Is Microsoft 365 right for your business? Plans, what is included and what is not

Microsoft 365 is the default choice for business email and collaboration in the UK, and for most small and medium-sized organisations it is a sound one. The real questions are which plan, what you will still have to arrange yourselves, and who will look after it. This guide answers those three without the sales gloss.

What Microsoft 365 is, and what it is not

Microsoft 365 is a per-user subscription that bundles hosted email (Exchange Online), file storage (OneDrive and SharePoint), Teams, the Office apps and, on the higher plans, security and device management tools. Microsoft runs the data centres, patches the platform and ships the features. You get a working set of tools from day one.

What you do not get is a managed IT service. Microsoft's shared responsibility model is explicit: the platform is theirs, but identity, access, configuration, data governance and backup are yours. Nothing in the subscription decides how your SharePoint should be structured, who should be a global admin or how long a leaver's mailbox is kept. Someone still has to make those decisions, which is where a Microsoft 365 partner earns its fee.

Where Microsoft 365 is a good fit

Microsoft 365 is a strong choice when most of the following are true:

• You need business email with shared calendars, shared mailboxes and mobile access, and you want to stop running an Exchange server or relying on a web host's basic mailbox.
• Staff work from more than one place, whether that is a second office, home or a customer's site.
• Documents are shared across a team and version control matters. SharePoint and OneDrive keep one copy with history rather than five attachments in an email chain.
• Your team already knows Outlook, Word and Excel, so training overhead is low.
• You want a single identity for each member of staff that can also sign them into other business systems.

Professional services firms, construction and plant hire businesses, estate agents, charities and healthcare practices all sit comfortably here. So does almost any organisation that has outgrown a single file server and a collection of personal email accounts.

When it may not be the right choice on its own

Microsoft 365 is not the answer to everything. Be cautious if:

• Your core work runs on a line-of-business application that needs a local Windows server or SQL database. Microsoft 365 can sit alongside it, but will not replace it. Our guide to what to keep off the cloud covers these cases.
• You work with very large files (CAD, video, survey data) over a slow connection. OneDrive sync copes with a lot, but not with a 40 GB project folder on a rural broadband line.
• Your organisation is already committed to Google Workspace and everything integrates with it. Switching for its own sake rarely pays. See Microsoft 365 vs Google Workspace.
• You expect the subscription to handle security by itself. Most protections need switching on and tuning.

None of these rule Microsoft 365 out. They usually mean the answer is hybrid rather than all-in, which is exactly how many established businesses run it.

Business Basic vs Standard vs Premium

The three Business plans, each capped at 300 users, are where most SMEs land. The differences that matter are desktop apps and security tooling.

Pricing changes, so we do not quote per-user figures here. Check Microsoft's published UK list prices and expect annual commitment to cost less than month-to-month.

A practical rule: if someone mainly reads email on a phone and occasionally opens a spreadsheet, Basic is enough. If they live in Outlook and Excel all day, they need Standard. If the business handles client data, wants MFA enforced through Conditional Access, needs laptops managed and wants Microsoft's email threat protection, Premium is usually the right default for everyone rather than a bolt-on for a few. Our Basic vs Standard vs Premium comparison goes deeper.

How to think about the cost

Per-user pricing is predictable, which is its main financial appeal. The cost creeps in three ways: people are added on a higher plan than they need, leavers' licences are never released, and add-ons accumulate. A licence review every six months, tied to your starter and leaver process, keeps this in check.

Compare the subscription against what it replaces. A small on-premise server with licences, backup and support typically costs several thousand pounds up front plus ongoing maintenance and a replacement cycle every five years or so. For email and files alone, the subscription usually wins. For a specialist application, the server may still be the cheaper and better option.

What Microsoft 365 does not include

This is the section most sign-up pages skip. Budget for the following separately:

• Backup. Microsoft protects its platform, not your data from your own mistakes or an attacker's. Native protection is limited to recycle bins, version history and retention windows, which are not a backup. Ransomware that encrypts synced files, or a leaver's mailbox purged after the retention period, is your problem. Third-party Microsoft 365 backup is the standard answer. Read does Microsoft 365 include backup for the detail.
• Migration. Moving mailboxes, file shares and calendars from an old server, Google Workspace or a web host's email is a project with planning, a cutover and a clean-up. Microsoft provides tools, not the work.
• Configuration. MFA enforcement, Conditional Access, external sharing limits, DKIM and DMARC, device compliance and alerting all need setting up. Out of the box, many are off or permissive. Our Microsoft 365 security settings checklist lists what to check.
• Training and structure. Teams and SharePoint become a mess quickly without naming conventions, owners and a short induction for staff.
• Ongoing administration. Starters, leavers, licence changes, shared mailboxes and the occasional "why can't I see this folder" all need someone accountable.

What a well-run rollout looks like

A good example is Mr Plant Hire, a multi-depot plant and tool hire business established in 1981 and headquartered on Hertford Road, Enfield. They run Microsoft 365 with SharePoint for inter-company document sharing across depots, while Windows servers still handle the applications that need them, protected by local and cloud backup. Dig IT has supported them for over 15 years. It is a genuine hybrid: cloud collaboration where it helps, on-premise where it still earns its place.

That pattern is the honest answer to "is Microsoft 365 right for us". For most businesses it is, as the collaboration and identity layer, run properly, alongside whatever else the business genuinely needs.

What to do next

If you are weighing up Microsoft 365, or already have it and suspect it is under-configured, the quickest route is a short conversation about what you run today and what you need it to do. Talk to an engineer and we will tell you which plan fits, what needs arranging around it, and what it is likely to cost to run.