Microsoft 365.
Business email, the real desktop versions of Word and Excel, Teams, SharePoint and a security stack that scales into regulated industries. If your business runs on Office, this is the platform built around that.
Microsoft 365 is a monthly subscription per member of staff. It covers your business email on your own domain, the Office apps your team already knows, cloud storage for everyone's files, video meetings and chat through Teams, and the admin tools that let someone add a new starter or lock a lost laptop in a couple of minutes. You stop buying Office as a one-off box every few years, you stop running an email server, and everything stays current on its own.
- Professional email on your own domain (@yourcompany.co.uk), with shared mailboxes and aliases included
- Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook installed properly on Windows and Mac, not just in a browser tab
- 1TB of personal cloud storage per person in OneDrive, plus shared team libraries in SharePoint
- Teams for chat, video calls and, if you want it, your phone system too
- One admin console to add staff, remove leavers and control which devices can reach your data
The parts you will use every day
Outlook
Email and calendar in one place, on the desktop as well as the web. The calendar is the strongest scheduling tool on either platform: delegate access, room booking and shared team diaries all work without add-ons.
Word, Excel and PowerPoint
The full desktop applications, not cut-down web versions. Pivot tables, Power Query, macros, tracked changes and referencing all behave exactly as they always have, because they are the same programs.
OneDrive
Every person gets their own cloud drive that syncs into Windows File Explorer. Files On-Demand means you see everything but only download what you open, so a small laptop SSD stops being a problem.
SharePoint
Your company intranet and shared document libraries. Policies, handbooks, client folders and project areas, with permissions, approval workflows and retention rules when you need them.
Teams
Chat, video meetings, shared files and apps in one persistent workspace. Teams Phone can also replace a traditional phone system, so internal and external calls end up in the same app.
Defender and Intune
On Business Premium, endpoint protection plus proper device management. Enrol a laptop, push settings, require encryption, and wipe a device remotely if it walks out of the building.
We recommend Microsoft 365 by default when a business has anyone who lives in Excel or Word at depth, when it runs mostly Windows laptops, or when it operates somewhere the rules are tighter. These are the signals we look for on a first call.
- Someone in the business builds real spreadsheets: pivot tables, lookups, macros, or models other people depend on
- You want a genuine company intranet rather than a shared folder, with approvals and retention behind it
- Your fleet is Windows and you want device control, encryption and remote wipe under one roof
- You are in a regulated sector such as NHS, care, finance or legal, where auditors ask specific questions
- You would rather your team lived in one app all day than switched between several
These are Microsoft's own list prices as we last checked, and they adjust them periodically. We can quote net pricing against your seat count and commitment term. Most businesses we set up land on Business Standard, and move to Business Premium the moment device management or a compliance requirement enters the conversation.
- Business Basic, ~£4.90/user: custom-domain email, Teams and the web-only versions of the Office apps
- Business Standard, ~£10.30/user: everything in Basic plus the full desktop Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
- Business Premium, ~£17.60/user: everything in Standard plus Intune device management, Defender and the deeper compliance tooling
- Enterprise plans sit above this and are worth a conversation once you pass roughly 300 seats
How we set it up or move you across
Work out what you have
We look at where your email and files live today, how many people need licences, who genuinely needs desktop Office and who does not, and what has to survive the move. This is where most of the surprises get found.
Build the tenant properly
Domain, DNS, email security records, multi-factor authentication, groups, shared mailboxes and permissions set up the way they should be from day one, rather than patched later.
Migrate the data
Mailboxes, contacts, calendars and file storage move across with proper migration tooling. We run it so the cutover lands outside your working day and nothing arrives in the wrong mailbox.
Settle everyone in
Laptops and phones reconnected, signatures applied, a short walkthrough for anything that looks different, and we stay close for the first couple of weeks while the questions come in.
Questions we get asked about Microsoft 365
Do I still need to buy Office separately?
No. On Business Standard and above, the desktop Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook are included in the monthly licence, and each person can install them on up to five computers plus their phones and tablets. You stop buying boxed copies entirely.
Does Microsoft 365 back my data up?
Not in the way most people assume. Microsoft keeps the service running and holds short retention windows, but that is not the same as a backup you can restore from after a deletion months ago, a ransomware event, or a departed staff member's mailbox being purged. We recommend adding a third-party backup on top, priced separately, for exactly this reason.
Can I mix plans across my team?
Yes, and it is often the sensible thing to do. Office staff who need desktop Excel go on Standard, frontline or shop-floor staff who only need email and Teams go on Basic, and anyone handling sensitive data goes on Premium. You are not obliged to licence everyone the same.
We are on Google Workspace now. Can we move?
Yes, and we do these migrations regularly. Gmail, contacts, calendars and Drive content all move across with proper tooling. The parts that need planning are documents currently open for editing and any shared links that live in other people's systems, so we map those before the cutover rather than after.
Is Copilot worth adding?
For some roles, genuinely yes, because it sits inside Word, Excel and Outlook where a lot of the day already happens. For others it goes unused and quietly costs you every month. We would rather licence it for the handful of people who will lean on it and review that after a quarter than roll it out to everyone on day one.
Let us work out the right plan before you buy anything.
A short call is enough for us to understand how your team works, count up who really needs what, and give you a straight answer on licensing. If Google Workspace turns out to suit you better, we will tell you that instead.