I don’t know about you, but I didn’t get into IT to become a licensing consultant.

Here’s the thing though — picking the right plan matters. Pay too little and you miss out on features your business actually needs. Pay too much and you’re burning cash on stuff you’ll never use. Let’s cut through the noise.

The Three That Actually Matter for Small Business

Microsoft has a lot of plans. There are enterprise plans, education plans, frontline worker plans, non-profit plans… it goes on. But for a typical small business — say, 2 to 50 employees — there are really only three you should be looking at:

Microsoft 365 Business Basic ($9.70 NZD/user/month) Microsoft 365 Business Standard ($20.20 NZD/user/month) Microsoft 365 Business Premium (~$35.60 NZD/user/month) Let’s break them down.

Business Basic — The Essentials

This is the entry point. For about $9.70 per person per month you get:

• Email via Outlook (50GB per user)
• OneDrive storage (1TB per user)
• Microsoft Teams (chat, video calls, meetings)
• SharePoint (shared file storage)
• Web and mobile versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint

What you don’t get is the desktop versions of Office. No installed Word, no Excel on your actual computer. Just the web versions.

This plan works if your team is happy working in a browser. Some businesses genuinely are. But in my experience, most people want the full desktop apps. They want Excel with all the features, Outlook on their taskbar, and Word that doesn’t need an internet connection to open.

If you’ve got a couple of staff and they just need email, file storage, and Teams, this might be all you need. But if anyone needs to work on complex Excel spreadsheets or use Outlook offline, you’re going to hit limits fast.

Business Standard — The Sweet Spot

For about $22.20 per person per month — double the Basic plan — you get everything above plus:

• Desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote
• Everything installs and runs locally on your computer
• Works offline (you don’t need the internet to open and edit files)

This is where most small businesses should be. You get the full Office experience everyone is used to, cloud file storage, email, Teams — the lot.

For the extra 12 ish dollars per user per month over Basic, you get the actual Office apps. That’s a no-brainer for almost every business.

Business Premium — When You Need the Extras

At about $35.60 per user/month, you get everything in Standard plus:

• Intune (device management — manage laptops, phones, and tablets)
• Entra ID P1 (identity and access management — conditional access, MFA controls)
• Azure Information Protection (control who can open, forward, or print sensitive files)
• Advanced threat protection (safer email, anti-phishing)

This is where it gets interesting — and where most small businesses overpay.

If you’re a business with 5 employees and you’ve got one shared laptop in the office, you almost certainly do not need Intune. You don’t need conditional access policies. You don’t need AIP.

But if you’ve got staff working from home on their own devices, or you handle sensitive data (customer info, financial records, health data), or you’re in a regulated industry, then Premium starts making sense. Intune lets you enforce security policies on every device that accesses your data. Entra ID lets you control who can log in and from where.

If you are choosing this level you really need a dedicated IT support person at the very least. Managing Intune, Entra/Azure is a beast and it takes a person working with it full time to understand it.

Side Quest: The Microsoft Licensing Treadmill

Here’s something that grinds my gears. Microsoft keeps changing plan names, shuffling features between tiers, and making it harder to compare. Features that were in Business Standard get moved to Premium. New plan names appear. Old ones get retired. It’s a deliberate strategy to keep you slightly confused so you just pick a plan and stop asking questions.

Don’t play that game. Know what you’re paying for. If you don’t use Intune, don’t pay for Intune. Downgrade.

So Which One Should You Pick?

Here’s my quick and dirty guide:

If your team just needs email, file storage, and web-based Office: → Business Basic

If your team needs the full desktop Office apps (Word, Excel, Outlook, etc.): → Business Standard

If you have remote staff, handle sensitive data, or need to control who accesses what: → Business Premium

For most small businesses I’d say the answer is Business Standard. It’s the plan where nothing important is missing and you’re not paying for enterprise features you’ll never touch.

Hidden Costs Nobody Talks About

A few things to watch for:

It’s per user, not per device. If someone has a desktop, a laptop, and a phone, that’s still one license. That’s actually good news. But if you’ve got 10 employees and only 5 computers, you still need 10 licenses if all 10 people need email and file access.

Domain name required. You probably want email that’s you@yourbusiness.co.nz, not yourbusiness.onmicrosoft.com. That means you need a domain, which is an extra ~$15-20/year. Worth it for the professionalism alone. In my humble opinion this is one of the things that turns me away from a business. Instead of battler@myplumbing.co.nz they expect me to email myplumbing@gmail.com. That’s a deal breaker for me.

Migration takes longer than you think. If you’re moving from Gmail or another provider, budget for a weekend or two of setting things up properly. Don’t try to do it on a Monday morning.

You’ll almost certainly need help setting it up. Intune and Entra are powerful but they’re not simple. If you’re going Premium, factor in some setup help from an IT person. Even if it’s just a few hours to get the basics configured. Even better, keep them on hand for any changes you need to make, I can’t see someone fighting fires with their biz coming home and expecting to know what to do with Intune and or Entra.

The Bottom Line

Don’t overthink it and don’t overpay. Most businesses need Business Standard, a few can get away with Basic, and Premium is for businesses that actually need the security features.

And whatever you pick, make sure you’re actually using what you’re paying for. I’ve seen businesses on the Premium plan for “the security” and then never configure a single Intune policy. You’re just lighting money on fire at that point.

Need help deciding or want a checklist for setting up your chosen plan? I’ve put together a companion guide on Patreon that walks you through the decision process step by step. Check it out here.