TL;DR: On 1 July 2026, Microsoft put up the price of most of its 365 business plans by around 12% to 17%. The one plan it left alone is Business Premium. That is the important part: the gap between Business Standard and Business Premium is now the smallest it has ever been, and Premium comes with a proper security and device-management package built in. For a lot of businesses, this is the moment moving up finally adds up. Nothing changes for you until your renewal, so there is still time to plan it.
What actually changed
On 4 December 2025, Microsoft announced its first price rise on these business plans in years. It took effect on 1 July 2026 and applies to most of the 365 line-up:
- Business Basic and Business Standard went up by roughly 12% to 17%.
- Enterprise plans (E3 and E5) went up by less, somewhere around 5% to 13%.
- Business Premium stayed exactly where it is. No increase at all.
It was not all cost, either. Microsoft added things to the cheaper plans at the same time: more email storage, link-checking that scans web links the moment someone clicks them, and the Copilot Chat AI assistant. So the plans are growing as well as getting dearer.
One thing worth saying up front, because it causes a lot of needless worry: this is not your IT provider putting prices up. It is Microsoft, and it lands on every business that runs on 365. Our job is the opposite, to help you pay as little of it as possible.
The bit most people miss
Here is the part that does not make the headlines.
Until now, Business Premium cost a fair bit more than Standard, so most small businesses looked at it, decided the extra was not worth it, and stayed put. Fair enough.
That sum has changed. Standard went up and Premium held, so the price gap between the two is the narrowest it has ever been. The plan with all the security built in is now only a little more than the plan without it.
Think of it like two cars in a showroom. One has airbags, ABS and an alarm, the other does not, and for years the safer one cost a good deal more. Microsoft has now dropped the price difference between them to almost nothing. The question stops being 'can we justify the upgrade?' and becomes 'why are we still in the one without the airbags?'
What you actually get for the difference
Standard and Premium look identical day to day. Same Office apps, same email, same Teams, same file storage. The difference is entirely under the bonnet, in protection you only notice when something goes wrong.
| What it does | Business Standard | Business Premium |
|---|---|---|
| Office apps, email, Teams, file storage | Yes | Yes |
| Advanced protection against scam emails, bad links and attachments | No | Yes |
| Ransomware protection on the actual computers your team uses | No | Yes |
| Manage and secure the laptops and phones used for work | No | Yes |
| Lock or wipe a lost or stolen device remotely | No | Yes |
| Stronger sign-in, so a stolen password alone is not enough | No | Yes |
| Price at July 2026 review | Went up | Unchanged |
In plain English, Premium adds four things that matter:
- Scam emails get caught before anyone clicks. A convincing fake invoice or a dodgy link is checked and blocked as it arrives, instead of relying on your team to spot every single one.
- Your computers are watched for ransomware, the kind of attack that locks you out of your own files and demands payment. Premium keeps an eye on the machines themselves, not just the email.
- We can look after your devices properly. If a laptop or phone goes missing, we can lock it or wipe the company data off it remotely, before it becomes your problem. We go into the detail of that on our device enrolment guide.
- A stolen password stops being enough to get in. Most break-ins start with a password that leaked somewhere, and that risk is identical whether your team works in the office or from home. Premium includes Conditional Access, the proper way to enforce who can sign in: it can block a login from a country you never work in, or demand an extra check from a device we do not recognise. Standard cannot do this at all.
To buy that lot as separate third-party products would cost more than the gap between the two Microsoft plans. You can see the numbers side by side on our Business Premium comparison.
Is it the right move for you?
For most businesses now, yes, and here is the honest reason why.
The upgrade used to be an easy 'no' for anyone working in a single office. That logic does not really hold any more, because the things Premium protects against do not care where you sit. The two most common ways a small business gets hit are a stolen password and a convincing fake email, and both arrive down the wire whether your team is in the office, at home, or on a train.
Two features matter most here, and neither is available on Standard at any price:
- Conditional Access is the only proper way to enforce your sign-in rules: block logins from countries you never work in, require an extra check from a device we do not recognise, and keep that enforced across the whole team. It is the single biggest reason a leaked password stops being a disaster.
- Impersonation protection spots an email pretending to be your boss or a supplier and stops it before it reaches the person who pays the invoices. This is how most invoice and CEO fraud gets through, and an office-only team is just as exposed to it as anyone else.
So we will not tell an office-based business to skip Premium simply because nobody works remotely. If you have email, passwords and anything worth stealing, which is every business, the protection earns its place. The only time we steer you away is the genuine edge case: a one or two person outfit with no staff and nothing a criminal would bother targeting. For everyone else, while the price gap is this small, it is an easy call.
The other way to soften the increase
Upgrading is not the only lever, and it is not the first one we reach for.
Before any renewal, the most useful thing we do is review your licences and make sure you are only paying for what you actually use. There is almost always something to trim: a licence still active for someone who left months ago, or people sitting on a bigger plan than they need. For a lot of businesses, that alone covers a good chunk of the increase. Some end up paying less than they do now.
So the honest order of events is this: clear out the waste first, then look at whether Premium makes sense for what is left. One saves you money, the other buys you a lot more protection for not much. Often it is worth doing both.
What you need to do today
Probably nothing this week, and that is not a throwaway line.
The new prices apply at your next renewal, not on the day they were announced. If your renewal has not come round yet, you are still on your old pricing until it does. There is no cliff-edge.
What we would suggest is using the time between now and your renewal to get ahead of it: book a quick licence review, clear out anything you are not using, and decide calmly whether Premium is worth the now-small step up. That beats reacting to a bigger invoice the week it lands.
If you would like us to work out exactly what your renewal looks like, what we can trim, and whether Premium stacks up for your team, get in touch or call us on 01584 517234. No pressure, no jargon, just the numbers and a straight recommendation.