Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3



Microsoft 365 Business Premium includes Windows 10 Business, which you can install with Windows AutoPilot. When you migrate to Microsoft 365 E3, each user license includes Windows 10 Enterprise E3, which you can also install with Windows Autopilot. Microsoft 365 Apps for business.

Many Office 365 plans also include the desktop version of Office, for example, Microsoft 365 Business Standard and Office 365 E3. One of the benefits of having the desktop version of Office applications is that you can work offline and have the confidence that the next time you connect to the Internet all your work will automatically sync, so. Not available on Windows 10 Enterprise E3 in S mode. Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA) ended Mainstream Support on January 12, 2021. Extended Support will continue until January 2026. Find additional information here.

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Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3 Price

Microsoft 365 and Office 365 are available in a variety of plans to best meet the needs of your organization.

Service families and plans

The following table lists the different service families and plans available in Microsoft 365 and Office 365. For a high-level overview of features and pricing information, or to chat with an online representative, select any of the links in the Plans column.

Office 365 service familyPlans
Business (maximum of 300 users)
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 (formerly Office 365 Business)
Enterprise (unlimited number of users)
Office 365 E1
Office 365 E3
Office 365 E5
Office 365 F3
Microsoft 365 F1
Microsoft 365 F3 (includes Office 365 F3)
Microsoft 365 E3 (includes Office 365 E3)
Microsoft 365 E5 (includes Office 365 E5)
Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise (formerly Office 365 ProPlus)
Education (unlimited number of users)
Office 365 A1
Office 365 A3
Office 365 E5
Microsoft 365 A1 (one-time, per device license paired with free Office 365 A1 per user licenses)
Microsoft 365 A3 (includes Office 365 A3)
Microsoft 365 A5 (includes Office 365 A5)
U.S. Government (unlimited number of users)
See all available plans
Office 365 operated by 21Vianet in China
See all available plans
Office 365 Germany
Learn about Office 365 Germany

Service availability within each Microsoft 365 and Office 365 plan

Each Microsoft 365 or 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 plan.

Enterprise

Important

While a service may be available across Microsoft 365 and Office 365 plans, the features available in each plan may differ. To see the details of features that are available for each plan, refer to the individual service description or contact your Reseller or Microsoft sales representative for more information.
Several of the Microsoft 365 and Office 365 plans have add-ons that you can buy for your subscription. An add-on provides additional functionality to the subscription. For more information, see Buy or edit an add-on for Office 365 for business.

ServiceMicrosoft 365 AppsMicrosoft 365 Business BasicMicrosoft 365 Business StandardMicrosoft 365 Business PremiumOffice 365 E1Microsoft 365 E3/Office 365 E3Microsoft 365 E5/Office 365 E53,15Microsoft 365 F3/Office 365 F3Microsoft 365 F1
Office 365 platform
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Exchange Online
No
Yes5
Yes5
Yes5
Yes5
Yes6
Yes6
Yes8
No16
SharePoint Online
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes17
OneDrive
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes4
Yes4
Skype for Business Online 14
No
Yes9
Yes9
Yes9
Yes9
Yes10
Yes12
Yes13
Yes13
Office for the web
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No18
Office applications
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
No
No
Project
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
No
Power BI
No
No
No
No
No
No
Yes
No
No
Yammer Enterprise
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Azure Information Protection2
No
No1
No1
Yes
No1
Yes
Yes
No1
No
Microsoft Kaizala
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No

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 Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Microsoft 365 Business Standard, Microsoft 365 F1, Microsoft 365 F3, Office 365 E1, Office 365 A1, or Office 365 F3.
2 To learn more about which Azure Information Protection features are included with Microsoft 365 and Office 365 plans, see Azure Information Protection.
3 Office 365 E5 and Microsoft 365 E5 contain Phone System and Audio Conferencing. To implement a Calling Plan requires an additional plan purchase (either Domestic or International).
4 Includes 2 GB storage.
5 Includes Exchange Online Plan 1.
6 Includes Exchange Online Plan 2.
7 Includes Exchange Online Plan 1 plus supplemental features.
8 Includes Exchange Online Kiosk.
9 Includes Skype for Business Online Plan 2 with basic client limitations.
10 Includes Skype for Business Online Plan 2 without any client limitations.
11 Includes Skype for Business Online Plan 1 plus supplemental features.
12 Includes Skype for Business Online Plan 2 with voice support and without any client limitations.
13 Includes Skype for Business Online Plan 1.
14 Microsoft Teams is now the primary client for messaging, meetings, and calling in Microsoft 365. As of Oct. 1, 2018, new customers with 500 seats or less are onboarded to Microsoft Teams and do not have access to Skype for Business Online. Tenants that are already using Skype for Business Online are able to continue doing so (including provisioning new users) until they complete their transition to Microsoft Teams.
15 Includes Microsoft 365 E5 Compliance, which provides automatic classification and retention, Customer Key, Advanced Message Encryption, Insider Risk Management, Communication Compliance, Information Barriers, Customer Lockbox, Privileged Access Management, Advanced Audit, Records Management, and Advanced eDiscovery capabilities; and Microsoft 365 E5 Security, which includes Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 2, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Azure Active Directory Plan 2, Microsoft Defender for Identity, Microsoft Cloud App Security, and Safe Documents.
16 Microsoft 365 F1 does not include rights to an Exchange mailbox. To enable a full Teams experience, M365 F1 licenses may come with the Exchange Online K1 service plan enabled. Although the Exchange Online K1 service plan will provision a mailbox for the user, M365 F1 users are not entitled to use the mailbox. We recommend that your customers disable Outlook on the web via these steps and ask users not to access the Exchange mailbox via any other methods.
17 Includes SharePoint Online Kiosk. Cannot be administrators. No site mailbox. No personal site.
18 Microsoft 365 F1 users can read files using Office for the web, but do not have create/edit/save rights.

Basic client limitations

The following features are available in the full client, but are not available in the basic client:

  • Manage team call settings
  • Manage delegates
  • Make calls on behalf of another contact (manager/delegate scenario)
  • Handle another's calls if configured as a delegate
  • Manage a high volume of calls
  • Initiate a call to a Response Group
  • Call park
  • Group call pickup

Changing or mixing plans

As the needs of your organization change, you may need to change your Microsoft 365 plan. You can switch from your current subscription to another subscription:

  • In the same service family: For example, you can move from Microsoft 365 Business Basic to Microsoft 365 Business Standard, or from Office 365 E1 to Office 365 E3.
  • From a standalone plan: For example, you can move from Exchange Online Plan 1 to Office 365 E1.
  • To a different service family: For example, you can move from Microsoft 365 Business Basic to Office 365 E3.
    For information about how to change subscriptions, including how to move from a trial to a paid subscription, see Switch to a different Microsoft 365 plan or subscription.

You can combine Enterprise, Business, and standalone plans (for example, Exchange Online Plan 1) within a single account. However, existing limitations on the number of seats per plan do not change. For example, you can have up to 300 seats per plan on both Microsoft 365 Business Basic and Microsoft 365 Business Standard, but an unlimited number of users on Exchange Online Plan 1.

Standalone services

The following online services are available on their own, as standalone plans. They can also be added to Business and Enterprise service family plans that don't already include them. For pricing information, or to chat with an online representative, select any of the plans listed in the following table.

Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3

ServicePlans
Exchange Online
Exchange Online Plan 1
Exchange Online Plan 2
Exchange Online Protection
Microsoft Defender for Office 365
Exchange Online Archiving
Exchange Online Kiosk
SharePoint Online
SharePoint Online Plan 1
SharePoint Online Plan 2
OneDrive for Business
OneDrive for Business Plan 1
OneDrive for Business Plan 2
Office applications
Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise
Microsoft 365 Apps for business
Project portfolio management
Project Plan 1
Project Plan 3
Project Plan 5
Yammer
Yammer Basic
Organizational insights
Workplace Analytics
Business intelligence service
Power BI
Online diagram software
Visio Plan 1
Visio Plan 2
Information Rights Management
Azure Information Protection

Feature availability

To view feature availability across Microsoft 365 and Office 365 plans, see Microsoft 365 and Office 365 platform service description.

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Microsoft provides a hierarchy of organizations, subscriptions, licenses, and user accounts for consistent use of identities and billing across its cloud offerings:

M365 E3 Windows 10 Enterprise

  • Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Office 365
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Microsoft Dynamics 365

Elements of the hierarchy

Here are the elements of the hierarchy:

Organization

An organization represents a business entity that is using Microsoft cloud offerings, typically identified by one or more public Domain Name System (DNS) domain names, such as contoso.com. The organization is a container for subscriptions.

Subscriptions

A subscription is an agreement with Microsoft to use one or more Microsoft cloud platforms or services, for which charges accrue based on either a per-user license fee or on cloud-based resource consumption.

  • Microsoft's Software as a Service (SaaS)-based cloud offerings (Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365) charge per-user license fees.
  • Microsoft's Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud offerings (Azure) charge based on cloud resource consumption.

You can also use a trial subscription, but the subscription expires after a specific amount of time or consumption charges. You can convert a trial subscription to a paid subscription.

Organizations can have multiple subscriptions for Microsoft's cloud offerings. Figure 1 shows a single organization that has multiple Microsoft 365 subscriptions, a Dynamics 365 subscription, and multiple Azure subscriptions.

Figure 1: Example of multiple subscriptions for an organization

Licenses

For Microsoft's SaaS cloud offerings, a license allows a specific user account to use the services of the cloud offering. You are charged a fixed monthly fee as part of your subscription. Administrators assign licenses to individual user accounts in the subscription. For the example in Figure 2, the Contoso Corporation has a Microsoft 365 E5 subscription with 100 licenses, which allows to up to 100 individual user accounts to use Microsoft 365 E5 features and services.

Figure 2: Licenses within the SaaS-based subscriptions for an organization

Note

A security best practice is to use separate user accounts that are assigned specific roles for administrative functions. These dedicated administrator accounts do not need to be assigned a license for the cloud services that they administer. For example, a SharePoint administrator account does not need to be assigned a Microsoft 365 license.

For Azure PaaS-based cloud services, software licenses are built into the service pricing.

For Azure IaaS-based virtual machines, additional licenses to use the software or application installed on a virtual machine image might be required. Some virtual machine images have licensed versions of software installed and the cost is included in the per-minute rate for the server. Examples are the virtual machine images for SQL Server 2014 and SQL Server 2016.

Some virtual machine images have trial versions of applications installed and need additional software application licenses for use beyond the trial period. For example, the SharePoint Server 2016 Trial virtual machine image includes a trial version of SharePoint Server 2016 pre-installed. To continue using SharePoint Server 2016 after the trial expiration date, you must purchase a SharePoint Server 2016 license and client licenses from Microsoft. These charges are separate from the Azure subscription and the per-minute rate to run the virtual machine still applies.

User accounts

User accounts for all of Microsoft's cloud offerings are stored in an Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) tenant, which contains user accounts and groups. An Azure AD tenant can be synchronized with your existing Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) accounts using Azure AD Connect, a Windows server-based service. This is known as directory synchronization.

Figure 3 shows an example of multiple subscriptions of an organization using a common Azure AD tenant that contains the organization's accounts.

Figure 3: Multiple subscriptions of an organization that use the same Azure AD tenant

Tenants

For SaaS cloud offerings, the tenant is the regional location that houses the servers providing cloud services. For example, the Contoso Corporation chose the European region to host its Microsoft 365, EMS, and Dynamics 365 subscriptions for the 15,000 workers in their Paris headquarters.

Azure PaaS services and virtual machine-based workloads hosted in Azure IaaS can have tenancy in any Azure datacenter across the world. You specify the Azure datacenter, known as the location, when you create the Azure PaaS app or service or element of an IaaS workload.

Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3

An Azure AD tenant is a specific instance of Azure AD containing accounts and groups. Paid or trial subscriptions of Microsoft 365 or Dynamics 365 include a free Azure AD tenant. This Azure AD tenant does not include other Azure services and is not the same as an Azure trial or paid subscription.

Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3

Summary of the hierarchy

Here is a quick recap:

  • An organization can have multiple subscriptions

    • A subscription can have multiple licenses

    • Licenses can be assigned to individual user accounts

    • User accounts are stored in an Azure AD tenant

Here is an example of the relationship of organizations, subscriptions, licenses, and user accounts:

  • An organization identified by its public domain name.

    • A Microsoft 365 E3 subscription with user licenses.

      A Microsoft 365 E5 subscription with user licenses.

      A Dynamics 365 subscription with user licenses.

      Multiple Azure subscriptions.

    • The organization's user accounts in a common Azure AD tenant.

Multiple Microsoft cloud offering subscriptions can use the same Azure AD tenant that acts as a common identity provider. A central Azure AD tenant that contains the synchronized accounts of your on-premises AD DS provides cloud-based Identity as a Service (IDaaS) for your organization.

Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3 Pricing

Figure 4: Synchronized on-premises accounts and IDaaS for an organization

Figure 4 shows how a common Azure AD tenant is used by Microsoft's SaaS cloud offerings, Azure PaaS apps, and virtual machines in Azure IaaS that use Azure AD Domain Services. Azure AD Connect synchronizes the on-premises AD DS forest with the Azure AD tenant.

Combining subscriptions for multiple Microsoft cloud offerings

The following table describes how you can combine multiple Microsoft cloud offerings based on already having a subscription for one type of cloud offering (the labels going down the first column) and adding a subscription for a different cloud offering (going across the columns).

Microsoft 365AzureDynamics 365
Microsoft 365
NA
You add an Azure subscription to your organization from the Azure portal.
You add a Dynamics 365 subscription to your organization from the Microsoft 365 admin center.
Azure
You add a Microsoft 365 subscription to your organization.
NA
You add a Dynamics 365 subscription to your organization.
Dynamics 365
You add a Microsoft 365 subscription to your organization.
You add an Azure subscription to your organization from the Azure portal.
NA

An easy way to add subscriptions to your organization for Microsoft SaaS-based services is through the admin center:

  1. Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center (https://admin.microsoft.com) with your global administrator account.

  2. From the left navigation of the Admin center home page, click Billing, and then Purchase services.

  3. On the Purchase services page, purchase your new subscriptions.

Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3 Cost

Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3

The admin center assigns the organization and Azure AD tenant of your Microsoft 365 subscription to the new subscriptions for SaaS-based cloud offerings.

To add an Azure subscription with the same organization and Azure AD tenant as your Microsoft 365 subscription:

  1. Sign in to the Azure portal (https://portal.azure.com) with your Microsoft 365 global administrator account.

  2. In the left navigation, click Subscriptions, and then click Add.

  3. On the Add subscription page, select an offer and complete the payment information and agreement.

If you purchased Azure and Microsoft 365 subscriptions separately and want to access the Microsoft 365 Azure AD tenant from your Azure subscription, see the instructions in Add an existing Azure subscription to your Azure Active Directory tenant.

See also

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