Microsoft has announced three new affordable Office 365 subscriptions for SMBs that will offer new features, greater value and flexibility options cheaper rates.
The three new cloud-based office suite subscription plans dubbed Office 365 Business, Business Essentials and Business Premium are designed to serve business needs of companies with up to 250 employees.
The new plans will replace Microsoft’s existing SMB plans – Office 365 Small Business, Small Business Premium and Midsize Business and will be made available from 1 October 2015.
Office 365 Business Plan, which will cost £4.83 ($8.25) per user per month, will offer full Office applications including Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Publisher with 1TB of cloud storage and online versions of applications for collaboration.
Business Essentials Plan, which will cost £2.92 ($5) per subscription per month, will offer “core cloud services for business”, including online Office applications, email, calendars and contacts, instant messaging and video conferencing through Lync and SharePoint and Yammer for collaboration.
Office 365 Business Premium Plan, which will cost £7.30 ($12.50) per month per user, will offer a combination of features of the other two mentioned plans.
Existing Office 365 users will see their user limit increased to 300 users.
Kirk Gregersen, general manager for Microsoft’s Office Marketing Group, said, the new plans will replace the current small and midsized business plans gradually over time.
More information on the new Office 365 plans is expected to be announced at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference scheduled this week.
