So I’ve got a client (small company of 10 users, mostly mobile and three in the office) that wants to retire their server and move to ‘the cloud’. They already have office 365 Business Standard, and I was told they need to go to E3 to get sharepoint so they can move the server shares there and then manage them centrally. But as I was looking at e3 I found there’s Microsoft 365 e3 for $36 / mo and Office 365 e3 for $23.

Again, all they really want to gain is the ability for the central managed shares through sharepoint and to use their accounts as their logon / ‘microsoft account’.

Of course if there’s anything compelling to one or the other, I’d like to hear!

Any input or clarification is much appreciated.

Hi Jamal,

Microsoft 365 A3 applies to education organization, and Microsoft 365 E3 applies to enterprise. The practicality of these two products is different.

If you would like to refer to the horizontal comparison between different plans of Microsoft 365 Education and Microsoft 365 Business, for your reference:

Compare Microsoft 365 Education Plans;

Compare Microsoft 365 Enterprise Plans.

And I noticed that you’ve posted this thread under **Microsoft 365 Apps (Office 365 Business)**category, I would like to confirm with you that whether you want to compare Office 365 A3 and Office 365 E3?

Compare Office 365 and Microsoft 365.

If so, you can refer to Office 365 service families and plans. Office 365 A3 belongs to Office 365 Education, Office 365 E3 belongs to Office 365 Enterprise. See Service availability within each Office 365 plan (Office 365 for Business/Enterprise/Government) and Service availability for each plan (Office 365 Education).

Best regards,

Madoc

Hi Dhiraj,

Let me clarify the difference between Office 365 Enterprice E3 and E5. 

You can refer to the links below to check if it helps:

https://products.office.com/en-us/business/compare-more-office-365-for-business-plans

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office-365-plan-options.aspx

In short, E3 uses Exchange plan 1 and E5 uses Exchange plan 2. E5 includes all the features in E3 and add more features, such as Advanced Thread Protection, PSTN conferencing to facilitate Skype for Business meetings, and Cloud PBX services to give you cloud-based call management (placing, receiving and transferring calls on multiple devices).

Let me know if you have any other queries.

Thanks,

Lance