1. O365 E5 Trial
2. O365 E5 License Features
3. Project For Office Plan E5

Microsoft Office 365 comes in three different flavors for Enterprise: E1, E3, and E5. With each successive level, you get more features — but what is included, exactly?

The short table below gives you a quick overview.

1. With Office 365 Enterprise E5 plan, you get all the features of Enterprise E3 in addition to rich compliance and advanced security features. Enterprise E5 is the most powerful business suite as it offers a host of features including Microsoft Teams, which is used as a single platform for calling, conferencing, video, and sharing.
2. Apr 18, 2017 Enter the Office 365 E5 suite Microsoft’s Office 365 E5 suite has been around for a little while now and over time has grown to include additional functionality, and as such is considered the premium package for organisations looking to take as much functionality as they can from Office 365.
3. The Microsoft 365 E5 suite is essentially a large amount of the products Microsoft offers for the Enterprise environment, more so focused towards the security and compliance areas. The purchasing of E5 licensing means an organization now has unlocked a lot of Microsoft products and the common question seen afterwards is, “where do I start?”.

In the rest of this article, I’ll give you an introduction to each of the three versions, a more detailed comparison table, some special considerations for different industries, and a video overview.

Microsoft Office E1

O365 E1 is the “lightest” version of the Enterprise-level plans. The features included in E1 are

Apr 08, 2021 Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is included in certain subscriptions, such as Microsoft 365 E5, Office 365 E5, Office 365 A5, and Microsoft 365 Business Premium. If your subscription does not include Defender for Office 365, you can purchase Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 or Defender for Office 365 Plan 2 as an add-on to certain subscriptions. Office 365 Enterprise E5 $35/user/month – Annual commitment. Preferred by: The costliest Office 365 plan. Enterprises that need all the features of E1 and E3 plan. With the E5 plan, you get all the consolidated features available in Office 365. All the features of Enterprise E1 & E3 plan are included in Enterprise E5 plan as well.

• Email and Calendars via Microsoft Exchange
• Enterprise Social with Yammer
• Communication and team sites with SharePoint
• OneDrive for Business with 1TB cloud storage
• Delve for content discovery
• StaffHub and Planner to manage daily staff tasks
• MS Stream
• Teams (which has adopted components and functions of Skype for Business)

Within the E1 license you also receive web versions of Office applications, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, and Publisher.

One thing to note is that the E1 plan does not allow installation of applications on devices — for instance, laptops, smartphones, or tablets — and therefore a constant, secure Internet connection is required to use this plan for your business.

E1 Pricing: Office 365 E1 licenses cost $8/user/month USD ($10.20 CAD).*

Microsoft Office E3

Though the E3 plan is slightly more expensive than the E1 tier, the added features justify the investment. Within the O365 E3 plan, each user gets the full license and is allowed to install the applications on up to 5 desktops, 5 tablets, AND 5 smartphones.

So your remote workers or team members working from home won’t be dependent on having a good, secure Internet connection 24/7. They can stay productive wherever they are and whichever device they are on.

The E3 plan includes everything mentioned in the E1 licenses along with some extras:

• MS Office Suite: Users will always receive the most updated versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, OneDrive for Business, Teams, Access, and Publisher.
• Cross-Platform Installation: Users now have the benefit of installing Office applications across devices (Windows, Mac, Android, tablets, smartphones).
• Cloud Storage: O365 E1 comes with 1TB of cloud storage for OneDrive for Business (which is more than enough in most cases). However, with O365 E3, you get 1TB by default and the ability to increase it to 5TB and even 25TB if needed.
• Data Loss Prevention (DLP): DLP allows you to comply with business standards and industry regulations in terms of protecting sensitive information and preventing data leaks outside of the organization. DLP is not available in E1.

E3 also includes other data management functions like archiving, rights management, and document-level encryption, advanced emailing, access control for emails and documents, intelligent search and discovery features that allow you to easily pick up required content from Office applications, SharePoint, and Delve.

E3 Pricing: Office 365 E3 licenses cost $20/user/month USD ($26.60 CAD).

Before I get into the details of E5, let me also mention that in addition to this blog post, we’ve created a tool that can generate an Office 365 recommendation for you based on your response to a short questionnaire. It will generate a score for each of the seven different versions of Office 365,† plus provide a few other things to think about. You can try it out here.

Microsoft Office E5

O365 E5 is the super-powered version of Office and is available for a small increase in cost. In my opinion, the main addition to the E5 license is the fully loaded security features and some analytic tools and voice capabilities. You get everything included in E3 along with a few more benefits:

• Advanced Security & Information Protection: The E5 license takes measures to protect your data from threats like phishing and zero-day malware. In this way, users of E5 stay protected from threats in attachments and links. DLP assures the safety of your content.
• Analytics Tools: E5 is the only Enterprise plan that offers analytics tools such as MyAnalytics and PowerBI Pro for data analysis and visualization.

Other additions include Advance eDiscovery, access controls and control encryption key, Advanced Threat Protection, Threat Intelligence for proactive cybersecurity and actionable insight, O365 Cloud App Security, PTSN conferencing capabilities, Advanced Data Governance and Customer Lockbox.

E5 Pricing: Office 365 E5 licenses cost $35/user/month USD ($46.60 CAD).

O365 E1 or E3 or E5: Instant Recommendation

Which one should you choose? Use our tool and we'll generate an instant recommendation and price quote.

Comparison of Microsoft Office E1, E3, and E5

Overall, the biggest difference between Office 365 E1 and E3 is that E3 is better for remote workers. The biggest difference between E3 and E5 is that E5 has extra security and analytics.

Here’s a detailed breakdown of pricing and the key Office 365 features for each Enterprise plan:

Which One Is Right for You?

Selecting the right Office 365 version is an important step. However, keep in mind that because these are subscription licenses, you are never locked in on the licenses you choose to start with. You can downgrade or upgrade, and you can also have a mix of different licenses for the different needs of the users in your company.

Based on my experience with many customers, there are also some special considerations in different industries:

Choosing the version of Office 365 Enterprise that’s right for you is pretty simple for most companies: If you want access to the Office applications on your own devices, even when you’re not connected to the Internet, then you need E3 or E5. And you only really need E5 if you need to have advanced security features, a Power BI Pro license, or the ability to make phone calls. If you still can’t decide, look at the “Security” row in the plan comparison table above and check out the various increases in functionality. There’s a little more to it than that (see the Office 365 page for more) but those are the basics.

Also, if you have special security, compliance, or other needs that don’t fit with the E1/E3/E5 level that otherwise seems to fit your company, please contact us. We’re a gold Microsoft partner and we can help you get the exact set of features that is best for you.

Get Office 365 from a Microsoft Partner Dedicated to Your Success

If you have further questions, or if you’re ready to buy Office 365, contact us with the form below.

If you purchase Office 365 with Encore as a partner, you pay the same amount per license and you gain extra benefits:

• Our experienced cloud consultants can help you with the internal challenges of deploying the cloud. This can be highly important if you’re struggling with the transition to remote work.
• Encore provides immediate access to elevated support levels via Encore’s Tier-1 Microsoft status.

* All pricing is subject to change without notice. Contact Encore for the most current pricing.

† The Office 365 Business Plans were recently renamed to Microsoft 365 plans. However, the Office 365 Enterprise plans described in this article still have the same names. Our recommendation tool evaluates your best fit across all the options, including the recently renamed ones.

O365 Business, Premium, Essentials: Instant Recommendation

Which one should you choose? Use our tool and we will generate an instant recommendation and price quote.

Microsoft 365 and Office 365 are available in a variety of plans to best meet the needs of your organization.

Service families and plans

The following table lists the different service families and plans available in Microsoft 365 and Office 365. For a high-level overview of features and pricing information, or to chat with an online representative, select any of the links in the Plans column.

Service availability within each Microsoft 365 and Office 365 plan

Each Microsoft 365 or Office 365 plan includes a number of individual services, such as Exchange Online and SharePoint Online. The following table shows the services that are available in each plan.

Important

While a service may be available across Microsoft 365 and Office 365 plans, the features available in each plan may differ. To see the details of features that are available for each plan, refer to the individual service description or contact your Reseller or Microsoft sales representative for more information.
Several of the Microsoft 365 and Office 365 plans have add-ons that you can buy for your subscription. An add-on provides additional functionality to the subscription. For more information, see Buy or edit an add-on for Office 365 for business.

¹ Azure Information Protection is not included, but can be purchased as a separate add-on and will enable the supported Information Rights Management (IRM) features. Some Azure Information Protection features require a subscription to Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise, which is not included with Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Microsoft 365 Business Standard, Microsoft 365 F1, Microsoft 365 F3, Office 365 E1, Office 365 A1, or Office 365 F3.
² To learn more about which Azure Information Protection features are included with Microsoft 365 and Office 365 plans, see Azure Information Protection.
³ Office 365 E5 and Microsoft 365 E5 contain Phone System and Audio Conferencing. To implement a Calling Plan requires an additional plan purchase (either Domestic or International).
⁴ Includes 2 GB storage.
⁵ Includes Exchange Online Plan 1.
⁶ Includes Exchange Online Plan 2.
⁷ Includes Exchange Online Plan 1 plus supplemental features.
⁸ Includes Exchange Online Kiosk.
⁹ Includes Skype for Business Online Plan 2 with basic client limitations.
¹⁰ Includes Skype for Business Online Plan 2 without any client limitations.
¹¹ Includes Skype for Business Online Plan 1 plus supplemental features.
¹² Includes Skype for Business Online Plan 2 with voice support and without any client limitations.
¹³ Includes Skype for Business Online Plan 1.
¹⁴ Microsoft Teams is now the primary client for messaging, meetings, and calling in Microsoft 365. As of Oct. 1, 2018, new customers with 500 seats or less are onboarded to Microsoft Teams and do not have access to Skype for Business Online. Tenants that are already using Skype for Business Online are able to continue doing so (including provisioning new users) until they complete their transition to Microsoft Teams.
¹⁵ Includes Microsoft 365 E5 Compliance, which provides automatic classification and retention, Customer Key, Advanced Message Encryption, Insider Risk Management, Communication Compliance, Information Barriers, Customer Lockbox, Privileged Access Management, Advanced Audit, Records Management, and Advanced eDiscovery capabilities; and Microsoft 365 E5 Security, which includes Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 2, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Azure Active Directory Plan 2, Microsoft Defender for Identity, Microsoft Cloud App Security, and Safe Documents.
¹⁶ Microsoft 365 F1 does not include rights to an Exchange mailbox. To enable a full Teams experience, M365 F1 licenses may come with the Exchange Online K1 service plan enabled. Although the Exchange Online K1 service plan will provision a mailbox for the user, M365 F1 users are not entitled to use the mailbox. We recommend that your customers disable Outlook on the web via these steps and ask users not to access the Exchange mailbox via any other methods.
¹⁷ Includes SharePoint Online Kiosk. Cannot be administrators. No site mailbox. No personal site.
¹⁸ Microsoft 365 F1 users can read files using Office for the web, but do not have create/edit/save rights.

Basic client limitations

The following features are available in the full client, but are not available in the basic client:

• Manage team call settings
• Manage delegates
• Make calls on behalf of another contact (manager/delegate scenario)
• Handle another's calls if configured as a delegate
• Manage a high volume of calls
• Initiate a call to a Response Group
• Call park
• Group call pickup

Changing or mixing plans

As the needs of your organization change, you may need to change your Microsoft 365 plan. You can switch from your current subscription to another subscription:

O365 E5 Trial

• In the same service family: For example, you can move from Microsoft 365 Business Basic to Microsoft 365 Business Standard, or from Office 365 E1 to Office 365 E3.
• From a standalone plan: For example, you can move from Exchange Online Plan 1 to Office 365 E1.
• To a different service family: For example, you can move from Microsoft 365 Business Basic to Office 365 E3.
  For information about how to change subscriptions, including how to move from a trial to a paid subscription, see Switch to a different Microsoft 365 plan or subscription.

You can combine Enterprise, Business, and standalone plans (for example, Exchange Online Plan 1) within a single account. However, existing limitations on the number of seats per plan do not change. For example, you can have up to 300 seats per plan on both Microsoft 365 Business Basic and Microsoft 365 Business Standard, but an unlimited number of users on Exchange Online Plan 1.

Standalone services

O365 E5 License Features

The following online services are available on their own, as standalone plans. They can also be added to Business and Enterprise service family plans that don't already include them. For pricing information, or to chat with an online representative, select any of the plans listed in the following table.

Project For Office Plan E5

Feature availability

To view feature availability across Microsoft 365 and Office 365 plans, see Microsoft 365 and Office 365 platform service description.