Compare Microsoft Office 365 Plans & Features: Choose the Best One

Comparing Office 365 Plans E1, E3 & E5

Start the Office 365 E1 vs E3 vs E5 comparison by identifying plan highlights:

Office 365 E1

If administrators are completely new to the enterprise-grade cloud, this plan is a great starting point. It covers almost all the basic features (emails & file sharing) an organization would require to manage its day-to-day operations.

However, this relatively lightweight edition has no desktop apps. It more than makes up for it with its web-based counterparts. Being on the lowest price out of all the available options, this is the go-to plan for those who have a tight budget.

Office 365 E3

The middle option may be the best of both worlds, combining app availability with security at an affordable price. It is the cheaper option for accessing desktop apps on up to 5 PCs. Moreover, it builds up on the 5 layer security present in E1. Some highlighted features are message encryption, DLP for email and files, and a rights management portal.

Office 365 E5

The top-of-the-line cloud subscription option allows for a complete Office experience. The inclusion of even more advanced capabilities in both security, as well as compliance, makes it the best choice if you work with critical data.

However, not everything between these apps is different so check out some points that tell us they are part of the same family.

View Similarities Before Checking the Difference Between Office 365 E1, E3, and E5

• All three plans are available on a subscription-based model, which can either be paid for monthly or yearly.
• None of them include an MS Teams subscription. Microsoft has made Teams into a separate product pack for which organizations have to pay extra.
• Co-Pilot the AI integration feature can be added to any of the Office enterprise subscriptions.
• Moreover, admins get access to the admin center for monitoring and managing user activity no matter the plan their organization opts for.
• The web/mobile-based applications are also identical. The same can be said for email and other basic tasks.
• Now we are ready to see the points where they differ from each other. As price is the first thing in the minds of organizations let’s start from there.

Compare Office 365 E1 E3 E5 Price

Source: Microsoft

Subscription length and billing frequency date are two different things. If you select the annual subscription category you can set the billing to the lowest amount even if you pay monthly.

However, if your subscription length is on a monthly renewal cycle then you pay $1.65, $4.25, and $7.25 more on a per-user basis for E1, E3, and E5 respectively. So if you want to check out the subscription we suggest you go for a 1-month trial. After the trials end you are automatically put on an annual cycle.

These prices are in US dollars if you purchase directly from Microsoft. It may vary based on your geographical location. Moreover, taxes and vendor costs may make the actual price you pay a little different from what you see here.

We want to inform readers that price is just one part of the total value proposition. It is the features you get in a plan that prove if your money’s worth or not. Moreover, the addition of the features the apps you get alongside helps to get a better idea of what’s different between the enterprise editions. So to help you we offer a tabular layout with all apps and the plans that contain them.

Office 365 E1 vs E3 vs E5 Comparison on App Availability

On a strict app matchup, almost all E5 apps are available in the E3 edition except for Power BI Pro. However, the E1 category lags behind the other two quite a bit. Especially, the lack of desktop options for core apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. This limits the offline work that can be done even with a premium plan. Next, our discussion moves toward another major point, which is security.

Security Difference Between Office 365 E1, E3, and E5

No administrator wants to move their organization to an insecure cloud environment. There is no doubt that Microsoft provides top-notch Office 365 security for all their products. However, there is a significant difference among them that may lead to the admin selecting one plan over the other. Check out what they are.

Available in all O365 plans (E1, E3, E5):

• Basic Security: Multi-factor authentication, antimalware protection
• Content Search
• Manual Retention Labels
• Audit (Standard)

Present in Office 365 E3 and E5 version:

• Microsoft Editor premium features
• Multilingual user interface for Microsoft 365 apps
• Inactive Mailboxes
• Auto-expanding email archive
• Exchange Plan 2 (100 GB mailbox + up to 1.5 TB archive)
• SharePoint Plan 2 (1+ 10 TB OneDrive storage)
• DLP for emails & files
• Manual, default, and mandatory sensitivity labeling in Microsoft 365 apps
• Group Policy support for Microsoft 365 apps
• Cloud Policy service for Microsoft 365 (Full access)
• Shared computer activation for Microsoft 365 apps
• Basic org-wide or location-wide retention policies
• eDiscovery (Standard) (including Hold and Export)
• Litigation Hold

Available only in Office 365 E5 variant:

• Audit (Premium)
• DLP for Teams chat
• Premium personal insights and experiences
• Automatic sensitivity labeling in various Microsoft 365 apps and services (Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams chat)
• Sensitivity labels based on advanced classifiers
• Default sensitivity labels for SharePoint document libraries
• Advanced Message Encryption
• Customer Key
• Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 2
• Rules-based automatic retention policies
• Records Management
• eDiscovery (Premium)
• Communication Compliance
• Information Barriers
• Customer Lockbox
• Privileged Access Management

Difference Between Enterprise Edition of Office 365 and Microsoft 365

Office 365 Enterprise edition beats the newer Microsoft 365 version on price. It also has an extra edition on the starting side of the spectrum tagged E1. However, organizations can’t add Co-Pilot with this plan. Other than that the common Apps in both Office 365 E5 and Microsoft 365 E5 variants are as follows.

• Word
• Excel
• PowerPoint
• Outlook
• OneDrive
• OneNote
• Microsoft Stream
• Microsoft Bookings
• Microsoft Forms
• Sway
• Microsoft Planner
• Microsoft To Do
• Power Apps
• Power Automate (potentially included in Power Apps)

Apps Only in Office category:

• Microsoft Access (PC only)
• Microsoft Publisher (PC only)
• Exchange (email server software)
• Delve (social networking for work)

Apps Only in Microsoft 365:

• Windows (operating system)
• Microsoft Lists (web-based list management)
• Clipchamp (video editing)
• Microsoft Loop (real-time collaboration)
• Visio (diagramming tool)
• Power BI Pro (advanced business intelligence)

How Microsoft 365 Enterprise and Business Plans are Different from Each Other?

• Up to 300 employees can be managed easily via the business edition. When the number of personnel increases beyond this, it is encouraged to move on to enterprise-grade.
• Cost is the biggest differentiator. Enterprise plans are the more expensive variant; even the cheapest enterprise-grade plan is $10 more costly than the premium business plan.
• All Business grade plans have a with or without teams option. For enterprise plans, organizations have to get the Teams subscription separately.
• Other than Teams, Enterprise plans have a wider selection of Microsoft apps available for users when compared to their business-level counterparts.

Even the enterprise-grade, has variants. Among them, a cost-effective option for organizations can be the F series of plans. Designed for frontline workers those who provide goods or services to customers directly.

These plans come with the premium Teams subscription. So if communication is something you cannot go without then this plan might be the best for you.

Purchasing a new plan is easy but shifting the entire workforce there is not. So that’s why it’s better to rely on a trusted Office 365 to Office 365 migration utility. It can help you align the user data with their new plan.

Other than the intra-cloud upgrade, there are instances where organizations using alternative cloud solutions want to move to Microsoft 365. For that, too we. have the right tools for the job.

• Scenario 1. Admins who want to shift from G Suite to Office 365 can do it with our migration utility.
• Scenario 2. There is also the option to migrate Lotus Notes to Office 365 without any data loss.
• Scenario 3. There is a chance that you are reading this because you have an on-premise. Don’t worry, as we offer a solution to transition from Exchange On-Premise to Office 365 cloud.