New Office 365 plans for small and midsized businesses

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Tim Tetrick

Hello Cloud Partners,

I’m excited to see the official release today of the new Office 365 plans for small and midsized businesses.  As I previewed in a blog post back in July, these new plans include three new offerings specifically designed to meet the needs of SMB customers.

To review, the new Office 365 plans for SMBs are:

  • Office 365 Business: The full Office applications—Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Publisher and OneDrive for Business cloud storage, which makes it easy to access, edit and share your documents across your Windows PC, Mac, iPad, Windows tablet and smartphone
  • Office 365 Business Essentials: The core cloud services for running your business—business class email and calendaring, Office Online, online meetings, IM, video conferencing, cloud storage and file sharing and much more.
  • Office 365 Business Premium: Get everything from both the Office 365 Business and Business Essentials plans.

Here is a high level comparison of features and functionality:

Office 365 plans for small and midsized businesses

For a more detailed look at features and functionality, and how the new plans compare with the Enterprise Plans (which remain the same), please see the Office 365 Service Descriptions, which have been recently updated to include the new plan lineup.

If your customers are currently on one of the previous SMB plans (Small Business, Small Business Premium or Midsize Business), you can visit the Message Center in the customer’s Office 365 admin center for more details on how the new plans will impact them.

If you are looking for more detailed information on the new plans, selling guidance, comparisons, transition plans, etc., here are some great resources specifically for partners: