How to Buy Microsoft 365 Business: Package Guide

"Office 365" is the name people still search for, but Microsoft retired it in 2020. The business plans are now branded Microsoft 365, and the buying decision has two parts: which plan, and who you buy it from. Get the first wrong and you overpay or under-protect; get the second wrong and you own every configuration problem yourself. This guide settles both.

Which Office 365 business package should you buy?

Microsoft 365 has three business-tier plans: Business Basic (£4.60), Business Standard (£9.60) and Business Premium (£16.90) per user per month, ex VAT on an annual commitment (Microsoft 365 plans). The right one depends on two questions: do staff need desktop Office apps installed, and do you handle regulated or sensitive data?

The simplest decision first: do your people need Word, Excel and Outlook installed on their machines, not just in a browser? If yes, you need Standard or Premium. If web and mobile apps are enough, Basic may suffice. The second decision: do you hold sensitive client data or carry compliance obligations? If yes, Premium's security toolset is the right call.

All three include Teams, Exchange email with 50GB mailboxes, 1TB of OneDrive storage and SharePoint (Microsoft 365 plan comparison). Premium is the one worth dwelling on: it adds Microsoft Defender for Business, Intune device management, conditional access and Purview data protection. For a business holding client records, that security layer costs less than a single afternoon spent recovering from a breach. The NCSC's small business guidance makes the same point: layered, managed protection beats bolt-on tools.

Where should you buy Microsoft 365 — direct or through a partner?

You can buy Microsoft 365 two ways: directly from Microsoft, or through a Microsoft-authorised Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) such as AMVIA. The licence price is the same either way. The difference is everything that surrounds the licence — setup, migration, day-to-day support and licence management.

Buying direct from Microsoft at microsoft.com is straightforward for a business with one to ten users running its own tenant. The catch: Microsoft's own support is platform-level only. You won't get configuration help, migration assistance or a helpdesk your staff can call when something breaks.

Buying through a CSP partner gives you the same licences plus the services that make them work:

• The same licences at the same price
• Configuration and migration support during setup
• Ongoing IT support for users and administrators through managed IT support
• A single point of contact for every Microsoft 365 query
• Licence management as you hire, onboard and offboard

For any business past a handful of users, expert support alongside the licences far outweighs the price, because price is identical. A poorly configured tenant costs far more through security incidents, wasted licences and lost productivity than proper managed Microsoft 365 service ever would.

Annual or monthly: which Microsoft 365 subscription is cheaper?

Microsoft 365 sells on an annual commitment (paid monthly or upfront) or as a monthly rolling subscription. Annual commitment is roughly 20% cheaper per user than the monthly no-commitment option. For a business with stable headcount, annual is the obvious choice; monthly buys flexibility for contractors and seasonal staff.

The trade-off is lock-in. On an annual term Microsoft does not refund licences you remove mid-term — you can only reduce numbers at renewal (Microsoft licensing docs). Monthly licences can be added or dropped at any time, at a higher per-user rate.

Most CSP partners, AMVIA included, let you mix the two: annual licences for permanent staff, monthly for temporary or seasonal users. That blend keeps the bulk of your seats on the cheaper annual rate while preserving flexibility where you genuinely need it.

How do you buy Microsoft 365 through AMVIA?

AMVIA supplies Microsoft 365 licences alongside managed IT support, so the licence and the people who configure it sit with one provider. The process is short and runs end to end without you touching the technical setup.

1. We scope your requirements — how many users, what roles, what devices, and any email platform you're moving from 2. We recommend the right plan mix, often a combination across roles 3. We handle tenant setup, domain configuration and migration through our cloud migration service 4. Licences are delivered as part of your monthly AMVIA service

There is no technical reason to buy licences and support separately. One provider simplifies billing, removes handoff friction during incidents, and means the team supporting you already knows your environment in detail. It's worth pairing any new tenant with Microsoft 365 backup from day one — Microsoft protects its infrastructure, not your data from accidental deletion.

What do you need before setting up Microsoft 365?

Before a Microsoft 365 setup begins, you need four things: your business domain, access to your domain registrar, a list of users, and the details of any email platform you're migrating from. With those in hand, a tenant can be live quickly.

• Your business domain name (e.g. company.co.uk) — this becomes the email domain for every user
• Domain registrar access to add DNS records, or confirmation your IT provider will handle it
• A user list with names and the email addresses each person should have
• Current email platform details if migrating: provider, number of accounts and approximate data volume

If you buy through AMVIA, we gather these during an initial scoping call and handle the technical work. A straightforward 10–20 user setup without migration can typically be operational within one to two business days; email migration adds time in proportion to data volume. Strong Microsoft 365 security — MFA, conditional access and Defender — should be switched on at setup, not retrofitted after an incident.