Microsoft 365 Business Premium: Features & Pricing

Nathan Hill-Haimes Technical Director 8 min read · Mar 2026

What is Office 365 Business Premium?

Business Premium is the top tier of Microsoft's Business plan range, sitting above Basic (£4.60) and Standard (£9.60). At £16.90/user/month it bundles the complete Microsoft 365 productivity suite — Office apps, Teams, Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive — with a security toolset that used to be reserved for enterprise customers buying E3 or E5.

Those security additions are the whole point. They are not cosmetic. Defender for Business, Intune and Entra ID P1 are the same controls large IT teams use to protect thousands of users — packaged for businesses under 300 seats. Current list pricing is published on the Microsoft 365 plans page. If you run a UK business that handles client data, this is the tier that earns its keep.

This guide covers exactly what Premium includes, how it compares to Standard and E3, and where it fits if you are working toward Cyber Essentials. For the managed side — deployment, hardening and ongoing monitoring — see our Microsoft 365 security pillar.

What is included in Office 365 Business Premium?

Business Premium combines four things: desktop and web Office apps, Microsoft Teams, full Exchange/SharePoint/OneDrive, and a stacked security layer. The productivity side matches Standard; the security layer is what you are paying the extra £7.30/user/month for. Here is the full inventory.

Productivity applications

• Desktop Office apps — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access on up to 5 PCs or Macs per user
• Office mobile apps on up to 5 smartphones and tablets per user
• Office web apps (browser-based)
• Microsoft Teams — full meeting, chat and calling
• Exchange Online — 50GB mailbox per user
• OneDrive for Business — 1TB per user
• SharePoint Online and Teams webinars

Endpoint security

Microsoft Defender for Business delivers endpoint detection and response (EDR) for up to 300 devices, covering Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. It includes next-generation antivirus, firewall management and attack surface reduction rules, and it detects, investigates and helps remediate threats — the same Defender engine that ships in the enterprise E5 plan. We break down how it is deployed and monitored on our Microsoft Defender for Business page.

Identity and access management

Microsoft Entra ID P1 (formerly Azure AD Premium P1) adds conditional access — block sign-in from untrusted locations, require compliant devices, and step up to MFA based on risk signals — plus self-service password reset with on-premises writeback and dynamic group membership. The NCSC treats this kind of access control as a baseline; its guidance on multi-factor authentication is worth reading before you set policy. We cover the build on our conditional access page.

Device management

Microsoft Intune provides Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Mobile Application Management (MAM) across Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. Enrol and manage company devices, enforce compliance (PIN, encryption, OS version), push configuration profiles remotely, and remotely wipe a lost or stolen device. See our Microsoft Intune page for how we configure it for SMEs.

Information protection

• Microsoft Purview Information Protection P1 — sensitivity labels for documents and emails, data loss prevention (DLP) policies, and Azure Information Protection P1 to classify and protect sensitive data, including policies that stop sharing outside the organisation
• Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 — Safe Links (URL checks at click time), Safe Attachments (sandbox scanning of attachments), and anti-phishing with impersonation detection

Is Office 365 Business Premium worth it over Standard?

For most UK SMEs that handle client data, yes. The £7.30/user/month gap between Standard (£9.60) and Premium (£16.90) buys a complete security stack — Defender for Business, Intune, Entra ID P1 conditional access, and Defender for Office 365 — that you would otherwise assemble from separate products at higher total cost.

Here is what the uplift gets you:

For a business of 20 users, the uplift from Standard to Premium is £146/month. Bought separately, a standalone third-party EDR product alone often costs as much again per user — before you add device management and identity controls. The honest question is not price, it is need: if you hold client data or face any compliance expectation, the answer is almost always Premium.

Does Office 365 Business Premium help with Cyber Essentials?

Yes — Business Premium contains the Microsoft tooling needed to meet every technical control area in the scheme. Cyber Essentials requires firewalls, secure configuration, user access control, malware protection and patch management. Premium maps onto each: Defender for endpoint protection, Intune for device configuration and patch enforcement, and Entra ID P1 for access control and MFA.

The licence is not the certification, though. The controls have to be configured correctly and evidenced. AMVIA configures Business Premium to meet the requirements and supports businesses through assessment — this is core to our managed Microsoft 365 service. Owning the licence is step one; turning the features on properly is where most SMEs need help.

Office 365 Business Premium vs E3: which should you choose?

Business Premium (£16.90/user/month) and E3 (£30.20/user/month) overlap heavily, but they target different buyers. E3 adds compliance-heavy features — litigation hold, 100GB mailboxes, unlimited archive, advanced eDiscovery and Windows Enterprise. What it does not do is beat Premium on day-to-day endpoint security for smaller organisations.

Defender for Business, included in Premium, is tuned specifically for businesses under 300 users — and in some respects gives a tighter endpoint story than the larger plan. For most UK SMEs, Premium hits the right balance of security and productivity without paying for E3 compliance tooling they will never switch on. We recommend Premium as the default starting point and only move clients to E3 when a genuine eDiscovery, archiving or licensing-by-device requirement appears.

If security is the deciding factor — and for businesses handling client data it usually is — pair Premium with active management rather than leaving the controls at their defaults. Our managed cybersecurity team monitors Defender and Entra ID so the tools you have paid for actually catch and contain threats.

How AMVIA deploys Office 365 Business Premium

Buying the licence is the easy part. The value sits in configuration: conditional access policies that fit how your people work, Intune compliance baselines, DLP rules that match your data, and Defender tuned so alerts mean something. Misconfigured tenants are one of the most common routes into UK SMEs, so this is where we spend the time.

AMVIA migrates, hardens and then monitors the tenant under one accountable contract — one provider, security-first, Microsoft-certified engineers. You get the full Premium stack switched on properly, mapped to Cyber Essentials, and watched rather than left to drift.