Microsoft 365 Organization Premium vs E3, and One Powerful Tool in Both That Will Revolutionize Your IT
You've chosen upon Microsoft 365 and the Azure cloud for your company. Congratulations. We believe you've made the best choice.
Now that you've chosen M365, it is time to select a strategy. While there are many to choose from, IT Support Guys usually manages M365's Business Premium and E3 (business) offerings.

In this post, we will cover the differences in between Business Premium and Microsoft's very first enterprise offering. You might discover that neither offering is for you, choosing the less expensive Business Standard strategy, or the immersive E5 plan.

If you have a question about any of these strategies or wish to consult our tech specialists on which M365 plan will move your business furthest forward, get on a call with us as soon as possible.
What is Microsoft 365?
A style depicting Microsoft 365 Business Premium vs E3
Microsoft 365 is Microsoft's membership efficiency suite that can connect all of your preferred Microsoft Office applications together with first-rate cloud capabilities and air-tight security.
M365 comes packaged in many various plans for home, company, and business. With varying rates and features, Microsoft offers you choices for what plan fits your circumstance the very best.
What is Azure cloud?
Graphic showing numerous computers sending information approximately the Microsoft Azure cloud, an essential part of Microsoft 365 Business Premium vs. E3 Azure is Microsoft's cloud computing platform that was launched in 2010, solving problems consisting of storage, computation, and analysis of data through virtualization.
Azure deals solutions like Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS).Cloud services permit organizations to reduce their overhead by suppressing storage expenses, while also centralizing data for better file sharing, and bolstering backup and disaster healing efforts.
What is Business Premium?
Microsoft 365 Business Premium is M365's top offering for little to medium-sized organizations, an upgrade on its Business Basic and Business Standard offerings.
Company Premium costs $20 per user each month and comes with a 50 GB mailbox storage limit and a 1 TB storage limitation in OneDrive. Just 300 Business Premium licenses can be assigned to a company prior to it need to begin acquiring enterprise plans.
What is E3?
Microsoft 365 E3 is M365's preliminary enterprise plan, being available in as the second-most crammed plan feature-wise behind E5.
E3 expenses $32/user/month and includes unrestricted mail box and OneDrive storage. There is no cap to the number of company users can be on E3 strategies. It also comes with a few of the top security functions readily available.
Why Business Premium and E3?-- Microsoft Intune
A graphic revealing connected gadgets to Microsoft Intune
ITSG highlights Business Premium and E3 as preferred M365 strategies since they provide a lot of functions that make your cloud experience much better.The essential function that makes these plans elite is Microsoft Intune, which controls gain access to for mobile devices, including smartphones, tablets, and laptops.
It likewise permits managers to set extra security steps on non-company gadgets and limitations on what remote employees can gain access to.
Why does that make Intune a gamechanger?
Anyone who has needed to establish a new computer or smartphone has likely had to invest hours customizing their settings, restoring files, and remembering passwords.
Those days remain in the past with Intune, which permits you to develop a default image for release. When you established a new computer system, Intune enables you to strike the ground running without lost time.Paired together with Azure Active Directory, Intune eliminates the requirement to run your own server.
With top-shelf identity management and endpoint management in the cloud, Intune and Azure ADVERTISEMENT makes on-premise identity and endpoint management redundant.
With no inconvenience and no server, Intune conserves time and money that you can assign elsewhere.If you currently have a server, Intune and Azure ADVERTISEMENT are still compatible with your environment.
In addition, with Azure sync, you can marry your on-premise and cloud servers to develop a hybrid setup, the ultimate choice for your IT.
Why Business Premium and E3?-- What else?
Beyond Intune, there are other features offered in both Business Premium and E3 that make them stand above the less-expensive strategies.
Both strategies feature Microsoft's best-in-class communication hub, Teams, along with SharePoint Online and Planner.Both Business Premium and E3 come with Litigation Hold and eDiscovery, which are very important features that secure your business from losing data that is crucial to any legal procedures. Although, Business Premium might run into storage issues if Litigation Hold is utilized to freeze excessive data.
Security
The real worth you get with E3's price increase is its additional security functions, which are extensive. E3 includes Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA), Credential Guard, App Locker, Windows Information Protection (WIP), and the complete version of Azure Active Directory.
E3 likewise includes the ability to encrypt emails with the click of a button. This ensures that delicate information is opened by the designated getting celebration, who must log in with a Microsoft or service account.
A screenshot of Outlook in Microsoft 365 E3, with how to place file encryption on an email.
Organization Premium just includes Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (previously called Advanced Threat Protection).
Let's quickly discuss just what you get with these features.
The headliner here is ATA, which is a tool that evaluates the traffic can be found in and out of your network, identifying the habits of entities within your company. By finding out the behavior of users and other parties accessing your data, ATA can accurately discover and notify you in the case that anything is suspicious.Credential guard utilizes virtualized security to keep login qualifications hidden from all software application, except for programs that need them. This additional security stores information in a separated location to reduce the opportunities of credential theft.
AppLocker allows managers to manage which files and applications that users have access to, including executable files and installer files. This safeguards you internally, as user mistake is a leading reason for cybersecurity breaches.
Mentioning user mistake, Windows Information Protection prevents the unintentional leak of information by employees through e-mail, social networks, and similar apps. WIP signals users that their action will share or divulge work information prior to the action is confirmed. This protection becomes more crucial as staff members stay remote.
Furthermore, with WIP, companies can preserve an archive after a staff member leaves, while still deactivating their license.All these features are tied together with the complete version of Azure Active Directory, where you can keep an eye on and govern your company's whole cloud environment. The complete version permits extra functions like group access management, advanced security reports, multi-factor authentication with conditional gain access to, and more.
Organization Premium's Microsoft Defender is a cloud-based email filter that determines harmful links and attachments prior to they enter your it services environment. Defender also determines malicious files and links in SharePoint, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft Defender suffices to secure your organization general and is a great initial step in protecting your cloud. If you desire the most defense Microsoft can use, that will need among their enterprise plans.
E3 and its innovative security functions allow organizations to carefully balance which employees have access to perform which jobs, creating a streamlined, safe cloud environment.
Everything else
If you are not as stressed over your security, think about a few of the other functions of E3 that you might lose out on with Business Premium.
One big perk of E3 is the ability to access the Microsoft Office suite via a remote desktop, meaning you can release its performance apps to shared computers in your company.The capability to activate shared computer systems from another location likewise comes with E3. With remote desktop services, every user on your shared computer system can continue to work on their files.
Likewise exclusive to enterprise plans is Azure rights management, which protects information that is shared externally. When protected files are emailed to another company, the protection remains on the file.
Like Litigation Hold and eDiscovery, Azure rights management is imperative for compliance and might be needed.
E3 further solidifies your compliance with information loss avoidance (DLP). If your company deals with delicate, proprietary, or client data, DLP can recognize and secure it from being shared. Utilizing "deep content analysis" and data-matching through keywords, DLP will show a pop-up notice that cautions users prior to sharing flagged data.
Other enterprise-only features consist of Excel PowerPivot, and PowerQuery, as well as Infopath, an application for distributing and submitting electronic types. In-place archiving for Exchange is likewise restricted to enterprise.
These are just some of the additional features of E3, with more that are currently present, and more that will be added with time. If you believe any of these functions may be something you need, make certain to reach out to ITSG before choosing.
Conclusion
Microsoft 365 Business Premium offers your business whatever it needs to run and grow. That's why we suggest it to all our consumers.
Security and security are a must for modern-day companies, nevertheless, and if your company is dealing with delicate information or has strict compliance guidelines-- E3 may be your finest option. Making this option might not be a simple task. If you are an organization bigger than 300 staff members, it might be a decision that is produced you.