Office 365 Business Premium vs Enterprise E3 Plans

Okay, you have decided to opt for Office 365 finally. So, we will not go into the details of what does it offer you and the benefits thereof. But, are you confused about which plans to go for? Office 365 provides you over ten different plans spread across Business and Enterprise genres. Which among them should you opt for? For the sake of today’s post, we will focus on the differences between the Office 365 Business Premium vs Enterprise E3 Plans. How do they compare to each other? Here is a breakdown.

Office 365 Business premium Plan – An Overview

The Office 365 Business plans are created for catering to the small businesses with less than 300 employees and users. Mostly, these plans do not need to have all the features that are available on Office 365 suite.

The Business Premium plan is the most expensive among all the three Business plans available under Office 365. The pricing for the plan is $ 12.50 per user per month if you are opting for a one-year agreement. In case, you are going with a monthly contract, the costing would be $ 15 per user per month. The plan is best suited for the small businesses with less than 300 users. You can opt for it if your business needs to have access to office desktop applications, cloud services, and Email hosting facility.

You get the desktop versions of the core Office applications including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, web versions of the Office applications like Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook and access to 1 TB of OneDrive storage.

Office 365 Enterprise E3 Plan- An Overview

Office 365 Enterprise E3 plan is one of the most popular options if you are into a business that is driven by the digital revolution. The Enterprise plans are meant for those looking for a more robust and full-fledged solution.

The plan comes with email, archiving solutions, information protection, and high-end storage options. The plan is available at $ 20 per user per month with an annual commitment. If your business needs advanced compliance standards, email, security, and voice functions, this can be your best bet. It does not have any limitation as long as the number of users is concerned. Some of the salient features include unlimited OneDrive storage, legal compliance standards like archiving, eDiscovery Hold and mailbox hold and hosted Voicemail support.

Office 365 Business Premium vs Enterprise E3 Plans – How do they differ from each other?

We would be able to understand it in a better way if we can differentiate them based on the key factors individually. Let us check out the components in a concise manner.

Please note that the core offerings remain the same between the plans. Some honorable mentions can be cited as Email, Document Management, Instant Messaging, and presence from Skype for Business and Office Pro Plus features. The significant difference between the two is regarding functionality. Let us dig a little deeper into the plans to understand the differentiating featuring between the two competing plans from Office 365.

Number of Users

For most of the businesses, that in itself should be a deciding factor. Business Premium plans come with a limitation of 300 users per license. The restriction on headcount can be a massive impediment if you are an enterprise with more than 300 users. Whether you want the additional features or not, you will need to opt for enterprise solution if you have more than 300 employees who need to have access to the Office 365 suite.

Storage Capacity

Storage can be a concern for the larger enterprises. You would not want to lose out on the storage count. The Business Premium Plan offers you a 50 GB storage space for email and 1 TB per user cloud storage.

The Enterprise E3 plan, on the other hand, provides you with an unlimited storage option. Not that every organization will need to have access to have storage for more than 50 GB. However, if your business needs to share large files and huge volumes, you may need to look for better storage options. Analyse your exact storage requirements before you can finalize between the two plans.

Enterprise management

Of course, all the Office 365 plans offer you a fair degree of enterprise management options. You should be able to perform the changes within a few minutes. However, the Enterprise E3 plan comes with a more robust infrastructure for the purpose. It offers you better administrative functionality. The availability of PowerShell commands and mobile management options should tilt you in favor of the Enterprise E3 plan.

Email Solutions

Enterprise E3 plan provides an advanced level of Email management. If you belong to an industry that needs to follow stringent rules regarding information archival, the Enterprise E3 plan is an ideal option for you.

The Enterprise E3 plans offer you archival and legal hold options. This will ensure that you do not need to delete any data as such. The Data Loss Prevention policies help you keep all your applications and employees stay compliant. The Business Premium plan does not come with such features.

Additional Tools

The add-on plans are available only with the Enterprise E3 plans. You will not be able to get those additional options with the Business Premium plans. Some of the add- n options include Delve Analysis, cloud PBX, threat protection, OneDrive for business and other additional features come involved with the Enterprise E3 plans.

Support Channels

Coming from Microsoft, you can expect a good uptime for both the plans. Just in case if you face any issues, Office 365 offers you a wide range of support options. If you are facing any critical problems that need immediate attention, you can opt for a 24 x 7 phone based support. The maximum response time for both the plans is one hour.

There is community support, troubleshooting tutorials, and web or email support. However, if the issues are non-critical, only the Enterprise E3 plan offers you a dedicated 24 x 7 support. For such cases, the Business Premium Plan is available on phone support only during the office hours. Moreover, it does not guarantee any response time for non-critical issues.

Pricing – (Subject to change)

The pricing should be what should matter the most for a few enterprises. However, there is not a massive difference between the two plans based on the per-user pricing.

The business Premium plan is available at $12.50 per user per month with an annual commitment while the monthly commitment will come with $15 per month per user. The Enterprise E3 plan, on the other hand, will offer you pricing of $20 per month per user. It has only the annual commitment option.

The cost may not be huge per user base, but it can accumulate for hundreds of users.

What sets Enterprise premium Plan Apart?

From the discussion above, it should be clear enough that Enterprise E3 plan is a little above with its feature pack and functionality in comparison. Of course, the final choice should boil down to what your enterprise needs.

The major differentiators are

Archiving and Compliance – The eDiscovery center provides you with legal hold and a high degree of compliance standards.
Security – Enterprise E3 provides the Rights Management and Data Loss Prevention options.
User management –The Office 365 Enterprise E3 plan comes with high-end enterprise management options like Telemetry, Group Policy, and Shard computer activations.
Best Business Intelligence – Enterprise E3 plan comes with secure business intelligence options.

A Comparison Chart

A tabular comparison of the significant features can serve as a better option to understand the differences between the two plans.

Features	Enterprise E3	Office 365 Business Premium
Office 365 Message Encryption	Yes	No
Data Governance	No	Yes
Archiving	Yes	Yes
Auto expand archival	Yes	No
Manual retention/deletion policies	Yes	No
Data Loss Prevention	Yes	No
Number of users	Unlimited	Max 300
OneDrive Storage	Unlimited	1 TB
Email Storage	Unlimited	50 GB
Custom templates, including departmental templates	Yes	No
In-place Hold and Litigation Hold	Yes	No
eDiscovery Online/SharePoint online	Yes	No

The Verdict – Which among these you should go with?

Well, the discussion above should have given you a fair understanding between Enterprise E3 and Business Premium plans. These differences should provide you with an idea of the positives and negatives of both the plans. Do note that there are several other differences between the two compelling alternatives, but the ideas shared here should give you an insight into what you can choose.

We will consider that the Microsoft has indeed offered two of the best options for the best suites for your business management needs. Both the Business Premium Plan and Enterprise E3 plan together constitute a compelling choice for all your needs. Of course, you need to go through the requirements that your enterprise has and thus opt for the best option that meets your exact requirements. Choose the one that best suits your needs.

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