Welcome to Microsoft licensing, where the rules never stay the same, and the names constantly change. Last year, Microsoft renamed and relaunched their business level empowering, adding a new Business Premium option. For $20 per user, you have two monthly options: Office 365 E3 and Microsoft 365 Business Premium.
You may want to change your license if you don’t use Microsoft’s phone functionality, have fewer than 300 users, and have E3 licensing. Besides the apps offered by E3, Business Premium also provides a few extras. With Business Premium, you receive (in addition to the apps you already have) Threat Protection, Identity Management, Intune, Autopilot, Windows 10 Pro and much more.
Microsoft 365 and Azure are both excellent options when your business decides to use them. Congratulations. We think you’ve made the right choice. Your choice of M365 now depends on what plan you choose. M365 offers many options, but IT Support Guys generally manages Business Premium and E3 (enterprise) offerings.
E5 and Business Standard are two other plans with their advantages. Yet, we feel that looking at Microsoft 365 Business Premium vs E3 provides the most comprehensive set of features that any organization could want.
In this post, we will explore how Business Premium differs from Microsoft’s first enterprise offering. You may find that neither offer is right for you. Instead, choose the business standard plan, which is less expensive, or select the immersive E5 program, which is more costly.
Microsoft 365 E3 is referred to in this post as “E3”. The new E3 plan differs from the legacy E3 service, referred to as “Microsoft Office E3.”
We’d be glad to answer the questions you might have about any of these plans or if you want to speak with one of our tech experts about which M365 package will move your business forward the most.
What is Microsoft 365?
As Microsoft’s subscriber-based productivity suite, Microsoft 365 promises to offer all of your favourite Office applications plus world-class cloud capabilities backed by secure data storage.
There are numerous packages available for both home and business use with the Microsoft Office 365 application. Microsoft offers a wide range of features and prices, so you can choose the package that’s right for you.
In 2010, Microsoft introduced Azure, a cloud computing platform designed to solve problems including storage, computation, and data analysis. Azure offers a range of cloud computing services, including SaaS (Software as a Service), IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), and PaaS (Platform as a Service).
By using cloud services, businesses can reduce storage costs, boost backup and disaster recovery capabilities and centralize data to share information more efficiently.
How does Business Premium work?
In addition to Microsoft 365 Business Basic and Business Standard, Microsoft 365 Business Premium is its top offering for small to medium-sized businesses.
OneDrive users will have access to 50 GB of storage during the free trial, and the Business Premium version will have 1 TB of storage. The number of Business Premium licenses available to a company before purchasing Enterprise plans is limited to 300.
What is E3?
The Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3 plan is the second-most feature-packed plan after the Microsoft 365 Enterprise E5.
The E3 package includes unlimited OneDrive storage and mailbox storage. E3 plans can have a total number of users. Security features are also top-notch.
What is the difference between Business Premium and E3? A Microsoft Intune subscription-based service
As M365’s preferred plans, Business Premium and E3 offer many features that enable you to get the most out of the cloud.
Among the features that make these plans elite is Microsoft Intune, which controls mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops. Moreover, managers can add additional security measures to non-company devices and set access restrictions for remote workers.
Intune is a game-changer because of this; why?
When setting up a new computer or smartphone, people typically spend a lot of time customizing settings and restoring files.
These days are over, thanks to Intune’s feature that lets you create a default image for deployment. Intune allows you to start using your computer right away without wasting time setting it up.
The combination of Intune and Azure Active Directory eliminates the need for owning and maintaining servers. Through top-of-the-line identity management and endpoint management in the cloud, Intune and Azure AD make on-premise identity and endpoint management obsolete.
Intune eliminates server hassles and saves time and money you can use elsewhere. Azure AD is still compatible with Intune if you already have a server at your location. Azure sync provides a hybrid setup that combines on-premises and cloud servers, giving your IT an ultimate choice, merging your servers on-premises and in the cloud, giving you the best of both worlds.
How does Business Premium differ from E3? And what else?
Beyond Intune, other features set Business Premium and E3 apart from less expensive plans.
Microsoft’s best-in-class communicative tools, Teams and SharePoint online, are included in both plans.
Litigation Hold and eDiscovery are included in Business Premium and E3 to protect your business from losing data critical to any legal proceedings. However, Business Premium may run into storage issues if Litigation Hold is used to freeze too much data.
Right here is the chart demonstrating the features of Office 365 plans
Plan | M365 Business Premium | M365 E3 |
---|---|---|
Price per user, per month | $20 | $32 |
User limit | 300 | Unlimited |
Outlook storage | 50 GB | Unlimited |
OneDrive storage | 1 TB | Unlimited |
Microsoft Teams | Yes | Yes |
SharePoint | Yes | Yes |
Intune | Yes | Yes |
Litigation Hold | Yes | Yes |
eDiscovery | Yes | Yes |
Microsoft Defender | Yes | No |
Advanced Threat Analysis | No | Yes |
Device Guard | No | Yes |
Credential Guard | No | Yes |
App Locker | No | Yes |
Enterprise Data Protection | No | Yes |
ECAL Suite | No | Yes |
Office 365 through Remote Access | No | Yes |
Azure Active Directory | Yes | Yes |
Azure Active Directory Premium | No | Yes |
Check out what E3 is missing with Business Premium!
Features of Office 365
Protection/Security
As a result of its price increase, E3 has an expansive set of security features. Azure Active Directory comes with Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA), Credential Guard, App Locker, and Windows Information Protection (WIP), as well as the full version of Azure Active Directory. With email encryption from E3, encrypting emails is easy. Microsoft or business accounts need to open sensitive information, ensuring the data is accessible only to the intended recipients.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (before Advanced Threat Protection) is the only feature included in the Business Premium service.
The following features are just a few you will get.
Aware Traffic Analysis is a tool that analyzes the traffic entering and leaving your network, diagnosing the behaviour of entities within your organization. When anything appears suspicious, ATA will alert you if any user or other party has access to your data.
Authentication credentials are protected with Credential Guard using virtualized security. Only the software that needs them has access to them. Data is stored in a secure, isolated location to reduce the possibility that credentials are stolen.
Management can control access to executable files and installer files by using AppLocker. Users are a significant cause of security breaches, so you protect yourself internally by not allowing them access.
Due to Windows Information Protection, users will be protected from accidental data leaks via email, social media, and other apps. Before confirming the action, WIP alerts users that sharing or disclosing work information will take place. As employees become more remote, this protection becomes more critical.
As an added benefit, a business can deactivate its license while maintaining the employee’s archive. With Microsoft Azure Active Directory, you can monitor and manage your entire cloud environment. Among the features available in the full version are group access management, advanced security reports, multi-factor authentication with conditional access, and more.
It can stop malicious links and attachments before they enter your environment with Business Premium’s Microsoft Defender. As well as detecting malicious files and links, Defender identifies malicious links in SharePoint, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams.
With Microsoft Defender, your business is protected to a large extent in the cloud. The most comprehensive protection Microsoft can offer requires an enterprise plan.
Due to E3’s advanced security features, organizations can carefully balance which employees have access to which functions in this streamlined, safe cloud environment.
Additional features of Office 365 for revolutionizing your IT
If security is not as important to you, you might be interested in some other options E3 offers that Business Premium does not.
Among the great benefits of E3 is its remote desktop access to the Microsoft Office suite, which means you can deploy the productivity suite to your company’s shared computers.
E3 comes with the ability to activate shared computers remotely as well. All users can continue working on their shared computers through Remote Desktop Services.
You can protect shared data by using Azure rights management for external parties. Email protected files to another company, and the protection will remain.
Microsoft Azure rights management is imperative for compliance as well as eDiscovery and litigation hold.
As a result of E3, you are further protected against data loss (DLP). You can use DLP to identify and prevent private, proprietary, or customer data from being shared within your organization. DLP will display a warning message through “deep content analysis” and keyword matching when users share flagged data.
Excel PowerPivot and PowerQuery are enterprise-only features, as is Infopath, which provides form distribution and submission. Enterprise-level archiving is also restricted to Exchange.
As well as these, several E3 features are already present, and there will be more adding as time goes on. Be sure to contact ITSG before deciding if you need any of the features listed above.
Conclusion
You get everything you need to manage and grow your business using Microsoft 365 Business Premium. All our customers benefit from it, so we recommend it.
However, safety dern companies, safety and security are param E3 may be your best choice if you handle sensitive data or have stringent compliance regulations.
Choosing between these options may not be as simple as it sounds. If your company has more than 300 employees, you may have to make the decision yourself.
No matter your choice, ensure that you make the right decision for your business and secure the features it needs. We are eager to assist and answer your questions regarding the M365 plan selection by phone or chat!