Getting the most out of Microsoft 365

A question we hear often from Brisbane businesses looking at their subscription costs: “Are we actually using what we’re paying for?” With Microsoft 365 pricing increasing from 1 July 2026, it’s the right time to revisit what the platform includes, which plan suits your team, and how to make sure you’re getting full value from it.

Our Microsoft 365 services cover everything from initial setup through to ongoing licence management, so we see this question play out regularly with clients across South-East Queensland. The short answer is that most businesses are paying for more than they realise, and with a little structure, they can put those tools to work.

What is Microsoft 365 and how does it differ from Office 365?

The two names still cause confusion, even now. Office 365 was Microsoft’s original cloud productivity suite: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive. Microsoft 365 includes all of that, and adds device management through Microsoft Intune, advanced identity protection through Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory), and security tools like Microsoft Defender for Business.

For most small and medium businesses, the “Office 365” brand no longer exists as a standalone product. Microsoft retired the Office 365 business plan names in 2022 and rebranded them as Microsoft 365 plans. The “Office 365” label survives only in a handful of enterprise tiers (E1, E3, E5), which focus on productivity without the device management layer. If your team is on a Business plan today, you’re already on Microsoft 365, whether you knew it or not.

Which Microsoft 365 plan suits your business?

There are three main tiers for businesses with up to 300 users. Each is priced per user per month on an annual commitment, and each suits a different profile.

• Microsoft 365 Business Basic gives you web and mobile versions of the Office apps, Exchange email, Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive. It’s the right fit for staff who primarily work through a browser or shared devices and don’t need desktop Office installs.
• Microsoft 365 Business Standard adds full desktop Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook) and additional collaboration tools including Microsoft Bookings, Planner, and Forms. This is the most common plan for office-based teams.
• Microsoft 365 Business Premium includes everything in Standard, plus Microsoft Defender for Business (advanced endpoint protection), Intune device management, and Entra ID P1 conditional access. For businesses that hold client data or run staff on personal or remote devices, Premium is the plan that gives you actual control over your environment.

One useful change coming with the July 2026 update: all Business plans pick up an additional 50 GB of mailbox storage, bringing Exchange Online mailboxes to 100 GB per user. Business Basic and Standard also gain URL time-of-click phishing protection, which checks every link in emails against Microsoft’s threat database before it opens. That’s a genuine security uplift included at no extra cost.

What’s changing with Microsoft 365 pricing in July 2026?

Microsoft has confirmed pricing increases across most commercial Microsoft 365 plans, taking effect 1 July 2026. For Australian businesses, the increases are applied at your next renewal after that date, not immediately. Existing customers stay on current pricing until their subscription renews.

Business Basic and Business Standard are both going up. Business Premium is holding at its current price, which is notable. It already includes Intune, Defender for Business, and conditional access, and with Standard now costing more, the gap between the two tiers is narrowing. For many Brisbane SMEs we work with, that narrowing gap makes Premium the clearer value call, particularly if you’re currently paying separately for any security or device management tools.

For a full breakdown of the pricing changes and what’s included at each tier, we’ve covered the specifics in our post on Microsoft 365 price increases coming July 2026.

Microsoft Copilot and what it means for your subscription

Microsoft 365 Copilot is an AI assistant built into the apps your team already uses: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. It can draft emails, summarise long email threads, generate meeting notes, build presentations from a brief, and analyse spreadsheet data. It works from your organisation’s own data through Microsoft Graph, so it has context about your actual work, not just general knowledge.

From July 2026, Microsoft is embedding Copilot directly into Business Standard and Business Premium as permanent bundled SKUs. A basic version of Copilot Chat is also included across all qualifying Microsoft 365 plans at no extra cost. This free tier gives you a web-grounded AI assistant and enterprise data protection, but does not include the deeper in-app integration across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams.

For businesses considering full Copilot access, the sensible approach is to start with a small number of licences on the roles that spend the most time in Outlook and Teams, measure what actually gets used at 60 days, then expand from there. We cover the broader picture of responsible AI adoption in our post on bringing AI into your business the right way.

What to look for in your current Microsoft 365 setup

Before your next renewal, it’s worth checking a few things in the Microsoft 365 Admin Centre. Many businesses find seats assigned to staff who have left, users on higher-tier plans than their role requires, or add-ons they’re paying for that are already included in a higher plan.

A practical check list:

• Are there licences assigned to former employees or shared accounts that no longer need a full seat?
• Are any users on Business Standard who could be on Business Basic, based on how they actually work?
• Are you paying separately for Intune, Defender, or a third-party endpoint protection tool that’s already included in Business Premium?
• Has multi-factor authentication (MFA) been switched on for all accounts? It’s available on every Business plan and is one of the most effective controls available.
• Is your Exchange Online archive and spam filtering configured correctly, or is it still at default settings?

Getting these basics right has more impact than upgrading to the next plan tier. A well-configured Business Standard environment is significantly more secure than a poorly configured Premium environment.

How TTA manages Microsoft 365 for Queensland businesses

TTA is a Microsoft Solutions Partner, and our team manages Microsoft 365 environments for businesses across Brisbane and South-East Queensland. In our experience, the most common gap isn’t the plan people are on, it’s the configuration. Features like conditional access, sensitivity labelling, and self-service password reset come included in the licence but require setup to work. Most businesses have never touched them.

Our IT consulting covers Microsoft 365 licence reviews, security configuration, and ongoing management so your team gets the full value of what you’re paying for. We handle Exchange Online administration, email security policies, spam filtering, and Active Directory integration. We also provide regular reporting on storage usage, compliance metrics, and assigned permissions so you can see the state of your environment at a glance.

For businesses that want proactive management without the overhead of dedicated in-house IT staff, our managed Microsoft 365 service covers the day-to-day administration and keeps your environment current as Microsoft rolls out updates.

A quick check before your next renewal

If your Microsoft 365 subscription renews after 1 July 2026, now is a good time to review your setup. These four questions are worth working through:

• When does your current subscription renew, and have you checked whether locking in an annual term before that date saves money?
• Is your plan mix right for your team’s actual work patterns, or are people on the wrong tier?
• Are there security features already included in your plan that haven’t been switched on?
• Would upgrading to Business Premium, given the narrowing price gap with Standard, reduce your overall security spend?

If you’re unsure of the answers, a licence audit through the Admin Centre or with your IT provider will surface the detail quickly. Our post on securing Microsoft 365 through an Essential 8 audit gives some useful context on what a thorough review covers.

Where do we start?

If you’d like a review of your current Microsoft 365 environment, including your licence mix, security configuration, and renewal timing, we’re happy to work through it with you. Get in touch with the TTA team and we’ll book a time to go through your setup and identify any quick wins before your next renewal hits.