There are a huge range of plans in the Office 365 space. This blog outlines the features and differences in the Enterprise plans, an explanation of the Education plans and the plans that Microsoft offers registered Not for Profits and Charities.

Part one covered:

  • Office Online
  • Home
  • Business

Read part one here

Part two of our two part blog will cover:

  • Enterprise
  • Specialty Plans
  • Education
  • Not for Profit

Enterprise

Enterprise grade subscriptions are targeted at businesses that require not only enterprise grade applications like Exchange, SharePoint and Skype for Business but also advanced services and features within those applications. This is where things can get complicated very quickly with the inclusion of team collaboration, advanced security and compliance tools and personal and organisational insight capabilities.

ProPlus

Office 365 ProPlus is the Office 365 Business (Basic) equivalent that scales beyond 300 users. Each user has a Microsoft based email account and access to the Office Suite. The subscription includes:

  • Microsoft email address
  • Online and locally installed Microsoft Office applications , e.g. Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Access
  • OneDrive for Business (1TB of storage per user)
  • Each user can install Office on 5 PCs or Macs, 5 tablets (Windows, iPad, and Android), and 5 phones
  • Publisher
  • Sway
  • Power Pivot

Enterprise E1

Office 365 Enterprise E1 provides enterprise grade infrastructure and an Online Office Suite of applications and scales beyond 300 users.

This is essentially the Office 365 Business Essentials plan with some additional features which include:

  • Skype for Business
    • Unlimited HD audio and video conferences for up to 250 people
    • Host meeting broadcast for up to 10,000 people
  • Microsoft Teams which is a highly collaborative chat based application with integration into SharePoint and other supported applications, reducing the need for extensive email conversations.
  • Retention & deletion policies and manual classifications, helping businesses conform to regulations and avoid data loss
  • Microsoft Stream, a product to help create, manage and share videos securely
  • Microsoft Flow to help build automated workflows
  • StaffHub which helps manage schedules and daily work tasks with schedule and task management, information sharing, etc.

Enterprise E3

Office 365 Enterprise E3 is a combination of the ProPlus and the E1 subscription. It provides all the advanced functionality of E1 along with the flexibility of the Office Suite application installation on up to 5 phones, tablets and PCs or Macs per user.

Features in addition to the advanced functionality of E1 include:

Enterprise E5

Office 365 Enterprise E5 brings all the features of E3 plus advanced security, analytics and voice capabilities. This is the most comprehensive package available from Office 365.

Advanced functionality is as follows:

The greatest advantage of an E5 subscription is the Cloud PBX offering. This allows an organisation to remove the reliance on traditionally installed PABX on premise using phone lines or ISDN lines to service each individual location to a system that leverages your internet connectivity to make incoming and outgoing calls. Some of the major advantages are:

  • Unified communications via Skype for Business client to manage calls, or desk phone with compatibility to log into your Skype for Business account
  • Access to company phone system from any Skype for Business compatible device
  • Location independent IVR (Interactive Voice Response)
  • Location independent Reponses groups (Team calling)
  • Global call routing (call from Australia using a United States PBX for local calling rates)
  • Advanced call analytics
  • Online voicemail available anywhere and anytime

Specialty plans

In addition to what would be considered a standard paid subscription in any of the previous categories there are also some uncategorised plans that are either obtained through certification, tailored to specific needs or are individual products that can be added to a generic plan.

Enterprise F1

Office 365 Enterprise F1 is designed for the Firstline worker to stay connected with the business, this package sits in between the Basic and Essentials package without a requirement for Exchange or an installed copy of the Office Suite. Suited to a user who will be interacting with the company from mobile and shared devices and receiving content more than producing content.

Education, students & teacher

These offerings include some products specific to the learning space such as:

  • Microsoft Forms
  • Professional Learning Community (PLC) groups

An educational institute will need to go through a verification process before being approved for these plans. There are for free and paid Education plans. The education plans have been tailored to meet the needs of academic institutes and are therefore completely different to the personal and business packages.

Inclusions can be found here.

Not-for-profit

Office 365 Non-profit plans are for organisations who use their certified Not for Profit licensing to access Office 365 plans for free or at a sizeable discount.

If eligible you can select from 5 plans:

  • Business Essentials (Free)
  • Business Premium
  • Nonprofit E1 (Free)
  • Nonprofit E3
  • Nonprofit E5

These plans are the same as the business equivalents just at a discounted rate. To be approved you must go through an authority body to be verified and once approved Microsoft will enable the option on your account.

Individual Offerings

Just because you have chosen a plan with its specific inclusions and exclusions does not mean you cannot take on some extra products the business may require or even mix and match your subscriptions depending on the workforce you have.

Microsoft offer most of their applications on an individual basis. These offerings include:

  • Exchange Online
  • SharePoint Online
  • Skype for Business Cloud PBX
  • Customer Lock Box
  • Visio Pro
  • Project Online
  • PowerBI Pro
  • OneDrive for Business

Read more in our post about License Management.

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