Business Basic, Standard or Premium: which do you need?

What they cost in Australia

These are Microsoft's Australian list prices, per user per month, excluding GST:

From microsoft.com/en-au, checked 18 September 2026. Add 10% GST.

Prices went up in July 2026. Microsoft raised Business Basic (from $9.00) and Business Standard (from $18.70) on 1 July 2026. Existing customers pay the new price from their first renewal after that date. Business Premium didn't change. So the gap between Standard and Premium has narrowed from $14.20 to $11.90 per user per month, which is worth another look if you ruled Premium out as too expensive.

Paid yearly or monthly?

On Microsoft's Australian prices, a monthly subscription costs 20% more than paying yearly. The yearly price comes with a catch, though: on an annual subscription, Microsoft lets you remove licences only within seven days of buying or renewing. Hire someone for three months and you pay for their licence until the renewal date. If your headcount moves around (seasonal staff, apprentices, contractors), putting a few monthly licences on top of a yearly base often works out cheaper.

What you actually get with each plan

The 100 GB mailbox rolled out during 2026, so an older tenant may still show 50 GB for a while.

What the Premium security actually does

The Premium features have unfriendly names, so here is what they do for a small business:

• Conditional Access sets rules about how people sign in. For example: block sign-ins from overseas, or only allow company email on devices you manage. A password stolen by a phishing email becomes far less useful to the thief.
• Intune manages laptops and phones: it enforces encryption and screen locks, keeps them updated, and wipes a lost or stolen laptop remotely.
• Defender for Business is proper business antivirus and threat detection on each computer, managed centrally instead of left to each laptop.
• Defender for Office 365 checks email attachments and links more thoroughly before anyone clicks.
• Data loss prevention can stop things like Medicare or credit card numbers being emailed out by mistake.

One detail that catches people out: these protections apply only to people who have a Premium licence. Putting the owner on Premium and everyone else on Basic leaves most of the business unprotected.

How to choose, person by person

The trick is to choose for each person, not for the whole business. Microsoft lets you mix Business Basic, Standard and Premium in one account, up to 300 users in total across the business plans.

• On the tools or on the road, working from a phone: Basic. Email, Teams, files, and good-enough Office apps in the browser and on the phone.
• Lives in desktop Excel, Word or Outlook (estimators, bookkeepers, office managers): Standard at least.
• Handles client or patient information, or carries a laptop out of the office: Premium. That covers most of an allied health practice and most office staff at a professional firm.
• Only ever needs email (a shared inbox user, or a part-timer who checks one mailbox): Exchange Online Plan 1 at $6.00. Though for $4.50 more, Basic adds Teams, 1 TB of files and the web Office apps.

Do you need Teams?

If your business uses Zoom or Google Meet and nobody opens Teams, the no-Teams versions save $2.40 a user per month on Basic, $4.90 on Standard and $4.80 on Premium. If people chat or call in Teams even occasionally, keep it.

What about Copilot?

Copilot Chat, Microsoft's AI chat assistant, comes at no extra cost with an eligible business subscription. The full Microsoft 365 Copilot, which works inside your email and documents, is an add-on at $31.40 per user per month paid yearly. Microsoft also sells bundles: Business Standard with Copilot at $35.20 and Business Premium with Copilot at $47.90 (paid yearly, with Teams). Let the plan choice come from what each person needs first, then add Copilot for the people who will actually use it.

The expensive mistakes we see most

• Everyone on Standard by default, because that's what the first person bought. Field staff who never open desktop Excel could be on Basic.
• Mistaking Apps for business for a full plan. It's the desktop Office apps and OneDrive, with no business email or Teams. People buy it thinking it's a cheaper Standard.
• Paying for people who left. Licences stay on the invoice until someone removes them, and on an annual subscription you can only remove them near the renewal date. But don't just delete a leaver's account either; see what happens to their data.
• Premium for one person. If you're paying for Premium's security, it needs to cover everyone who could be phished.

Where we fit

A licence review is part of every Microsoft 365 tenant we take on: every seat checked against who actually uses it, the right plan for each person, and renewals timed so the savings are real rather than locked in for another year. If your Microsoft invoice is a mystery, send it over and we'll tell you what you're paying for.