Features of Office 365 Business ‘Essential’ & Business ‘Premium’
I have led several Office 365 implementation projects from scratch like from migrating emails to Office 365 to implementing various features of Office 365. When it comes to choosing the Office 365 subscriptions, I have seen that many of the organizations go with Office 365 Business Premium or Office 365 Business Essential subscriptions as both of these subscriptions are almost identical, the only difference is Office 365 Business Essential doesn’t contain Microsoft Office applications.
In the below table you can find the list of features available with Office 365 Business Premium & Business Essential subscriptions. While in this article I am not actually highlighting the difference, I am just trying to provide the list of features available in these two subscriptions. I have also mentioned the Security & Compliance features which I have seen that most of the organizations don’t actually use but are very beneficial and I always try to convince my clients to use all these features.
| S. No. | Features | Features (Office 365 Business Premium) | Features (Office 365 Business Essential) |
| 1 | Office Application | Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote | Not included |
| 2 | Services Included | Exchange Online, Skype for Business, OneDrive, SharePoint, MS Teams | Exchange Online, Skype for Business, OneDrive, SharePoint, MS Teams |
| 3 | Max Users | 300 | 300 |
| 4 | Mailbox Size | 50 GB (Exchange Online Plan 1) | 50 GB (Exchange Online Plan 1) |
| Security & Compliance Features | |||
| 5 | Protect access to data and service | Configure Multi-Factor Authentication | Configure Multi-Factor Authentication |
| Device Management (Enroll devices, Device Wipe) | Device Management (Enroll devices, Device Wipe) | ||
| 6 | Prevent data loss | Not Available | Not Available |
| 7 | Manage data governance | Import Data | Import Data |
| Archiving feature for Emails | Archiving feature for Emails | ||
| Retention for SharePoint & OneDrive | Retention for SharePoint & OneDrive | ||
| Retention (EAC) | Retention (EAC) | ||
| 8 | Protection against threats | Anti-Spoofing | Anti-Spoofing |
| Anti-Spam & Anti-malware Policies | Anti-Spam & Anti-malware Policies | ||
| Email encryption | Email encryption | ||
| Quarantine email messages | Quarantine email messages | ||
| Submitting malware to Microsoft for analysis | Submitting malware to Microsoft for analysis | ||
| 9 | Search for content | Content Search in Office 365 | Content Search in Office 365 |
| 10 | Manage legal investigations | eDiscovery in Office 365 | eDiscovery in Office 365 |
| 11 | Audit Log | Audit Log search in Office 365 | Audit Log search in Office 365 |
| Enable mailbox auditing | Enable mailbox auditing | ||
| 12 | Monitor Security & Compliance | Alerts in Office 365 | Alerts in Office 365 |
| Quarantine in Office 365 | Quarantine in Office 365 | ||
| Check secure score | Check secure score | ||
| Office 365 Service Health | Office 365 Service Health | ||
| Monitor reports (access and usage reports) | Monitor reports (access and usage reports) |
Note: Many security features are not available within the subscription, but we can procure add-on licenses to enhance the security.
Apart from these features, Microsoft also offers other services with these subscriptions.
- MS Teams– Platform that combines workplace chat, meetings, collaborate on files and especially the guest access feature in Teams is awesome.
- Exchange Online– Exchange for email services, also there is a lot you can do with Exchange Admin Center.
- OneDrive for Business– Storage for documents
- SharePoint Online– Document Management & Real-time Collaboration with attractive modern sites, document versioning, web parts & lot more.
Hope this article helps you to easily find out the list of all features so that you can implement the same when you purchase any of the subscriptions and keep your organization secure.