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Important

Microsoft Teams is experiencing a tremendous spike in online calls and audio/video conferencing due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

To restore an Microsoft 365 Group see article Restore a deleted Microsoft 365 Group. Members: Leave plans to remove them. If you're not the plan owner, you can't delete the plan. Instead, you can leave the plan to remove it from your Planner hub. To leave a plan, select the three dots to the right of the plan name, and then choose Leave plan. Plans & pricing. Find a Microsoft 365 subscription that's right for you. Microsoft 365 Apps formerly Office 365 ProPlus $13.99. Find the right Microsoft 365 Family or Personal plan for all your devices. Includes AI-powered Office apps, 1 TB of cloud storage, and premium mobile features. Microsoft has changed the names of most plans to Microsoft 365 but also kept partially the Office 365 label. Comparing all the plans together on the Microsoft site can sometimes be a bit challenging, so to help you out I have created an overview to compare all office 365 plans. Our Microsoft 365 plans give you the ability to easily and securely share and collaborate on documents using OneDrive for Business and Online Office apps. With Online Essentials and Business Premium you can also create a domain-based email address and share calendars and contacts with people inside and outside of your company.

In response to the unprecedented increase in calls, and to ensure continuity and availability, Microsoft is allowing Microsoft Teams GCC audio/video servers to leverage processing capacity in our commercial datacenters, as well as in our government datacenters.

These audio/video servers reside within the Microsoft Azure FedRAMP High accreditation boundary servers in the United States and do not store any customer content. However, these servers are processing audio and video for calls and conferences and are operating under our commercial staff during this interim period.

Qualified, screened personnel are monitoring these servers for potential access to customer data by reviewing any interactive log-ons to these servers. Qualified personnel meet GCC requirements for access to customer content. For details about screening requirements, see the GCC service description.

Thank you for your support as we take steps to ensure that our services remain available and reliable in these extraordinary times.

In response to the unique and evolving requirements of the United States public sector, Microsoft has created Office 365 Government plans (or Office 365 Government). This service description provides an overview of features that are specific to Office 365 Government US environments. We recommend that you read this service description alongside other Microsoft 365 and Office 365 service descriptions.

How to use this service description

The Office 365 Government service description is designed to serve as an overlay to the general Office 365 service description. It defines the unique commitments and differences compared to Office 365 Enterprise offerings.

About Office 365 Government environments

Office 365 Government plans are monthly subscriptions and can be licensed to an unlimited number of users.

• The Office 365 GCC environment provides compliance with Federal requirements for cloud services, including FedRAMP High, and requirements for criminal justice and federal tax information systems (CJI and FTI data types).

• The Office 365 GCC High and DoD environments deliver compliance with Department of Defense Security Requirements Guidelines, Defense Federal Acquisition Regulations Supplement (DFARS), and International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).

In addition to the features and capabilities of Office 365, the organizations that use Office 365 Government benefit from the following features unique to Office 365 Government:

• Your organization's customer content is logically segregated from customer content in Microsoft's commercial Office 365 Services.

• Your organization's customer content is stored within the United States.

• Access to your organization's customer content is restricted to screened Microsoft personnel.

• Office 365 Government complies with certifications and accreditations that are required for US Public Sector customers.

Customer eligibility

Office 365 Government is available to (1) US federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial government entities, and (2) other entities that handle data that is subject to government regulations and requirements and where use of Office 365 Government is appropriate to meet these requirements, subject to validation of eligibility. Validation of eligibility by Microsoft will include confirmation of handling data subject to International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), law enforcement data subject to the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Policy, or other government-regulated or controlled data. Validation may require proof of registration with the U.S. Department of State for ITAR data or sponsorship by a government entity with specific requirements for the handling of data. The Office 365 DoD environment is for the exclusive use of the United States Department of Defense.

While eligibility criteria are consistent across Office 365 Government offerings, Microsoft will only agree to DFARS and ITAR contract language for the GCC High environment.

Entities with questions about eligibility for Office 365 Government should consult their account team.

Upon renewal of a customer's contract for Office 365 Government, revalidation of eligibility is required.

Customer content located within the United States

Office 365 Government services are provided from datacenters physically located in the United States. The following customer content is stored at rest in datacenters physically located only in the U.S.A.:

• Exchange Online mailbox content (email bodies, calendar entries, and the content of e-mail attachments)

• SharePoint Online site content and the files stored within that site

• Skype for Business archived conversations, uploaded documents, and whiteboarding sessions

• Microsoft Teams persistent chat threads

Note

With typical use, Skype for Business does not store customer content, but if such storage occurs, it will be stored in datacenters in the U.S.A.

If your users are located within the U.S.A. while using Office for the web (formerly known as Office Web Apps) or if you adopt the use of Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) 2.0 and set up policies to help ensure your users connect to the services through single sign-on, any customer content that is temporarily cached in Office for the web will be located in the U.S.A.

The Site usage page for SharePoint sites is available for government plans, though per compliance, there are some features of this page that are only available to commercial customers. To learn more, see Site usage page for SharePoint sites in Microsoft 365.

Office 365 Government and third-party services

Office 365 provides the ability to integrate third-party applications into SharePoint Online sites, Skype for Business, Office applications included in Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise (such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook), and Outlook Web App. In addition, Office 365 supports integration with third-party service providers. These third-party applications and services might involve storing, transmitting, and processing your organization's customer data on third-party systems that are outside of the Office 365 infrastructure and therefore are not covered by the Office 365 compliance and data protection commitments. It is recommended that you review the privacy and compliance statements provided by the third parties when assessing the appropriate use of these services for your organization.

Restricted data access by administrators

Access to Office 365 Government customer content by Microsoft administrators is restricted to screened personnel. For screening levels details, refer to the service description page for each respective environment (GCC or GCC High and DoD).

FastTrack Center onboarding assistance

With the FastTrack Center Benefit for Office 365¹, you work remotely with FastTrack Specialists to get your Office 365 environment ready for use and plan rollout and usage within your organization. The FastTrack process provides onboarding and user adoption services.

Onboarding consists of:

• Core onboarding - These are tasks required for tenant configuration and integration with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) if needed. Core onboarding also provides the baseline for onboarding other eligible services.

• Service onboarding and migration - Service onboarding tasks enable scenarios in your tenant. Data migration (including email and files) is covered in Data Migration.²

User adoption services are composed of tasks that provide guidance for you to ensure your users are aware of the eligible services and can use them to drive business value. This assistance occurs in parallel to onboarding activities.

Specific information on the FastTrack Center process can be found here. For a breakdown of engagement roles and responsibilities, review FastTrack Responsibilities as well as Your Responsibilities.

¹ You must purchase at least 50 licenses from the list of the eligible plans to receive FastTrack services.
² Data Migration services are available to Office 365 tenants with 500 or more licenses.

Data migrations performed by FastTrack

Customers who choose the FastTrack migration benefit will need to grant access to the team managing their data migrations. These personnel are US citizens and undergo the following background checks before performing migrations for customers of Office 365 US Government services.

Office 365 US Government and Azure Government ExpressRoute

Office 365 US Government customers can use Azure Government ExpressRoute services to connect privately to supported Office 365 services instead of connecting over the public internet.

For details, such as supported providers, pricing models, and more, review the Azure ExpressRoute information.

For details on Office 365 support for Azure ExpressRoute, see Azure ExpressRoute for Office 365

System requirements

For system requirements for Office 365 US Government plans, see System requirements for Office on the office.com products site.

Security & Compliance Center

For information about the Security & Compliance Center and links to additional information and availability, see Security & Compliance Center.

Service availability for each plan

Each Office 365 plan includes a number of individual services, such as Exchange Online and SharePoint Online. The following table shows the services that are available in each Office 365 US Government plan.

¹ Skype for Business Basic is available for all customers. The Skype for Business desktop client is a locally installed application that provides presence, instant messaging, and conferencing features for Office 365 plans that include Skype for Business Online. Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise, G3, and G5 include the full Skype application, which includes additional features such as advanced telephony support, archiving, and compliance features. A Skype for Business Online license must be assigned for each user.
² Not included but can be purchased as a separate add-on. Project Online includes Project Online Desktop Client as a part of the subscription.
³ Not yet available in GCC High or DoD plans, but coming soon.
⁴ Yammer Enterprise is not a component of Office 365 US Government, but may be acquired at no cost as a standalone offer for each user licensed for Office 365 in GCC. This offer is currently limited to customers that purchase Office 365 GCC under Enterprise Agreements and Enterprise Subscription Agreements. Yammer is not available in GCC High or DoD.
⁵ Calling Plan is an add-on.
⁶ Not included but can be purchased as a separate add-on. Visio for the web includes the Visio desktop app as a part of the subscription.

Platform features

The following table lists the platform features and services that are available across the Office 365 US Government plans.

¹ Azure Information Protection is not included, but can be purchased as a separate add-on and will enable the supported Information Rights Management (IRM) features. Some Azure Information Protection features require a subscription to Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise, which is not included with Office 365 Government G1 or Office 365 Government F3. >
² Existing BBCS and BIS customers can continue use of the service. New customers are not being accepted.
³ If using directory synchronization, you must delete accounts or change passwords by using Active Directory, rather than the Office 365 portal or by using the Azure Active Directory module for Windows PowerShell.
⁴ If using password synchronization, users must change their passwords in the local Active Directory.
⁵ To learn how to set self-service password management policies for users, see Manage Passwords in Azure AD.
⁶ You can have only one public website with Office 365, unless you've upgraded from an earlier version of Office 365. In that case, you have two public websites, but only one of them can be hosted with a custom domain name. For more information about working with the two websites for Business subscriptions, see Work with your two Office 365 public websites. If you have a different subscription, learn more about public websites at Learn about partner website hosting and public websites in Office 365.
⁷ Reducing seats that were purchased with a term discount may be subject to an early termination fee. This is not applicable to subscriptions paid on a monthly basis.
⁸ The following plans do not support license seat changes from the Microsoft 365 admin center: Office 365 Government G1, Office 365 Government G3, Office 365 Government F3.
⁹ Not yet available in GCC High, but coming soon.
¹⁰ For Office 365 Government G1, G3, and F3, Targeted release and the Office 365 for business roadmap apply; however, there may be some differences or delays for specific service updates due to compliance requirements.
¹¹ Not yet available in Office 365 Government offerings, but coming soon.
¹² Not included, but can be purchased as a separate add-on in GCC.
¹³ Not supported for Office 365 Government offerings.
¹⁴ Available at https://securescore.office.com. Requires admin permissions. For more information, see Introducing the Office 365 Secure Score.).
¹⁵ Not yet available in DoD environment, but coming soon.
¹⁶ Admin center does not include usage analytics in DoD or GCC High environments.
¹⁷ Not supported for GCC High or DoD environments.
¹⁸ Anti-phishing for user and domain impersonation and spoof intelligence are not yet available in GCC High and DoD.
¹⁹ Not yet available in GCC environment, but coming soon.
²⁰ Consumption only for Microsoft Stream: no publishing or sharing.
²¹ Not available for the Microsoft Graph API or Microsoft Teams.

Office application availability and enterprise value

The following table shows the Office application features that are available across Office 365 US Government plans.

¹ Azure Information Protection is not included, but can be purchased as a separate add-on and will enable the supported Information Rights Management (IRM) features. Some Azure Information Protection features require a subscription to Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise, which is not included with Office 365 Government G1 or Office 365 Government F3.
² Windows Server AD RMS is an on-premises server that must be purchased and managed separately to enable the supported IRM features.
³ Skype for Business Basic is available for all customers. The Skype for Business desktop client is a locally installed application that provides presence, instant messaging, and conferencing features for Office 365 plans that include Skype for Business Online. Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise, and Office 365 Enterprise E3 include the full Skype application, which includes additional features such as advanced telephony support, archiving, and compliance features. A Skype for Business Online license must be assigned for each user. For more information on Lync Basic features, see Skype for Business Online client comparison tables.
⁴ Not yet available in GCC High or DoD environments, but coming soon.
⁵ See Using Outlook for iOS and Android in the Government Community Cloud for more details.
⁶ Not yet available in Office 365 DoD environment, but coming soon.
⁷ Applications are fully available in the government clouds, with the exception of the specific features not available at this time. See Office application feature availability for details.

Office application and feature availability in Government plans

The following Office applications are available in the government clouds; however, some cloud-based capabilities may not be currently available, as indicated in the table.

For feature availability for Microsoft Teams within GCC/GCC High/DoD, please visit the Microsoft Teams service description.

¹ Availability forthcoming.
² Availability on local Surface Hub (not signed in).
³ External sharing is available for the GCC environment. Learn more about how to turn off or turn on Microsoft Forms for your organization. External sharing is disabled for GCC High and DOD environments; users within your organization may do the following: complete a form and submit responses, duplicate and share a form as a template, co-author or collaborate on a form, and access form results.
⁴ Recent group forms feature is disabled for the GCC environment. Users, however, can still access group forms by selecting a specific group on the Group forms tab.
⁵ Word, Excel PowerPoint Windows client only, not web, MacOS, iOS or Android.

There's no getting around the importance of Office 365 for day-to-day business.

Office 365 Pricing

Or is it Microsoft 365 now?

Wait. What's going on?

The confusion surrounding the recent changes with Office 365 and Microsoft 365 is completely understandable. The shift has a lot of people scratching their heads and wondering, 'OK, so what's the difference?'

But organizations that currently depend on Microsoft's Office suite, Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, and other cloud apps and services to keep their remote workers connected and productive don't need to worry.

Because although names might have changed for some of the business and enterprise subscriptions, the license features have pretty much been untouched.

Here's a quick breakdown of what's different and what's stayed the same.

Office 365 vs. Microsoft 365

Why all the sudden confusion between Office 365 and Microsoft 365? Well, it really comes down to rebranding.

Microsoft 365, also known as M365, is a cloud-based, subscription suite that encompasses Office and other productivity apps, cloud services, device management, and security. It first emerged as an enterprise-level licensing bundle in 2017.

Microsoft announced in late March that Office 365 would officially become Microsoft 365 effective April 21. And as part of that, Office 365 subscriptions for small- and medium-sized businesses, as well as the enterprise-level Office 365 ProPlus, would be renamed.

Those plans are now called:

• Microsoft 365 Business Basic (formerly Office 365 Business Essentials)
• Microsoft 365 Business Standard (formerly Office 365 Business Premium)
• Microsoft 365 Business Premium (formerly Microsoft 365 Business)
• Microsoft 365 Apps for Business or Enterprise (formerly Office 365 Business and Office 365 ProPlus)

But by any other name, those business licenses retain the same features and pricing. And Office 365 Enterprise subscriptions — as well as select Office 365 plans for education, government, and first-line workers — remain unchanged in name and details.

So why make the move to Microsoft 365 at all?

The branding shift is meant to better reflect the innovative cloud-based productivity tools offered in these plans, as well as the new Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions, according to a blog post authored by Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365. But the name changes should also help better differentiate between subscriptions, too.

And although no major subscription changes were made along with the rebranding, it's almost guaranteed that Microsoft 365 will be introducing added features as newer versions are released. Meanwhile, a later announcements revealed a steady elimination of older Office versions and Office 365 services:

• Microsoft 365 Apps for Business of Enterprise (formerly Office 365 Business and Office 365 ProPlus), Office 2019, and Office 2016 are the only Office versions supported to connect to Office 365/Microsoft 365 services as of Oct. 13, 2020.
• Connecting to Office 365 via Office 2016 for Mac, as well as older versions of Project and Visio are no longer supported as of Oct. 13, 2020. (InfoPath 2013 and SharePoint Designer 2013 have extended support into 2026.)
• TLS 1.0 and 1.1 was retired on Oct. 15, 2020; TLS 1.2 is now required to connect to Office 365 services.
• Skype for Business Online will be retired on July 31, 2021.
• Versions of Office 2019 will be supported until October 2023.

'The Office you know and love will still be there,' according to Spataro's March 30 blog post, 'but we're excited about the new apps and services we've added to our subscriptions over the last few years and about the new innovations we'll be adding in the coming months.'

Comparing Business and Enterprise Plans

Name changes aside, the current business licenses Microsoft 365 has to offer should look fairly familiar.

For business plans — which support up to 300 users — web and mobile Office apps as well as cloud file storage come standard. Most of the subscriptions also include Teams, Outlook, Exchange, and SharePoint.

But some of the key differences among the business licenses lie desktop versions of Office apps, as well as advanced security and device management offered by the Premium plan, which includes Intune and Azure Information Protection.

Here's a quick look at the main features of the newly renamed business subscriptions, directly from Microsoft:

*FKA = formerly known as

Enterprise licenses — available for an unlimited number of users — offer a broader variety of apps, cloud services, and device and security management.

On the lighter end of the subscription spectrum are Office 365 E1, E3, and E5, as well as the newly renamed Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise (formerly Office 365 ProPlus), all of which have different mixes of Office and productivity apps, device management, and even analytics. The more advanced protection, security, and compliance features, though, can be found with the Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 plans, which also include the Windows OS.

Here's Microsoft's general overview of what the enterprise licenses include:

Of course there are even more Microsoft 365 subscriptions — including personal/family, first-line workforce, education, and government plans — not covered in this post. But in terms of licenses that can fulfill the needs of large-scale organizations, these business and enterprise plans are a great place to start.

It's also worth taking a closer look at two popular enterprise plans, Office 365 E3 and Microsoft 365 E3, that are frequently compared in terms of features and value.

Differences Between Office 365 E3 and Microsoft 365 E3

Microsoft Office 365 Plans For Business

For organizations weighing the benefits and costs of Microsoft's enterprise licenses, two plans in particular often stand out: Office 365 E3 and Microsoft 365 E3.

At first glance, the two subscriptions have a lot in common. Both include Office suite apps (desktop, mobile, web), Outlook, Exchange, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, and more productivity apps. They also include some of the same services, such as Microsoft 365 admin center, Graph API, Mobile Device Management for Office 365, shared computer activation, on-premises Active Directory sync for single sign-on, and information protection.

But Microsoft 365 E3 has a bit more to offer, including device management options such as Microsoft Intune, Windows Autopilot, analytics, and a System Center Configuration Manager. It also features Windows Hello, Windows Credential Guard, DirectAccess, Azure Active Directory Premium, advanced threat and information protection measures, Microsoft Secure Score, and Microsoft Security and Compliance Center.

Microsoft 365 E3 also includes the Windows 10 Enterprise OS, which might explain why the plan is $12/user/month higher than Office 365 E3.

So which subscription offers the best value? Well, that's tough to say.

When it comes to choosing the best license, or even combination of licenses, organizations need to start by looking at their own users.

How to Choose the Right Licenses for Your Users

With so many different license tiers to pick from, finding the right fit can be a challenge.

Because while it's important for organizations to provide all the apps and services employees need to stay productive, it's just as important to avoid costly overprovisioning and unused software.

That's why understanding end-user needs is crucial. In order to strategically provision licenses and prevent wasted resources, IT teams need clear, detailed usage data.

Microsoft Office 365 Plans Comparison Pdf

With a digital experience monitoring solution, such as SysTrack, organizations can gain better visibility of their digital environments and end-user behavior by gathering data metrics — such as application usage and performance, storage needs, license info, etc. — directly from the endpoint.

IT teams can then use that information to start considering some critical questions:

• Where are licenses needed? Are there unused licenses that can be re-provisioned or removed?
• What does the usage data show over a 30-, 60-, or 90-day period?
• Are there edge cases where users can benefit from an upgrade? Or are there users who can be moved to a less expensive license without impact?

Microsoft Office 365 Plans India

Backed bys still the matter of keeping everything running smoothly and maintaining a great digital employee experience.

Although the SaaS model of Office 365 and Microsoft 365 make them ideal for many workspaces, their third-party infrastructure makes it tricky for IT admins to troubleshoot. And tools such as Microsoft Support and Discovery Assistant and the Admin Center's Microsoft 365 service health page offer only basic help with mainly external factors.

For deep root cause analysis and more effective troubleshooting — especially with Office 365 Enterprise licenses — an internal monitoring solution such as SysTrack is invaluable for providing visibility into other areas, including:

• Browser
• Network
• Operating system
• Hardware
• Other apps

Using SysTrack's comprehensive analytics in combination with its Office 365 Performance Monitoring Kit, which includes specially designed dashboards and reports, also gives IT teams greater insights into license usage and performance across their environment.

In addition to summary information about usage and performance, the kit also helps IT teams track underused or unused licenses; location-based details; and performance and consumption info for specific users.

So when issues do arise, IT has the means to quickly identify, resolve, and even prevent problems before they impact end-user experience and productivity.

Request a Demo

Learn how to gain better visibility of your licenses and environment with a free SysTrack demo.