Microsoft 365 Business Premium vs. Office 365 E3 – Which should you choose?
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Microsoft 365 offers a bundle of productivity services to renovate the traditional approaches used by small or large enterprises. These services help organizations to streamline work procedures and improve productivity in a seamless manner. As this service comes with various plans, it may get complex for you to choose suitable Microsoft 365 plans for your business. These plans can be considered a productivity suite that includes cloud-based office apps and collaboration tools. While planning to purchase any specific Microsoft 365 plan for your organization, you must think carefully about your business needs and desired results.
There are two popular plans used by many organizations, i.e., Microsoft 365 business Premium & Office 365 Enterprise or E3. If you are unable to find which plan is best suited for your organization, this guide will help you choose a reliable plan. However, both plans look similar, but it includes slightly different features that you should be aware to make a smart decision.
Microsoft 365 Business Premium Vs. Office 365 E3
Microsoft 365 Business Premium services are more focused on small and mid-size businesses. If you want services for larger corporations, it’s quite better to experience the Microsoft 365 E3 plan. Both these plans offer responsive digital safety programs and policies, but some slightly unique features stand them apart from one another.
Security is the foremost part of any business that requires continuous monitoring and regular updates. To prevent various types of cyber threats, both these plans follow different approaches to ensure the platform’s security. No matter which plans you adopt for your organization, you can protect your company’s IT infrastructure using both these plans. However, while comparing these plans, you will get a clear idea of which can be a reliable option for individual security solutions. If we talk about the differences, the Business Premium plan offers Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) to promote safe email links and detect cyber threats, which is unavailable for Office 365 plan users.
Each Microsoft plan includes an intended number of users to offer services in real-time. If you choose the Business Premium plan for your organization, it can only offer services for up to 300 users only. But using the E3 plan allows you to include more than 300 users in the specific plan. Hence, performing proper research before purchasing any plans for your organization is recommended.
This has become clear that each plan is unique with its own features. It depends on the user’s needs and desired results to simplify the selection of a reliable plan for the business.
- In Microsoft 365 E3 plan, you can create 45 menus by accessing the admin console, whereas the Business plan is only limited to 15.
- Microsoft E3 plan provides data storage of 100 GB mailbox whereas Business Premium offers 50 GB.
- Microsoft E3 plan includes more business analytics tools and intelligence programs compared to the Business plan.
If you want to use the services of the Business Premium plan, you need to purchase it for $22 a month, whereas the E3 plan costs organization ranges from $23 to $36 depending on the specific version.
Large companies follow these policies to control the working environment of user accounts. It can be considered a method of centralizing configuration settings that manages all the applications integrated with a specific domain. In general, these policies are not officially supported in Business plans. If you want to implement these policies, you need to use the Enterprise plan.
It might be possible that you get stuck at a certain point while using the services of the Microsoft 365 plan. In this case, you may need support to remove the interruptions that occurred in your system. If you purchase the Enterprise plan, you will get 24/7 support for all your issues. But the Premium plan provides support for only critical issues.
The Business Premium plan is recommended only if you need OneDrive storage of upto 1TB. To get unlimited OneDrive Storage, you must purchase the M365 E3 plan.
The Business plan can store only 50 GB of Outlook mailbox data, whereas the M365 Enterprise plan provides unlimited mailbox storage.
| Plan | Office 365 E3 | M365 Business Premium |
| Maximum Users | Unlimited | 300 |
| OneDrive Storage (per user) | Unlimited | 1 TB |
| Outlook Storage (per user) | 100 GB | 50 GB |
| App Locker | Yes | No |
| Anti-phishing | No | Yes |
| Group Policy Support | Yes | No |
| Advanced Threat Protection | No | Yes |
| eDiscovery | Yes | No |
| Microsoft Intune | No | Yes |
| Email & Calendar storage | 100 GB | 50 GB |
| Identity Management | No | Yes |
| 24/7 Support | All issues | Critical only |
| Operating System | Windows 10 Enterprise | Windows 10 Business |
Wrapping Up
Microsoft 365 subscriptions various versatile plans to improve the organization’s efficiency and market response. As an entrepreneur, you must adopt the upcoming trends to scale up your business. Microsoft 365 Enterprise and Business Premium are the two innovative plans that many organizations use to achieve their desired outcomes. An enterprise plan will be best if you are involved in small or mid-size companies and want to improve business operability. But if your organization deals with sensitive information, it’s quite better to use the M365 Business plan.
While dealing with bulk data, it is recommended to keep a backup of your mailbox data to prevent various cyber threats like email spoofing, phishing attacks, etc. One such innovative tool, Kernel Office 365 Backup & Restore, provides a backup of your private mailboxes, archive mailboxes, and Microsoft 365 groups. You can save the data backup in multiple formats such as PST, DOCX, DOC. Also, it provides an automated backup of your data using an inbuilt CSV file. In addition, it also offers the option to generate a backup for only required data.
