What each plan carries, what the 2026 packaging change added, and how to avoid buying E5 for people who do not need it.
Microsoft PartnerVerify on Microsoft Marketplace →No seat cap, and no requirement to put the whole organisation on one plan. The decision is how much advanced security and compliance you need, and for which people.
The enterprise baseline: Office applications, Exchange, Teams, SharePoint, Entra ID P1 and core compliance, with no seat cap.
Right when: Organisations past 300 users that do not need advanced threat protection in the suite.
E3 plus advanced security and compliance — Defender across the estate, Entra ID P2, advanced Purview, Power BI Pro and Teams Phone capability.
Right when: Regulated businesses, and anyone who would otherwise buy those tools separately.
The Frontier Suite, launched 1 May 2026: Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Agent 365 and the Microsoft Entra Suite in a single subscription.
Right when: Organisations that were already going to buy Copilot on top of E5.
Enterprise licensing is where the largest amounts get wasted, almost always in the same two ways: one plan applied to everybody, and paying separately for tools the suite already contains.
E7 bundles E5, Copilot, Agent 365 and the Entra Suite. If you were buying E5 and Copilot anyway, the bundle makes sense. If Copilot is something you are still piloting with twelve people, buying it for everybody inside E7 is not a saving.
E3 has no access to Agent 365. E5 can add it as a standalone, which assumes you already have the Purview and Entra groundwork in place. E7 includes it. If Agent 365 is the reason you are looking at E7, check the prerequisites before the licence.
The July 2026 packaging change added Defender for Office 365 Plan 1, Intune Remote Help, Intune Advanced Analytics, Intune Plan 2, Intune Privilege Management and Microsoft Cloud PKI to qualifying suites, with Security Copilot for E5 within capacity limits. Holding standalone subscriptions for those alongside the suite is now double payment.
Advanced security is priced per user, but risk is not distributed evenly across your staff. A common and defensible pattern is E5 for finance, IT and management, E3 for everybody else, and Frontline for staff who do not sit at a desk. Microsoft does not require one plan across the tenant.
Microsoft's published list price for Microsoft 365 E3 moved from 36 to 39 US dollars per user per month, and E5 from 57 to 60, effective 1 July 2026. Office 365 E3 and E5 rose too. E7 pricing was not changed by that update, though the E5 packaging changes apply to it.
Licensing rules on this page were checked against Microsoft’s own documentation in September 2026. Microsoft changes plan contents regularly — if you are reading this much later, ask us to confirm before you commit to a term.
E7, the Frontier Suite, launched on 1 May 2026. It bundles Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Agent 365 and the Microsoft Entra Suite into one subscription. It is aimed at organisations that were going to license Copilot across the business on top of E5 anyway.
Security, compliance and analytics. E5 adds Defender across the estate, Entra ID P2, advanced Purview compliance, Power BI Pro and Teams Phone capability on top of everything in E3. The Office applications and core services are the same.
Almost never. Risk is not spread evenly across staff, and Microsoft does not require a single plan across the tenant. E5 for finance, IT and leadership with E3 for the rest is a common and defensible split. Send us your org structure and we will map it.
Microsoft raised list prices effective 1 July 2026 across Office 365 E3 and E5, Microsoft 365 E3 and E5, the Business plans, Frontline F1 and F3, EMS, Windows E3 and E5, and Entra P1 and P2. It came with additions to the suites, so check whether you can now cancel something you buy separately.
No. E3 has no Agent 365 access. E5 can take it as a standalone add-on, and it is included in E7.
No. Unlike the Business family there is no 300-user cap and no minimum, so a mixed tenant with a handful of E5 seats alongside Business or Frontline licences is perfectly normal.
Tenant setup, mailbox and file migration, user onboarding and activation are included at no extra charge on Microsoft licences bought from Proto Link. You pay for the licences, not for the project around them.
Send us your headcount and what your team actually needs. We will come back with the right plan mix and a price — usually the same working day.