• Office 365 Enterprise G3
• Office 365 Enterprise Licensing
• Office 365 Enterprise Plans
• Office 365 Enterprise Apps

Browsing Office 365 plans?

1. When you're looking to deploy Office 365 in your business, it is important to consider which out of Microsoft 365 Enterprise vs Office 365 Enterprise would be a more gainful choice. If you are in need of upgrading your operating system to Windows 10 or you are concerned about data security and GDPR then the bundled package may be a more cost.
2. Office 365 Business is now Microsoft 365 Apps for business; Why did you change the name from Office 365 to Microsoft 365? We changed the name to be more reflective of the range of features and benefits in the subscription. Microsoft 365 includes everything you know in Office 365, including best-in-class Office apps, intelligent cloud services.

Don’t get out your credit card just yet. There are some options you should try first.

This course covers three central elements of Microsoft 365 enterprise administration – Microsoft 365 tenant and service management, Office 365 management, and Microsoft 365 identity management. In Microsoft 365 tenant and service management, you will examine all the key components that must be planned for when designing your Microsoft 365 tenant. Add to this the frequent shuffling of packages and renaming options – including the recent name changes for Office 365 into Microsoft 365 – and it’s no wonder it can be tricky to pick the right plan for your business. When it comes to Microsoft 365, there are four iterations: Home, Business, Enterprise, and Education. Microsoft 365 for Enterprise uses a combination of apps, enterprise services, and cloud-based products to help people and organizations be more productive.

I know, the prospect of a free Office 365 download sounds kind of farfetched. But it’s not. If there is a legal way that you don’t have to pay, you’ll find it here.

Of course, one way is to simply get the free trial of Office 365 if you don’t have it already. This is limited but will give you a chance to try it before you buy.

On to the ways to get a full free Office 365.

1. Get Office 365 through your school

Microsoft offers Office 365 Education for free through many schools and universities. If you are a student or educator, and your institution is eligible, all you need is a valid school email address.

This is a truly free version of Office 365, and you should enjoy this benefit for as long as possible. In addition to your familiar MS apps, it comes with tools to encourage collaboration in the classroom, like Access, Sway, Teams, SharePoint, Stream, and Flow.

Every so often, Office will verify you are still are still an active educator or student. Once your Office 365 Education plan expires, applications will become view-only after 30 days. After 60, you will lose access. To keep working, you will need to subscribe to Office 365, or back up your files and use Office Online.

If you used to be a student, see if your school address will work. If not, access the alumni discount they offer for Office 365 Personal.

2. Get the free trial of Office 365

This is the easiest free option for accessing premium versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, and Access. But it only lasts for a month. After that, you’ll have to begin a subscription or use one of the other methods here.

Note: You will have to provide payment information to sign up for the free trial, though you won’t be charged until the trial expires. When it does, you will start getting billed automatically.

Remember to turn off recurring billing in your Account Settings unless you want to start paying.

Unlike the online version, when Office 365 is installed locally you have full document editing capabilities offline. You can share the free Office 365 trial version with up to five other people. Each person gets 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage, plus the ability to sync and share files across Windows, Apple, and Android devices.

This is a great option, but only for the short-term. You only get a single free trial per email and credit card, so unless you try to bend the terms of the license agreement, it’s a one-shot deal. Or is it?

3. Get the free trial of Office 365 ProPlus

Office 365 Enterprise G3

Microsoft provides evaluation versions of its products to potential customers through its Evaluation Center. There you can test-drive the latest features and services the company offers, including Office 365 ProPlus. First, you’ll need to register an Office 365 ProPlus account and qualify for an evaluation account.

Note: Same as the trial version of Office 365, the ProPlus trial requires payment information and bills you after a month.

Once you have access to the full evaluation version of Office 365 ProPlus, you can share and manage up to 25 users. It comes with all of the premium Office tools, not just web apps, and Skype for Business. Streaming installation for up to five computers per user allows everyone to work offline with full editing capabilities.

Since it is an evaluation version, Microsoft is still working out the kinks of this software. Things may not work perfectly, so be prepared.

This is Microsoft’s way of hooking enterprise customers, and it is a sleek toolkit for any company. But if you are not looking to pay once the trial is up, you will have to back up and switch to something else.

Tip: G Suite Business isn’t free, but its pricing is competitive and the functionality works well for agile companies.

4. Convince your company to get Office 365

If your need for Office 365 is strictly personal, this may be a tough sell. But if you constantly find yourself in need of full-versions of Word or Excel, you probably have a strong case to make to your employer.

Office Online is great, considering it’s free, but the lack of function or offline capability can be extremely frustrating. If these things are getting in the way and costing you time, it’s likely costing the company more money a subscription would.

This isn’t always going to work—especially if you are your own boss, sorry freelancers—but I told you we were looking at every option to get Office 365 free of charge.

5. Free Office 365 (with purchase of a PC)

Here’s an option that is not going to be right for everyone, but if you are in the market for a new computer, this could be an answer. Some PCs come with one year of Office 365. This sometimes includes ultra-affordable laptops, and you still save $99 annually on an Office 365 subscription.

One thing to make sure of is that you are getting what you want. Some computers will only come with Office 365 Personal, and others may not even have an OS installed. Read the fine print and confirm everything is set up as you expect.

What about Office Online and Mobile?

Now you know how to get a free download of Office 365, but I should mention two easy, free-forever Office options just in case they do the trick.

Get Office Online

Office Online is entirely cloud-based and works on most browsers. As long as you have the internet, you have access to familiar MS Office tools like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well as Sway, OneNote, Outlook, Calendar, OneDrive, Forms, People, and Skype. Simply create an account and log in from anywhere to collaborate with anyone.

While Office Online doesn’t take up any space, the downside is that you need the internet in order to use the programs and your documents. If you can rely on wifi wherever you need it, this limitation isn’t so bad. Plus, you can always sync your computer with OneDrive so that files are automatically stored for offline access.

The features are greatly limited compared to Office 365, but for personal use, it’s probably okay as long as you plan ahead. The extra logistics required to coordinate larger teams using Office Online, however, probably don’t end up saving much money.

Get the Office mobile app

The Office mobile app works on Android and iOS on your phone or tablet. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are combined into a single app that syncs with all of your devices that use Office.

You can download additional apps, which take up some space, but all of your documents are stored in the cloud. You’ll be able to create and sign PDFs, and edit documents, tables, and slides—but be aware that the editing features are limited without the Office 365 subscription.

Similar to Office Online, the mobile app is okay for personal needs but quickly reveals itself wanting at the enterprise level.

Note: Editing in the Office mobile app is limited to screens up to 10.1 inches. If you have a larger screen, you will have to upgrade to Office 365 or be stuck in read-only.

Dubious methods and hacking

Finally, I want to point out that similar to giving Microsoft multiple credit cards or emails in an attempt to prolong your free trial of Office 365, there are other dubious methods out there. These are not always safe for you and may be illegal.

I mention them because your search has no doubt included these options, and many are disguised as genuine with a price that is too good to be true.

For example, you will find people offering Office 365 for $1 on eBay and other sites. This will get you a product key that maybe works, and definitely isn’t legal. Typically, you can use these accounts for one year, or until Microsoft detects that your key is not legitimate.

There are also videos and blogs that show you how to hack Office 365 by emulating a successful KMS activation. These authors claim that the KMS license key is legal, which may be true, depending on how the code is written. But installing the key to access licenses you never bought is certainly not legal.

Plus, whatever patch you copy into your system may have other functions you don’t want. A hacker wrote it after all. For us, we don’t consider it worth the risk.

This goes, too, for any free Office 365 you discover on torrents and other sites that get shut down periodically. With an illegal free version of Office 365 you may get more than you pay for in the worst way.

Final note: If you have to pay… it’s really not that bad!

In the end, Office 365 is an extremely valuable set of programs. Getting it for $99/year is pretty amazing.

I understand why it’s annoying, especially in the eleventh hour when your documents are out of reach. Trust me, I get it. But I also understand that the software of this century requires ongoing maintenance for security and integration. The game has changed and it’s not necessarily evil for companies to move to a subscription model.

Of course there are people who will disagree with me.

LibreOffice is a free fully-loaded office suite. Over 200 million people use the open-source program, which supports more than 200 file types. It’s got Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, and a number of other applications that are recognizable to any user of Word, etc.

There are Google’s free offerings as well, which solve most personal needs for document creation, sharing, and storage. For enterprise needs, though, G Suite for Business is reasonably priced and has a higher user satisfaction score than Office 365.

Use the trials to figure out where you stand. If Office 365 is what you need, budget it in and write it off next year. Here’s a guide to help you make sense of the Office 365 pricing.

Microsoft 365 Business Premium has everything you need for your small business, combining the best-in-class cloud-based productivity apps with simple device management and security that enable your employees to do their best work. In some cases, however, you may need to migrate your Microsoft 365 Business Premium subscription to Microsoft 365 E3.

For example, your business has grown and needs more than 300 licenses (congratulations, by the way).

Or, your business needs enterprise features, such as Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise, Windows 10 Enterprise E3, or Enterprise Client Access Licenses (CALs).

Upgrading is easy: you can start the upgrade from the Admin center. All your data and configuration in your current subscription is maintained. There's nothing for you to do to prepare for the migration and nothing to do afterward, except take advantage of the new features.

Note

You can also use a Microsoft 365 Business Premium subscription for up to 300 seats and get a Microsoft 365 E3 subscription for more than 300 seats. However, Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is not included with Microsoft 365 E3. For continued threat protection, you should add additional Defender for Office 365 licenses so that all of the users in scope of your Defender for Office 365 polices are licensed.

Differences between Microsoft 365 Business Premium and Microsoft 365 Enterprise

This table shows the differences between Microsoft 365 Business Premium and Microsoft 365 E3.

* Users who have been assigned access to SaaS apps can get SSO access to up to 10 apps. Admins can configure SSO and change user access to different SaaS apps, but SSO access is only allowed for 10 apps per user at a time. All Office 365 apps are counted as a single app.

Migration

To migrate, work with your partner to move your Microsoft 365 Business Premium subscription and licenses to a suitable Microsoft 365 E3 subscription with its licenses.

The following sections describe what changes you need to make, if any, and what you can do after the migration.

Microsoft 365 subscription configuration and data

You don't need to make any changes to your current subscription or data before migrating, which includes:

• Subscription configuration, such as DNS domain names.
• User and group accounts and authentication settings, such as multi factor authentication or conditional access policies.
• Productivity service configurations and their data, such as Teams, Exchange Online mailboxes, SharePoint Online sites, OneDrive for Business folders, and OneNote notebooks.

Your users can now enjoy unlimited storage in the Exchange Online mailboxes and OneDrive for Business folders.

Office 365 Enterprise Licensing

You can begin using Cloud App Discovery, Azure AD Connect Health, and SSO for more than 10 apps.

Threat protection

Windows 10 Business includes these protections:

• Integrity enforcement of operating system boot up process
• Integrity enforcement of sensitive operating components
• Advanced vulnerability and zero-day exploit mitigations
• Reputation-based network protection for Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, and Chrome
• Host-based firewall
• Ransomware mitigations
• Hardware-based isolation for Microsoft Edge
• Application control powered by the Intelligent Security Graph
• Device control (USB)
• Network protection for web-based threats
• Host intrusion prevention rules

Windows 10 Enterprise E3 also includes enterprise management of hardware-based isolation for Microsoft Edge.

Note

Users migrated to Microsoft 365 E3 will each require a Microsoft Defender for Office 365 license for continued threat protection. Be sure to purchase additional Defender for Office 365 licenses so that all of the users in scope of your Defender for Office 365 polices are licensed.

Device management with Intune

You don't need to make any changes to your current Intune configuration before migrating, which includes enrolled devices and device and app settings.

Windows 10

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

Office 365 Enterprise Plans

Your Microsoft 365 Apps for business client installed on your devices will automatically begin to use the features of Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise. After migration, you can now use:

Office 365 Enterprise Apps

• Group Policy support
• Spreadsheet compare and inquire
• Business intelligence