It’s not long since we heard about Microsoft’s public roadmap for Office 365. Today we learn a little more about the new plans that will be launching October. Aimed specifically at small to medium-sized businesses, these are packages that are perfect for operations comprising up to 250 people.
The new plans will be available from October 1 this year, and will ultimately replace the existing SMB offerings — Small Business, Small Business Premium and Midsize Business. As Microsoft is in the habit of giving one year’s notice to customers of changes, the new packages will not affect existing customers in their first renewal data after October 1 2015.
The three new plans are Office 365 Business, Office 365 Business Essentials, and Office 365 Business Premium. Office 365 Business brings subscribers Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Publisher, and 1TB of OneDrive for Business cloud storage. Office 365 Business Essentials is a cloud-based offering that includes email and calendaring, Office Online, online meetings, IM, video conferencing, cloud storage, and file sharing. The Premium bundle includes all of these things. A full breakdown of what each package includes can be found on the Office Blog.
Office 365 Business is priced at $8.25 per user per month, Office 365 Business Essentials is $5, and Office 365 Business Premium is $12.50. When current plans come to an end, Small Business will find Office 365 Business Essentials is the replacement, while current Small Business Premium and Midsize Business users will migrate to Office 365 Business Premium
Further reading: Microsoft, Office 365
