On July 1, 2026, Microsoft pushed through its biggest commercial price increase since 2022. Business Standard went from $12.50 to $14.00 per user per month. Microsoft 365 E3 went from $36 to $39. The gap between them is now $25 per user per month — $300 per user per year, every year.
For a 100-person company, that's $30,000 a year riding on a single licensing decision. Here's how to get it right.
Current list prices
| Plan | Per user/month | Per user/year | User cap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business Standard | $14.00 | $168 | 300 |
| Business Premium | $22.00 | $264 | 300 |
| Microsoft 365 E3 | $39.00 | $468 | None |
What the $300 actually buys
Business Standard is productivity only: desktop Office, Exchange, Teams, SharePoint. No Entra ID P1, no Intune, no Defender — beyond basic MFA, you have no managed device story and no Conditional Access.
E3 adds the whole management and security baseline: Entra ID P1 (Conditional Access, SSO), Intune, Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 (Safe Links, Safe Attachments — Microsoft folded this into E3 in 2026), Defender for Endpoint Plan 1, Purview DLP and eDiscovery, Windows 11 Enterprise rights, a 100 GB Exchange mailbox, and no 300-seat ceiling.
The comparison nobody runs (but should)
Price the security à la carte on top of Standard: Entra ID P1 runs about $84/user/year standalone, Intune about $96, Defender for Business about $36. Standard ($168) + those three = $384/user/year.
Business Premium — which bundles all of it — is $264/user/year.
If your users sign in from company laptops and you want Conditional Access (you do), Standard is the most expensive way to get there. The real mid-market decision isn't Standard vs. E3 — it's Premium vs. E3.
The break-even math
| Users | Standard/yr | E3/yr | Annual gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50 | $8,400 | $23,400 | $15,000 |
| 150 | $25,200 | $70,200 | $45,000 |
| 300 | $50,400 | $140,400 | $90,000 |
E3 earns its premium only when you need what Premium can't give you: more than 300 seats, Windows Enterprise, Purview-grade DLP and eDiscovery, or 100 GB mailboxes.
Decision framework
- Under 300 users, standard office work: Business Premium. Not Standard.
- Over 300 users, or you need Windows Enterprise / advanced compliance: E3.
- Standard only if: no managed devices, no Conditional Access requirement, genuinely basic productivity needs.
- Nobody should be on Standard + standalone security add-ons. That's the $384 trap.
The CSP play: list price is the ceiling
Here's what the price tables don't tell you: nobody sophisticated pays list. CSP partners routinely run promo discounts, and the real savings are structural — true-up/true-down timing, mixing Premium and E3 by department instead of one plan for everyone, and setting the license mix before a migration rather than after it.
If you're renewing, over 300 seats, or migrating off on-prem Exchange or Google Workspace, the license architecture should be designed before you sign — not discovered at true-up.
Prices: Microsoft commercial list, annual commitment, USD, effective July 1, 2026. Verified October 14, 2026. Your CSP or EA pricing will differ — that's the point of the audit.
Turn the math into a better agreement.
Use the same decision framework on your actual seat mix, renewal terms, and migration plan.