Microsoft 365 Business Premium Explained
A note on names, because the search terms are a mess and the products behind them are not. Office 365 was renamed Microsoft 365 in 2020, and the subscriptions people still call an Office 365 subscription, O365 Business or Office365 Business are today's Microsoft 365 Business plans. Exchange Online, the business email part, is included in every one of them. If you are pricing an Office 365 subscription for a Canadian business, this page is about the plan you mean.
Email, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, Teams, SharePoint, plus Intune device management, Defender for Business EDR, Entra ID Plan 1 with conditional access, and Azure Information Protection.
What Business Premium costs in Canada.
Microsoft list prices for the Business plans, in Canadian dollars, per user per month. Microsoft has repackaged this line: Standard and Premium are now sold as "with Copilot" editions at higher prices, and Business Premium as it was previously sold at $30.60 is no longer what the pricing page offers. The figures below were taken from Microsoft's Canadian pricing page and the Copilot pricing page on 14 August 2026. Check both before you budget, because Microsoft moves these without much notice.
| Plan | Paid yearly | Monthly commitment | Desktop Office apps | Device management and EDR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business Basic | $9.50 | Not published | Web and mobile only | No |
| Apps for business | $14.20 | Not published | Yes | No |
| Business Standard with Copilot | $31.90 | $38.28 | Yes | No |
| Business Premium with Copilot | $43.40 | $52.08 | Yes | Yes |
Three things trip people up on this table. The first is that the widely quoted "about thirty dollars" figure for Business Premium is out of date: it was the annual-commitment rate before Copilot was folded into the licence. The second is that paid yearly and monthly commitment are 20 percent apart where Microsoft publishes both, and that annual commitment and annual billing are still different choices, so you can commit for a year and be invoiced monthly, which is what most of our clients do. The third is that Microsoft also sells every one of these at a lower price without Teams, a European regulatory artefact that Canadian tenants can buy: Basic at $7.30, Standard with Copilot at $27.50, Premium with Copilot at $39.10.
For a 25-person business paid yearly, Business Premium with Copilot runs $1,085 per month or $13,020 per year. Moving those same 25 users up from Business Standard with Copilot costs an extra $287.50 per month, which is the number worth holding onto for the comparison further down.
The Copilot repackaging is worth understanding before you treat the increase as a price rise. The step from the old $30.60 Premium to the current $43.40 is $12.80, and what it buys is Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams. The nearest thing you can buy separately, the Microsoft 365 Copilot Business add-on, lists at $24.43 per user per month paid yearly. If your team will use Copilot, the bundled price is the cheaper route by a wide margin. If it will not, you are paying $12.80 a seat for something nobody opens, and that is the real question to settle before you renew.
Everything in the licence, and what each piece actually does.
Business Premium is Business Standard plus a security and device-management stack. The productivity half is the part everyone knows; the second half is the part people pay for twice because they did not realise they already owned it.
Everything in Business Standard.
Exchange email with a 50 GB mailbox per user, the desktop, web and mobile versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, 1 TB of OneDrive per user, Teams, SharePoint, and Bookings. Installable on up to five PCs or Macs, five tablets and five phones per person.
Intune Plan 1.
Yes, Intune is included, and it is the single most under-used thing in the licence. It enrols Windows and mobile devices, pushes configuration and compliance policy, and lets you wipe company data off a lost phone without touching the owner's photos. Most businesses paying an MSP for "device management" are paying for someone to operate this.
Defender for Business.
A genuine endpoint detection and response product, not the consumer antivirus of the same family. Behavioural detection, automated investigation and remediation, and vulnerability management across the fleet. Bought standalone this is the line item that most often gets duplicated on top of a licence that already includes it.
Entra ID Plan 1, with conditional access.
Conditional access is included, and it is what turns MFA from a checkbox into a control: block sign-ins from outside Canada, require a compliant device for access to SharePoint, force reauthentication on risky sessions. Self-service password reset comes with it. This is also the specific line insurers look for on a cyber application.
Purview Information Protection.
Sensitivity labels and encryption that travel with the file rather than the folder it lives in, so a labelled document stays protected after it is emailed outside the organisation. Formerly Azure Information Protection, which is the name still used in most of the documentation you will find.
Windows 11 Business upgrade rights.
Business Premium carries upgrade rights from Windows Pro to Windows 11 Business, plus Windows Autopilot for zero-touch deployment. A new laptop can be shipped straight to an employee and configure itself on first boot, which is the difference between a two-hour setup and a ten-minute one.
What Business Premium does not cover.
The honest list, because assuming any of these are included is the expensive kind of mistake.
Power BI Pro.
Not included. It is a separate per-user licence. This is the single most common "I thought we had that" on the list.
Defender for Office 365 Plan 2.
Business Premium includes Plan 1, which covers Safe Links, Safe Attachments and anti-phishing. Plan 2 adds threat hunting, attack simulation training and automated investigation for email. Separate purchase.
Teams Phone and calling plans.
Teams is included; making Teams your phone system is not. Teams Phone is a separate licence, plus either a Microsoft calling plan or a direct routing carrier. Worth pricing against a dedicated VoIP platform rather than assuming.
Backup of your Microsoft 365 data.
Microsoft replicates your data for their availability, not for your recovery. Retention policies and the recycle bin are not backup: they will not save you from a malicious admin, a ransomware event that encrypts synced files, or a deletion discovered eight months later. Third-party backup is a separate line, and it is not optional.
Should your business choose Microsoft 365 Business Premium?
Business Premium is usually the strongest Microsoft 365 licence for security-conscious organizations with up to 300 users, but it is not automatically the right plan for every seat.
You need one integrated productivity and security licence.
It is a practical fit when staff need desktop Office apps, business email, Teams, managed Windows devices, conditional access, endpoint detection and phishing protection under one subscription.
You already operate an equivalent security stack.
Standard can make sense when another platform already covers device management, identity controls, endpoint security and email protection. Compare the full stack cost, not the licence price alone.
You exceed 300 users or need deeper controls.
E3 or E5 becomes relevant for larger organizations and requirements such as advanced identity protection, compliance, eDiscovery, analytics, voice or enterprise-grade endpoint capabilities.
For a plan-by-plan Canadian cost table, see our Microsoft 365 pricing guide for Canada. This page stays focused on what Business Premium includes, its limits, and whether it fits your environment.
Business Premium against the plans either side of it.
The two decisions people actually face: whether to step up from Standard, and whether to jump to Enterprise.
| Capability | Business Standard | Business Premium | Enterprise E5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Desktop Office apps | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Seat limit | 300 | 300 | None |
| Intune device management | No | Plan 1 | Plan 1 |
| Defender for Business EDR | No | Yes | Defender for Endpoint P2 |
| Conditional access | No | Yes, Entra ID P1 | Yes, Entra ID P2 |
| Defender for Office 365 | No | Plan 1 | Plan 2 |
| Power BI Pro | No | No | Yes |
| Teams Phone | No | No | Yes |
| Advanced eDiscovery | No | No | Yes |
Standard to Premium
The upgrade costs $11.50 per user per month paid yearly, since both editions now carry Copilot and the gap between them is purely the security stack. Buying the same capabilities separately, Defender for Business, Intune Plan 1 and Entra ID P1 list at roughly $3 to $10 each per user per month, so the bundle is close to a wash on paper and clearly ahead once you count the administration you are not doing across three consoles. For any business that handles client data, carries cyber insurance, or has staff on laptops off the network, Premium is the correct answer and Standard is a false economy.
The case for staying on Standard is narrower than most people think: a small team, all on desks, in one office, with no regulatory exposure and no cyber policy. If someone is asking you for evidence of MFA enforcement or managed endpoints, Standard cannot produce it.
Premium to E5
Almost always premature for a business under 300 people. E5 is priced for organisations that will actually use Power BI Pro across the company, run Teams Phone as their telephony, and have a compliance function that needs advanced eDiscovery and insider risk management. If you want two of those three, price them as add-ons to Premium first; the add-on route is usually cheaper until you are consuming most of what E5 bundles.
Business Premium against the Microsoft enterprise licences, E3 and E5
The plans people compare Business Premium against are usually Business Standard below it and the Microsoft enterprise licences above it. E3 and E5 sit in a different family with no seat cap, and the jump is less about features than about scale and identity governance.
More seats, fewer security features than you might expect.
An enterprise Microsoft licence with no 300-seat ceiling, unlimited archiving and stronger compliance tooling. Notably it does not include the advanced threat protection that Business Premium does, so moving from Business Premium to E3 alone can be a security downgrade.
The full stack, at a price that shows.
Adds advanced threat protection, cloud app security, automated investigation, plus Power BI Pro and telephony. Genuinely comprehensive and materially more per user per month. Worth it where identity governance and compliance are real obligations rather than aspirations.
The best security per dollar under 300 seats.
For most Canadian SMBs this is the correct answer, because it bundles device management and the threat protection insurers ask about at a fraction of enterprise pricing. The reason to leave is hitting the seat cap or needing compliance features, not needing better security.
The trap worth naming: a business outgrowing 300 seats and moving to E3 to solve the cap can lose security capability it was relying on, because E3 does not carry Business Premium's threat protection. The usual answer is E3 plus a security add-on, or E5, and either is a bigger budget conversation than the seat count implies. Check current Microsoft pricing and plan contents directly, since both change.
The ceilings worth knowing before you commit.
300 users, and it is a hard stop.
Every Business plan caps at 300 seats, and the cap is per plan rather than per tenant, so you can hold 300 Business Premium alongside Enterprise licences in the same tenant. Growing businesses should plan the Enterprise transition at around 250, not at 299.
50 GB per mailbox.
Shared mailboxes get 50 GB without a licence. Archive mailboxes add 50 GB more, and auto-expanding archive is not available on Business plans, so a user genuinely generating 100 GB of mail is a signal to look at Enterprise.
1 TB per user, plus a tenant pool.
OneDrive is 1 TB per user. SharePoint starts at 1 TB for the organisation plus 10 GB per licensed user, and more can be bought. The number that surprises people is the SharePoint pool, not the OneDrive allocation.
Annual commitment means annual.
Under the New Commerce Experience, seats on an annual term can be added at any time but not reduced until renewal, and the cancellation window is seven calendar days from the order. Businesses with seasonal headcount should hold a monthly baseline and flex on top of it.
Quick answers.
How much is Microsoft 365 Business Premium in Canada?
Microsoft's Canadian list price is $43.40 per user per month paid yearly, or $52.08 per user per month on a monthly commitment, for Microsoft 365 Business Premium with Copilot, as published on microsoft.com on 14 August 2026. Microsoft has folded Microsoft 365 Copilot into the Standard and Premium editions, so the 'about thirty dollars' figure still repeated in most articles is the older pre-Copilot rate and no longer buys the plan. An edition without Teams sells for $39.10 paid yearly.
What is included in Microsoft 365 Business Premium?
Everything in Business Standard, meaning Exchange email with a 50 GB mailbox, the desktop, web and mobile Office apps, 1 TB of OneDrive per user, Teams and SharePoint. On top of that: Intune Plan 1 for device management, Defender for Business for endpoint detection and response, Entra ID Plan 1 with conditional access and self-service password reset, Purview Information Protection for sensitivity labelling and encryption, and Windows 11 Business upgrade rights with Autopilot. Since the 2026 repackaging the licence also carries Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams.
Does Microsoft 365 Business Premium include Intune?
Yes, Intune Plan 1 is included. It covers Windows and mobile device enrolment, configuration and compliance policy, application deployment, and selective wipe of company data from a lost or stolen device. It is the most under-used component of the licence, and businesses frequently pay a provider separately for device management that this already entitles them to.
Does Business Premium include conditional access and Power BI?
Conditional access yes, Power BI Pro no. Conditional access comes with the included Entra ID Plan 1 and is what lets you require a compliant device, block sign-ins by location, or force reauthentication on a risky session. Power BI Pro is a separate per-user licence and is the most common thing people wrongly assume is in the bundle.
Is Business Premium worth upgrading to from Business Standard?
For most businesses yes. The step up is $11.50 per user per month paid yearly, and because both editions now include Copilot, that money buys exactly one thing: the security stack, meaning endpoint detection and response, device management and conditional access. Bought separately those three list at roughly $3 to $10 each per user per month, so the bundle is close to a wash before you count running one console instead of three. If you handle client data, carry cyber insurance, or have staff on laptops off the network, Standard cannot produce the evidence you will be asked for.
What is the user limit on Microsoft 365 Business Premium?
300 seats, and it is a hard ceiling. The limit applies per plan rather than per tenant, so 300 Business Premium licences can coexist with Enterprise licences in the same tenant. If you are growing, plan the Enterprise transition at around 250 users rather than waiting until you hit the cap.
Should we go to E5 instead?
Usually not, under 300 people. E5 makes sense when you will genuinely use Power BI Pro across the business, run Teams Phone as your telephony, and need advanced eDiscovery or insider risk management. If you want one or two of those, price them as add-ons to Business Premium first. The add-on route is normally cheaper until you are consuming most of what E5 bundles.
Do we still need backup if we are on Business Premium?
Yes. Microsoft replicates your data for their availability, not for your recovery. Retention policies and the recycle bin will not save you from a malicious administrator, a ransomware event that encrypts synced files, or a deletion nobody notices for eight months. Third-party backup of Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams is a separate line item and it is not optional.
Can North Star set this up and manage it?
Yes. We run Business Premium tenant builds, migrations from Google Workspace or on-premises Exchange, and ongoing management for businesses across BC, Alberta and Yukon. The part worth paying for is not the licence purchase, it is turning on the half of it most tenants never configure: conditional access, Intune compliance policy, and Defender deployed to every endpoint.
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