Microsoft 365 Business Standard vs Premium: Which Should You Pick? (2026 UK)

Last updated: April 2026

Business Standard costs £10.08 per user per month. Business Premium costs £17.75. That's a £7.67 difference — which over a 25-user firm is £2,301 a year. Not small change.

The question most people actually want answered: is the extra money worth it, or is Standard enough?

Short answer: if you handle client data, have staff using their own laptops or phones, or fall under any regulated regime (ICO, SRA, FCA, NHS), Business Premium pays for itself. For everyone else, Standard is fine.

Here's the longer version.

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What's in Business Standard

For £10.08 per user per month (ex VAT, annual commitment, billed monthly), you get:

• Desktop and web Office apps — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, installed on up to 5 PCs/Macs per user
• Microsoft Teams — meetings, chat, file sharing
• Exchange Online — 50GB business mailbox per user
• OneDrive for Business — 1TB cloud storage per user
• SharePoint Online — team sites and intranet
• Mobile versions of all Office apps on up to 5 phones/tablets per user

That's the productivity stack most SMBs actually use day to day.

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What Premium adds

Business Premium is £17.75 per user per month. It includes everything in Standard, plus three things that matter:

1. Microsoft Intune (device management)

Intune lets you remotely manage every laptop and phone your staff use for work. Two jobs:

• Lock down company data — you can wipe company files from a stolen laptop or a leaver's personal phone without touching their holiday photos.
• Enforce baseline security — require passwords, auto-lock timers, encryption. No more "my phone PIN is 1234."

2. Microsoft Defender for Business

Endpoint protection (antivirus plus endpoint detection and response) for every device. Equivalent to what you'd pay £24 per user per year for via Avast. In Premium it's included.

3. Entra ID P1 (formerly Azure AD Premium)

The security plumbing: conditional access rules, multi-factor authentication enforcement, self-service password reset, dynamic groups. This is what lets you say "require MFA from anyone logging in outside the office" without writing scripts.

Plus smaller extras: Azure Information Protection (labelling and encrypting documents), basic data loss prevention, and Exchange Online Archiving.

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Who should pick Business Standard

• Small teams under 10 people with office-based working patterns. Laptops stay in the office, everyone has the same simple setup, no one is on their own device.
• Businesses that have zero compliance burden. No client data, no financial records beyond your own, no regulator breathing down your neck.
• Customers who already have a separate device management and antivirus solution and don't want to change it.

If that's you, you're not "missing out" on Premium — you're making a sensible cost decision. Standard is a grown-up product.

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Who should pick Business Premium

• Anyone whose staff use personal devices for work (nearly everyone, if we're honest — checking email on your own phone counts).
• Any business in a regulated sector: accountants, solicitors, healthcare, financial advisers, anyone handling card data. The ICO, SRA and FCA all expect you to be able to demonstrate device control.
• Any business with staff in multiple locations or who work from home. Intune is how you keep control of kit that never comes into an office.
• Anyone buying antivirus separately. Premium's Defender for Business is genuinely enterprise-grade and included — stack that against £24-£35 a year you'd pay for third-party endpoint protection.

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The maths

For a 10-user firm:

• Standard: £10.08 × 10 × 12 = £1,209.60 per year
• Premium: £17.75 × 10 × 12 = £2,130 per year
• Difference: £920.40 per year, or £7.67 per user per month

If you'd otherwise pay for Defender for Business (£2.42/user/month) and Intune (£6.30/user/month as a standalone) separately, that's £8.72 per user per month. So if you need those products, Premium is £1.05 per user per month cheaper than buying them à la carte.

The only people for whom Standard genuinely wins are those who don't need device management or enterprise endpoint protection at all.

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Is there a cheaper option?

Yes, two:

• Microsoft 365 Apps for business (£8.51/user/month) — just the desktop Office apps and OneDrive. No Teams, no email. Only makes sense if you're already getting email elsewhere (Gmail, Exchange on-premise).
• Microsoft 365 Business Basic (£4.83/user/month) — Teams, email, OneDrive but web-only Office apps. Fine for email-first roles (warehouse, reception, field staff) who don't really need Word and Excel installed. Often good as a mix — Basic for some roles, Standard or Premium for others.

Mixing tiers is allowed and common. A 15-person firm might have 3 Basic licences for field staff and 12 Premium licences for office staff.

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What about Copilot?

Microsoft 365 Copilot (£24.26/user/month) is an add-on that sits on top of Standard or Premium. It doesn't replace either tier. If Copilot is on your shopping list, you'll need Standard or Premium first. See our Copilot vs Business Premium write-up for when it's worth it.

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Buying from a reseller vs Microsoft direct

Same product, same price — but through an authorised UK CSP reseller like Compare The Networks, you also get:

• UK phone support for licensing and admin issues (Microsoft direct support is slow and overseas)
• A named account manager instead of a ticket queue
• Renewal reminders and licence rationalisation (Microsoft never tells you when you're paying for licences no one uses)
• A 10% bundle discount when taken alongside CTN VoIP or business mobile

Your users don't notice any difference — Microsoft 365 Admin, logins, data, apps are all identical. The only change is who invoices you.

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FAQs

Can I upgrade from Standard to Premium later?

Yes, and this is the most common migration we handle. You can upgrade a single user or the whole tenant at any point. The price change is prorated to the day.

Can I mix Standard and Premium in the same company?

Yes. Assign different tiers to different users in Microsoft 365 Admin. No technical limits.

Does Premium include Copilot?

No. Copilot is £24.26/user/month extra and requires Standard or Premium as a prerequisite.

Is Business Premium different from Office 365 E3?

Yes. Business Premium is capped at 300 users and is SMB-priced. Office 365 E3 (and Microsoft 365 E3/E5) are enterprise plans with higher user counts and more advanced features — but also significantly more expensive per user. For companies under 300 staff, Business Premium is almost always the right choice.

Can I pay monthly instead of annual commitment?

Yes, but it costs ~20% more per month. Microsoft publishes monthly-term prices as well. Most customers take the annual commitment (billed monthly) for the saving.

What happens to my files if I cancel?

You get 30 days after cancellation to export data from Exchange, SharePoint and OneDrive. After 30 days it is deleted. This is Microsoft's policy, not ours.