Microsoft Office 365 Business Essentials upgrade path

Our previous blog post discuss about Microsoft detach Office and email Exchange online from Office 365 Plan. Now customer can choose Office only, Email only or Cloud ( both ).

If your company choice is Outlook Email Exchange Server online, One of the most popular product of Microsoft, other than it Microsoft Office product. 

Then your choice should be Microsoft Office 365 Business Essentials. Of course, there is  standalone Exchange Online Plan 1 and Plan 2.

However, with Office 365 Business Essentials. You get Sharepoint Online, Lync online, Yammer, in addition to Email Exchange Online.

Previously, small and Medium enterprise ( SME ) can buy Small Business Server that included Exchange Server, Sharepoint Server,and Lync Server in a box with affordable price.

Now, Microsoft Small Business Server no longer in the market. SME have to order Windows Server 2012 Essentials but doesn't included Exchange Server at all. For that functionality, you're expected to subscribe to Office 365 Business Essentials in addition to Windows Server 2012 Essentials.

The advantage is that you get 50GB inbox per user. Majority of Exchange Server or within Small Business Server. Each user get 50MB inbox per user that constantly need to delete archieve to keep your email with name@yourcompany.com active.

With 50GB inbox, it seem each user have unlimited storage.

Each user also get 1TB of One Drive for Business, like Office 365 Business.

Staff can book their meeting room with Shared Calender now

What is the upgrade path than?


If you want to keep your company On premises Exchange Server for hybrid deployment as not confident on pure cloud services. You can upgrade to Office 365 Enterprise E1, then data still can keep on your server and on the cloud.


If you want to combine Office 365 Business Essentials together with Office 365 Business to include Microsoft Office like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Publisher, etc. Then your company can upgrade to Office 365 Buisness Premium.