Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard or Premium: which licence suits your business?

The difference between Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard and Premium comes down to two steps. Business Basic gives you business email, Teams, 1 TB of OneDrive and the web and mobile versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Business Standard adds the installed desktop apps. Business Premium is Standard plus security and management: Microsoft Intune for your devices, Entra ID P1 with Conditional Access, Defender for Business on your laptops and Purview to label and protect company data.

The short guide: if someone only works in the browser or on a phone, Basic is enough. If someone needs Word, Excel and Outlook on their PC, you end up with Standard. If you want to secure laptops, sign-ins and company data centrally, Premium is the plan. For most SMEs with their own laptops and people working from home, that last case applies. All three are designed for organisations with up to 300 users.

What do Basic, Standard and Premium have in common?

The three plans share a substantial foundation, and it grew this summer. Since June, Microsoft has been rolling out extensions in phases, which should be in place everywhere by early August. Once they land, all three include:

• A 100 GB mailbox per user, up from 50 GB until this summer.
• 1 TB of OneDrive storage per user, plus shared SharePoint storage of 1 TB with an extra 10 GB per licence.
• Teams for chat, calls and meetings with up to 300 participants.
• Copilot Chat, which since this summer can use context from your own inbox and calendar.
• Baseline security: a spam and malware filter on your email, MFA through security defaults and simple mobile device management through Basic Mobility and Security.
• Link checking at the moment of clicking. Premium already had this through Defender for Office 365; Basic and Standard get it in this round of extensions.

What exactly was added and what you can do with it is covered in what you gained this summer.

Two more points. The plans are available with and without Teams; without Teams you licence it separately. And the 300-user limit does not apply per plan, but to all Business licences combined. If you have 250 Business Premium licences, Microsoft says you can add 50 more Business licences, from any of the plans.

Comparison table: Basic, Standard and Premium side by side

Business Basic: who is it enough for?

Business Basic suits staff who mainly email, meet in Teams and view or lightly edit documents. Think of the shop floor in manufacturing or logistics, or field staff who work on their phones.

Note two limitations. There is no Outlook, Word or Excel for PC or Mac. And with Basic you may only use the mobile apps on devices with a screen of up to 10.9 inches. That works fine on a phone or small tablet; to edit on a larger tablet you need Standard or Premium.

Business Standard: adding the desktop apps

Business Standard is Basic plus the full desktop apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote, and Access for PC. Each user may install them on five PCs or Macs, five tablets and five phones. You can also run webinars with registration through Teams.

Standard is a logical choice for a small office that relies heavily on Excel and Outlook, but where device security is handled in another way. What it does not include: no Intune, no Conditional Access, no endpoint security and no sensitivity labels. With Standard you also cannot use the apps on a shared virtual desktop, such as a remote desktop server. That requires shared computer activation, which Standard does not include.

Business Premium: what do you get on top?

Business Premium includes everything in Standard, plus a complete security and management layer:

• Microsoft Intune Plan 1: management of Windows, macOS, iOS and Android devices, with Windows Autopilot for rolling out new laptops and app protection on personal phones.
• Entra ID P1: Conditional Access, which lets you decide who may sign in under which conditions, for example only from a managed device.
• Defender for Business: security for laptops and PCs with detection and response (EDR) and automated investigation and remediation.
• Defender for Office 365 Plan 1: besides link checking, attachments are scanned before they reach the inbox.
• Purview Information Protection and DLP: sensitivity labels and rules that prevent, for example, Dutch citizen service numbers (BSN) from leaving the organisation by email or through shared files.
• Archiving: an archive mailbox that grows automatically up to 1.5 TB, and litigation hold, so email is retained even if someone deletes it.

Premium is also the plan for anyone working on a shared virtual desktop: it grants rights to Azure Virtual Desktop and supports shared computer activation. If you work on our Online Workspace, Business Premium is part of it.

Notable in the price round of 1 July 2026: Basic and Standard became more expensive, Premium did not. That has made the step from Standard to Premium smaller. More on this in our analysis of the price increase. Current prices per plan are on Microsoft 365 licences and prices.

Which plan suits which type of business?

• Freelancer or small team that mainly works online: Business Basic, or Standard as soon as you need the desktop apps.
• Office with its own laptops and people working from home: Business Premium. As soon as laptops leave the building, you want to be able to manage, encrypt and remotely wipe them, and decide from which devices someone can reach company data.
• Organisations with sensitive data, such as healthcare, law firms and accountancy: Business Premium, because of Conditional Access, sensitivity labels and DLP.
• Manufacturing, logistics and retail with a shop floor: a mix. Business Basic for staff who only need email and Teams, Premium for the office and management.
• Working on a remote desktop or virtual workspace: Business Premium, for the licensing reasons above.
• Growing beyond 300 users: you move to Enterprise licences, such as Microsoft 365 E3.

Can you mix the plans?

Yes, you choose per user. Microsoft adds one caveat: the security and management benefits of Premium only apply to users and devices covered by Premium. A director on Standard is therefore not licensed for Intune and Conditional Access, even if the rest of the team is on Premium. So choose by risk, not by job title: anyone with access to sensitive data, who works on a laptop outside the office or who has admin rights belongs on Premium.

When is it time to upgrade?

Signs that Basic or Standard is becoming too tight:

• Staff use personal phones for work email and you want to protect company data in those apps without managing the whole device.
• Laptops are used at home or on the road and you have no central view of updates, encryption and virus protection.
• You want to allow sign-ins only from company devices, or block sign-ins from certain countries. That requires Conditional Access.
• A customer, supply chain partner or insurer asks for demonstrable device security or a policy for sensitive data.
• Archives are filling up, even after the increase to 100 GB.
• You are moving to a shared virtual desktop.

It can also work the other way round: someone on Standard who never opens a desktop app can often move to Basic. The free licence check shows which plan fits each user. If you first want to know how your current settings stand, run the Microsoft 365 security check.

How we do it

We first look at what each user actually does, and only then at which plan fits. Often that is a mix, with Premium for everyone who works with laptops and sensitive data. If you want it to stay in good shape afterwards, with daily backup, MFA and support, you can have Microsoft 365 managed for €5.50 per user per month on top of your licence. You order the licences themselves through Microsoft 365 licences and prices.