Mailboxes, Visio, Teams, Copilot and the security add-ons — and when buying one is cheaper than moving everybody up a plan.
Microsoft PartnerVerify on Microsoft Marketplace →Sometimes the right answer is not a bigger suite for everybody, but one licence for the four people who need it. These are the pieces that can be bought on their own or bolted onto what you already run.
Mailboxes without the rest of the suite. Plan 2 adds the larger mailbox, archiving and data loss prevention.
Right when email is all you need — and wrong when you find yourself adding Teams and SharePoint separately afterwards.
The AI assistant across the Office applications, licensed per user per month on top of a qualifying plan.
Licence the people who will genuinely use it. A pilot group beats a company-wide rollout nobody adopts.
Not available on E3. Available to E5 as a standalone add-on, and included in E7.
Assumes the Purview and Entra groundwork is already in place. Check that before the licence.
Device management, including the Intune Suite capabilities.
Check what your suite already includes since the 2026 packaging change before buying this separately.
Threat protection across email, endpoints and cloud apps.
Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 came into qualifying suites in 2026. Do not buy it twice.
Compliance, information protection and data governance.
Most valuable where you have a regulatory obligation to evidence, rather than as a general purchase.
Identity and access management, including the Entra Suite.
Entra ID P1 is in Business Premium and E3; P2 is in E5. Check before adding it.
Diagramming, in web and desktop plans.
Typically needed by a handful of people rather than the whole company.
Teams as a standalone, where the rest of the suite is not wanted.
Worth checking against a Business plan, which sometimes costs little more and carries far more.
A cloud PC, licensed per user.
Genuinely useful for contractors and for staff on unmanaged devices. Expensive as a default.
Add-ons are where licensing quietly sprawls. Each one is small enough not to need a decision, and together they can cost more than the plan that would have included them all.
One add-on for a handful of people is usually cheaper than moving everybody up a plan. Three add-ons across most of the company usually is not. The point where it flips is worth calculating rather than guessing, and it is a ten-minute job.
The 2026 packaging change moved Defender for Office 365 Plan 1, several Intune capabilities and Microsoft Cloud PKI into qualifying suites, with Security Copilot for E5 within capacity limits. A standalone subscription for any of those may now be redundant.
Several add-ons assume something underneath them — Agent 365 on E5 expects Purview and Entra to be in place. Buying the licence before the groundwork means paying for something that cannot be switched on yet.
Copilot is priced per user per month and adoption is uneven. A pilot group that reports back beats a company-wide rollout discovered to be unused at renewal.
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.
Plan 2 adds a larger mailbox, in-place archiving and data loss prevention on top of Plan 1. If you need archiving or DLP for compliance reasons, Plan 1 will not do it.
It depends entirely on how many people need it. One or two add-ons for a few staff is almost always cheaper. Several add-ons across most of the company usually costs more than the higher plan. Send us the numbers and we will work it out both ways.
Copilot is licensed per user per month on top of a qualifying plan, so it sits alongside your existing licensing rather than replacing it. We would suggest starting with a pilot group rather than the whole company.
Possibly not. The 2026 packaging change moved several Intune capabilities and Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 into qualifying suites. Send us your licence list and we will check what is now duplicated.
Yes, from one seat, against a company LPO with a VAT tax invoice.
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.