Greetings all! I've been chatting with a person who works at a company with approx 40 users. At first they purchased M365 Business Standard licenses - then they switched all the users to Office 365 E3 as they thought it was required for an Accounting application - it wasn't.

So I feel that they will do better with M365 Business Premium as a good fit with SMB's - yes that will reduce that mailbox size from 100GB to 50GB but they're all well below 50GB and have archiving turned on.

Did a lot of research...comparing the features...also had a look here - mind you dated July 2023: https://m365maps.com/matrix.htm#010001000000000000000

Now the costs are comparable....as purchased those O365 E3 licenses before those recent license changes.

So I'm trying to point out the advantages of switching to M365 Business Premium.

My understanding is that M365 BP provides advanced security features and better device/app management and provides for a less complex environment to support. Thinking of their needs also on that side as their current IT folks are new to M365 (no comment!) ;-) ....so I am not always available to assist.

M365 Business Premium will also provide their Compliance and Governance needs when they're ready to go there.

Am I missing something here? Any there any other pro's associated with that M365 Business Premium subscription vs O365 E3?

Many thanks in advance!

Cheers!

I'm sure you have all seen this exact scenario far too many times.. but the time has come for our company to talk about licensing/changing licenses etc.

I took over the environment not too long ago, so I've had my work cut out for me trying to figure out why we went with certain licensing structures. One of the big ones is Office E3 instead of Business Premium. To me, Business Premium is a no brainer, but no one here can tell me the reason that we went with Office E3. I get the classic "there is a reason.. we just can't remember.."

I wanted some opinions of people who have made this change. I've read multiple threads about it, I've looked at the M365 maps and feature matrix, and I've talked to a couple reps that have been helpful but did not know the exact information I needed. So I'm going to lay out the specific concerns:

• We require litigation holds. I have not gotten a straight answer of whether or not Business Premium offers litigation holds. Some people say it doesn't since it's an Exchange P1 license, some people say that it does. Does anyone know which of these is truly the case?

• I understand we will be moving from Sharepoint P2 to P1, and thus losing DLP. That being said, Business Premium includes Defender and Purview, which comes with DLP. Has anyone had experience with this switch? Does the Purview DLP replace/make up for losing the Sharepoint-specific DLP?

• From what I've seen, Apps for Business don't support GPO. I'm not particularly worried about this, as we don't do much with the apps. Business Premium does come with Intune though, and I'd imagine that any settings I'd be worried about with GPO would be mostly doable with Intune. Has anyone run into specific issues that they feel like they've lost because of that loss of GPO support?

I feel more comfortable hearing from people who actually do the work and deal with the consequences rather than from people who would love to sell me Business Premium licenses, then force me to get some add-ons that would put us at a higher cost than we would have been if we stuck with Office E3.

Thanks in advance!

I'm concerned about changing from E3 to Business Premium for the users.

How does that work exactly? Need a little ELI5 please.

Hi All,

Just had a long talk with our CSP rep. They mentioned that Microsoft is incentivising all clients to ditch their E3 license for Business Premium. And as a Silver partners we would be rewarded an additional $1.50 for each mailbox a month if we bring over them from E3 to Business premium, they both seemingly cost $20.

Doing further research seems that clients that use a remote server and office applications on would not be a good fit. Since premium would not allow office to run on remote servers, while E3 does. Also the mailbox restrictions (E3 is 100GB but BP is 50 GB).

Our other concern was the writebackup password sync, which works in E3. They advised us this feature would be exactly the same.

Having heard this we are likely going to be switching around 150 existing licenses of E3 to BP solely for this incentive, granted they dont use application on terminal server and they have a mailbox less than 50GB.

Still this move makes us a bit nervous, wondering if anyone here has done this or any other knowledge to add.

Thanks.

We are currently in the process to move all our users from office E3 to M365 E3 but given the cost difference, we were thinking to max out on business premium licenses and rest on M365 E3.

What are the major differences or challenges you faced while doing so?

1. Does ediscovery and litigation hold still works compared to office e3?

2. Does the end users notice any difference? Does apps have to be reinstalled on each device or does it happen automagically once the license is assigned?

3. Does it affect overall sharepoint space?

Just wanted to see what everyone faced during the change! Microsoft doesnt provide a lot of granular level difference on the documentation.

Hello everybody,

we are currently evaluating M365 Business Premium instead of our Office 365 E3 License (and an added EMS E3) since we are a small business with around 70 Users.

Looking at both Licenses in most of the features are still included but the difference between the plans in Sharepoint and Exchange raises some concern, since i could not find documentation regarding feature differences from MS.

Looking at 3rd Party Websites, I see that there are differences in space, the search function and DLP.

The main point of concern is some small workflow which is build on top of Sharepoint with (IIRC) PowerAutomate based on Lists (somewhere i read this wouldnt be possible anymore with MBP). Is there a difference in features which could possibly break the workflow?

Also, since it is the first time switching between licenses - are there any precautions to take before switching to reduce data loss or downtime?

Thanks in advance and have a nice day!

Good Morning Everyone!

I'm dealing with licenses of my company, I'm very new to my job and even more to this Office 365 thing, so I'm having a hard time to understand some of the benefits of each type.

2 questions:

1 - Is there a post that have a comparison between the diferent types of licenses? Its very confusing on the microsoft websites and those spreadsheets online.

2 - Is Office 365 E3 vs Microsoft 365 Business Standard + Exchange Online Plan 2 a viabal thing to do? because, from I've understand, The E3 just have more a little more security and the benefits on the storage capacity (which would come from a Plan 2). I'm asking because the E3 one is much more expansive (about 200BRL) vs just paying the other two (about 130 BRL) [just to clarify, we are a company with about 200 employes, so the 300 max account from the Bussines licenses insent a problem in the short term]

Sorry for the broken english (Brazilian here), anything that wasn't made clear you guys can ask me in the comments.

thanks for the help!

It feels like Microsoft has done their best to make understanding the pros and cons of these licenses as convoluted as possible. Does anyone here have any good resources for comparing these? Looking specifically for some comparisons between the security and management features the licenses offer.

Hello

Lets pretend i only want Office365 functionality. MS365 Business Premium is a little cheaper then Office E3.

What is missing in Business Premium compared to Office365 E3?
I've been trying to compare some matrixes, but with the name changes it gets even more complicated to find the difference and if its still valid.

Will there be anything the users will notice on their devices?

Did some testing, and I have only noticed that Windows 11 is changed to Windows 11 Businss.

What about Microsoft 365 apps? Will they need a reactivation?

Hello, i can't quite figure out if in terms of Intune, data protection and other security features Microsoft 365 Business Premium is any weaker than Enterprise Mobility + Security E3 license. Could someone please explain? I am aware, that EMS E3 doesn't contain Exchange online, Sharepoint etc, rather wanting to know, if EMS E3 could be replaced with MS365 Business Premium and keeping the same level of functionalities.

We have a customer that wants to move from E3 to business premium, all devices currently run Office apps for enterprise, when i switch the licenses, will office stop working or will it downgrade itself automatically to apps for business?

My company is thinking of switching from Microsoft E3 to Business Premium. Our experience with Microsoft support has been quite good. When we open a call, we almost immediately get a call back and in most cases they resolve the issue or answer the question quickly. If we move to Business Premium can we expect a change in the service level?

Greetings all! I've been chatting with a person who works at a company with approx 40 users. At first they purchased M365 Business Standard licenses - then they switched all the users to Office 365 E3 as they thought it was required for an Accounting application - it wasn't.

So I feel that they will do better with M365 Business Premium as a good fit with SMB's - yes that will reduce that mailbox size from 100GB to 50GB but they're all well below 50GB and have archiving turned on.

Did a lot of research...comparing the features...also had a look here - mind you dated July 2023: https://m365maps.com/matrix.htm#010001000000000000000

Now the costs are comparable....as purchased those O365 E3 licenses before those recent license changes.

So I'm trying to point out the advantages of switching to M365 Business Premium.

My understanding is that M365 BP provides advanced security features and better device/app management and provides for a less complex environment to support. Thinking of their needs also on that side as their current IT folks are new to M365 (no comment!) ;-) ....so I am not always available to assist.

M365 Business Premium will also provide their Compliance and Governance needs when they're ready to go there.

Am I missing something here? Any there any other pro's associated with that M365 Business Premium subscription vs O365 E3?

Many thanks in advance!

Cheers!

Hi everyone,

we've got a customer with 175x Office 365 E3 licenses (NOT Microsoft 365 E3), because they need their office apps to be managed by group policies and don't want to switch to Intune to manage their devices as they already have an endpoint management in use.

So this basically means that they are stuck with Apps for Enterprise. What would they miss if they combine single Apps for Enterprise plans with Business Basic plans? This would save them some money and I haven't seen anything relevant that would be missing, but maybe I am just overlooking something really important.

Also, as they are in the EU, they need to purchase Teams seperately for $5 anyway as Teams is not part of Office 365 plans anymore, so we will be purchasing Business Basic anyway.

I am involved with an organization with about 60 licences of business or business premium. Everything is great, but the other day I was wondering if there was something I could benefit from with going to e3 or e5.

I’m missing something. I see a few extra things, but I dont see enough reasons/value in moving for the price tag that comes with it. What am I missing? I would have thought getting to the sub with the full office programs would be the step up, and then more features would increment pricing. A full out 2x+ price, I am surely missing something.

thanks all!

Hello together,

is there a difference in the IntunePortal when using a Microsoft 365 Business Premium or a Microsoft 365 E3 Licence?

Like Autopilot feature?

Like Installing Apps?

Like Import the PC only via BusinessStore and not through Intune Portal?

Has the E3 Licence more Features because of Enterprise or ist it all the same? IF there is a difference between the two Licences, where can i find out what the differences are?

Best Regards,

Phil

I am looking to migrate a company that has been on Office 365 E3 + Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (Plan 1) to Microsoft 365 Business Premium.

Business Premium included Defender for O365 P1 so that is covered as-is.

Looking at specific things one may lose by going this route seem to be primarily around Office 365 Apps for Enterprise vs Business versions. Some specifics in Excel that I will have to investigate with a couple Excel power users, but otherwise the big one I see is loss of GPO or Cloud Policy support. Does this mean Apps for Business will ignore all registry keys related to configuring office, or does it only ignore them if they are in the "Policies" key and it would honor values set into the app-specific keys?

Outside of differences in the Office apps, the only other major difference I am seeing is in mailbox limit of 50GB vs 100GB, but there is still auto-expanding (unlimited) archiving in Business Premium, so not too concerned about the primary mailbox size.

The on-prem CALs you get with E series SKUs are not needed in there environment.

Anything else I am missing as potential gotchas or things to be aware of for someone who has made this transition?

Hello,
I was wondering if anyone knows the differences between M365 E3 license and M365 BP license when it comes to Intune? Users who have the BP license act normally with Intune (ie. All appropriate apps installed, Show their devices enrolled in all devices, Hello for Business disabled on enrollment). For users who have M365 E3, it takes them through Hello for Business to set a pin, none of the apps install and their devices don't show up as enrolled in All devices but do when I go to their user. Does anybody know why this is happening?

Thank you,

Hi,

Any MSFT licensing experts out there?

Currently using MSFT M365 E3 + EMS-E5 + MDE P2.

With the recent announcement that E5 Security add-on is a thing for Business Premium (Microsoft 365 E5 Security is now available as an add-on to Microsoft 365 Business Premium | Microsoft Community Hub), this combo becomes very attractive and is more cost effective.

Trying to wrap my head around what are the shortfalls, I suspect there is no Windows Server CALs? Can anyone think of anything else..