Guide
Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard or Premium?
Almost every small office in New Zealand runs on Microsoft 365, and most are on whichever plan someone picked years ago. The three business plans differ in two ways that matter: whether staff get the desktop Office apps, and whether the business gets the tools to manage and secure its devices. Here is how to choose.
Updated
The three plans at a glance
All three include business email with your own domain, OneDrive storage for each person, SharePoint for shared files and Teams for chat and calls. The differences are on top of that.
| Business Basic | Business Standard | Business Premium | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Email, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Word, Excel, Outlook on the web and phones | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Desktop Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint | No | Yes | Yes |
| Device management (Intune) | No | No | Yes |
| Sign-in rules and conditional access | No | No | Yes |
| Defender for Business on every device | No | No | Yes |
| Email archiving and data protection labels | No | No | Yes |
What they cost
On Microsoft's New Zealand website, Business Basic is NZ$11.30 per user per month, paid yearly, excluding GST. Standard and Premium are now listed there with Copilot, Microsoft's AI assistant, built in, at NZ$38.00 and NZ$51.80 per user per month. Paying month to month costs more than paying yearly, and Microsoft changes prices from time to time, so check before you buy. Prices were checked in November 2026.
Business Basic: email and files, in the browser
Basic gives each person email, storage, Teams and the web and mobile versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. It suits people who mostly email, share files and edit simple documents: front-of-house staff, field staff on phones, and part-timers.
What it lacks is the desktop apps. Anyone who lives in Excel, writes long Word documents or needs the full Outlook will feel the limits quickly.
Business Standard: the desktop apps
Standard adds the full desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook on up to five computers, tablets and phones per person. For office staff it is the plan most small businesses actually need for day-to-day work.
It does not add any extra tools for managing or securing devices. Those still have to come from somewhere else, or not at all. Defender for Business, the device protection included in Premium, can be bought on its own for NZ$4.90 per user per month.
Business Premium: Standard plus security
Premium is Standard plus the security and management tools Microsoft sells to larger organisations. Intune lets you set up, update and wipe laptops and phones from one place. Conditional access lets you block sign-ins from unknown devices or overseas. Defender for Business protects every computer against malware and ransomware, and data protection labels stop sensitive files being shared by accident.
Bought separately, those tools would cost more than the difference between Standard and Premium. For a business that holds client data, Premium is usually the cheapest way to get proper security.
Which one should you choose?
You can mix plans in one business, so choose per person, not per office.
- Basic for people who only need email, Teams and simple documents.
- Standard for office staff who need the desktop apps, if your devices are secured some other way.
- Premium for anyone handling client, financial or health information, and for any business that wants its laptops and phones managed properly.
- Premium for the owners and anyone who approves payments, because their accounts are the ones attackers want most.
The plan only helps if it is set up
Many businesses pay for Premium and use none of it. The security tools do nothing until someone switches them on and configures them for the way the business works. That setup, and keeping it working, is exactly what a managed IT plan is for.