by Brett
Office 365 is packaged in a variety of ways. The primary offerings are:
- The E plans (E1 – E4) are designed for businesses of 1 to tens of thousands. Microsoft calls this range “midsized business and Enterprise.”
- The P1 plan for Small Business and Professionals is targeted to businesses of 25 people but allows up to a maximum of 50. This plan is attractive at $6 per seat, but comes with special considerations. See this article on the P1 plan before you make a decision.
In addition, there are specialized plans for education, government and Kiosk plans. Kiosk plans are designed for situations where you have multiple users on a single workstation, like on a shop floor or other environment where workers move around a facility, but need to be in the information flow.
To get a solid idea of the differences in the E plans, you have to review a number of documents, starting with the general list of plans as shown here. The plan descriptions don’t say you actually get Exchange Online, instead you get “Email, calendar, contacts, personal archive, and 25GB mailbox storage.” So some translation is needed.
Key Feature*
The language in this column is from Microsoft’s plan overview
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Versions Available
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Translation
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| Advance administration capabilities, active directory integration, and 24/7 IT Administrator support |
E1-E4 |
- All plans come with access to an administrative website that has advanced features.
- Remote PowerShell is supported for Exchange. There are even some Office 365 administrative PowerShell commands.
- You can use the directory synchronization tool with all plans (but not P1).
- All plans come with support (but not P1 which has “community support”)
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| Email, Calendar, contacts, personal archive, and 25 GB mailbox storage |
E1-E4 |
Exchange Online |
| Sites to share documents and information |
E1-E4 |
SharePoint Online |
| Instant messaging, video calls and online meetings |
E1-E4 |
Lync Online |
| Premium anti-spam and antivirus filtering – Microsoft Forefront® Online Protection for Exchange and Microsoft Forefront® Security for SharePoint |
E1-E4 |
Yeah! Self-explanatory |
| License rights to access on-premise deployment of Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and Lync Server |
E1-E4 |
You don’t have to buy an access license for Office 365 users to access on premise content in hybrid (used to be called co-existence) environment. |
| Document viewing and light editing |
E2-E4 |
This is a reference to Office Web Apps, which is part of SharePoint Online. In effect this says you cannot use OWA with the E1 plan. That is incorrect. You can view documents with the E1 plan, but you are not licensed to edit. For the real info, see the SharePoint Online service description |
| Complete and full-featured set of office productivity applications: Office Professional Plus |
E3-E4 |
E3 and E4 subscriptions include the right download and install Office Pro Plus (A high end version of Office 2010 that is usually only available via licensing agreement) This is new and worth checking into. |
| Publish Access databases, share Excel workbooks, build InfoPath forms, and share Visio process and diagrams |
E3-E4 |
SharePoint Online for E3-E4 includes Access, Excel, and Visio services and InfoPath form services. If you’re a system integrator / ISV, this should get your attention. (Also, note that P1 includes Access services.) |
| Advanced archive capabilities, unlimited email storage and hosted voicemail |
E3-E4 |
Advanced archive capabilities is a sideways reference to Rich Coexistence with Exchange Online. Voice mail requires on premise equipment. See the Exchange Online Service Description for details. |
| Enterprise voice capabilities to replace or enhance a PBX |
E4 |
Lync Online comes with the rights to deploy Lync 2010 Server on premise. See the Lync Online Service Description for details |
BPOS users will be moved to E1
BPOS users will be moved to the E1 plan ($10 US). This is the same price as the current BPOS-S plan, and offers a huge upgrade by virtue of being moved to Office 365. There is a website dedicated to the topic.. See this webcast as well.
Can you mix different E licenses within the same account?
It is my understanding that you can. You cannot however mix P1 with E licenses.
How can I be sure the feature I want is the Plan I’m interested in?
Your best bet is to carefully read the service descriptions.