Microsoft on Thursday announced three new affordable pricing plans for its cloud-based Office 365 service dedicated to SMBs.
Microsoft claims the new plans dubbed Office 365 Business Essentials, Office 365 Business and Office 365 Business Premium have been designed to cater needs of businesses that have anywhere from one to more than 250 employees. The new plans will be replacing the old Small Business, Small Business Premium and Midsize Business plans.
Announcing the new plans, Microsoft said “We made these changes to the existing Office 365 plans in response to feedback from our customers, and as part of our longstanding commitment to bring the benefits of cloud-based productivity to every SMB (small and midsize business).”
Available at a monthly subscription fee of £3.10 based on an annual commitment, the new Office 365 Business Essentials offers core cloud-based business services, including email and calendaring, Office Online, online meetings, IM, videoconferencing, file sharing, 1 TB of free OneDrive for Business cloud storage, and Yammer enterprise social-networking support, but no desktop apps.
Available for £7 a month based on an annual commitment, Office 365 Business includes the full desktop installation of Office application such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher and OneNote as well as OneDrive for Business cloud storage allowing business users to access, share and edit documents across Windows, Mac, iPad, Windows tablets and smartphones.
Last but the least, the third Office 365 Business Premium plan, available for £7.80 per user per month based on an annual commitment, combines the other two plans, giving users an access to everything included in Office 365 Business Essentials and Office 365 Business.
The Redmond has confirmed that brand-new Office 365 customers can opt for the new plans anytime; however, existing Office 365 SMB customers will need to wait until their existing subscriptions end up.
