complete Network possesses a proven track record helping clients in Albany, New York, Charlotte, North Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, and Bluffton, South Carolina deploy the right Microsoft products. .
Contact our friendly team at (844) 426-7844. We look forward to speaking with you!
In an ideal world, technology would be a consistent source of competitive advantage and benefit for small and midsized businesses. The reality is that many fail to realize that confidence.
Without the right resources and support, even a highly skilled technology team can become overwhelmed by the growing list of technology management duties. When important tasks get neglected, it creates ripple effects throughout an organization that damage productivity and efficiency.
The co-managed IT services model solves these problems by providing your existing IT team with all the support and resources they need to successfully plan, manage, and defend your network technology.
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