Microsoft 365 Pricing Changes Coming Soon

Microsoft has announced pricing changes for their Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) solutions. The first substantive pricing update since Office 365 was launched a decade ago, this new pricing reflects the increased value that Microsoft 365 has delivered to its customers. Microsoft has assured partners and customers the pricing increase reflects their commitment to develop and improve these solutions in the areas of communications, collaboration, security, compliance, AI, and automation.

Evolving with the Worlds Changing Needs

Since the pandemic began Microsoft went into hyperdrive mode creating new applications to help the world work from home. They did this by expanding the features of many of their applications in the following areas of continued improvement and focus.

Communication and Collaboration

Microsoft Teams is the next generation of work collaboration, bringing together people, conversations, content, and tools to help teams connect and get more done. Microsoft launched Microsoft Teams in 2017 as part of Office 365 and has seen over 300 new features including Together mode, background effects, large gallery view, raise hand, live reactions, breakout rooms, live captions with speaker attribution, and Fluid components—just to name a few.

Microsoft also introduced a new category of collaborative applications in Teams designed for hybrid work that deeply integrate with Power Platform, Whiteboard, Lists, Planner, Shifts, Forms and SharePoint. Companies like Adobe, Atlassian, Salesforce, SAP ServiceNow, and Workday have built apps that deeply integrate with Teams bringing business processes and functions directly into the flow of work. Along with Teams, more collaboration features are

Security & Compliance

The cybersecurity landscape has changed. Attackers are becoming more sophisticated, and they’re leveraging new attack techniques and technologies. With so many digital assets and complex IT environments to protect, organizations need to find ways to stay secure while also doing business.

As Microsoft 365 has been enhanced and developed, it has helped organizations stay secure with attack surface reduction capabilities like data loss prevention (DLP) for email and documents, sensitivity labels, message encryption, and eDiscovery capabilities. At the same time, it’s designed to help them respond to the increasing regulatory requirements of Content Search, eDiscovery, and core Litigation Hold. Built-in mobile device management (MDM) and other management tools like Microsoft Endpoint Manager help admins support remote and hybrid workforces.

AI & Automation

Over the past decade, Microsoft has worked to infuse AI capabilities into every part of Microsoft 365—from productivity and collaboration applications like Office and Power Platform, to the operating system powering Windows 10 devices. Today’s world is increasingly digital, fast-paced, and global. And users are constantly juggling multiple priorities at work and home; we want to help them achieve more.

AI capabilities have been built into every major product across Microsoft 365 to help users be better writers, designers, presenters—to help do their best work together with others.

What’s Next?

The pricing changes will go into effect on March 1, 2022, for the following commercial products: Microsoft 365 Business Basic (from $5 to $6 per user), Microsoft 365 Business Premium (from $20 to $22), Office 365 E1 (from $8 to $10), Office 365 E3 (from $20 to $23), Office 365 E5 (from $35 to $38), and Microsoft 365 E3 (from $32 to $36). These increases will apply globally with local market adjustments for certain regions. There are no changes to pricing for education and consumer products at this time.

If you want to review all the great features of Office 365,  you can learn more here.