On December 4, Microsoft announced a price increase and change of features included in the Office 365, M365 Business suite and Enterprise plans. The changes will go into effect from July 1, 2026.
There is plenty of time to work on a plan, it might not even be a big deal for your end customers – but being able to save your customer money to invest into more interesting things is always a good value-add. This post looks at what the changes will mean for you.
Overall, the majority of the CSP renewals sit in the first half of the year due to the shift into New Commerce Experience, this means that most customers are not affected by the price increase until their renewal in 2027.
Effectively there are three things to focus on:
- Understanding the added features and how your customers might benefit from them.
- Maximizing the price lock on the current price level to push the price increase as far into the future as possible for customers with renewals before July 1, 2026.
- Strategies to enable price locks for customers with renewals after July 1, 2026.
The new features will roll out during 2026 for all users, let’s have a look at the announced features, focusing on the Business Suite.
Copilot Chat enhancements
Copilot chat is already available to users using Office 365, Business suite or Enterprise SKUs. The easiest way to understand Copilot chat is to think of it as an AI chat that only has access to public information on the internet, with added enterprise guardrails (link: Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat Privacy and Protections | Microsoft Learn) to make sure company data doesn’t end up in the wrong hands.
At the time of writing Copilot Chat uses GPT-4 Turbo created by OpenAI which is optimized by Microsoft for use in Copilot chat. This gives the user an experience that is very close to the one of ChatGPT but with added enterprise grade guard rails. (link: Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat Privacy and Protections | Microsoft Learn)
During 2026, Microsoft is planning enhancements that will allow Copilot Chat to be able to access users’ calendar and email content – moving the scope of Copilot Chat from only being grounded on public data to be grounded on user data. This will make Copilot Chat more integrated into users’ workflow and be able to provide foundational productivity gains.
Copilots are here to stay and customers are already using them, so we might as well make sure we can help them get maximum value out of them.
Source: Microsoft Ignite 2025: Copilot and agents built to power the Frontier Firm | Microsoft 365 Blog
Security, management and analytics for Copilot Chat
The Copilot Control System makes Copilot Chat safer and smarter for users by protecting sensitive data and enforcing compliance during conversations. It gives IT teams tools to customize and manage Copilot Chat, so users get a consistent, secure experience. Built-in analytics track adoption and productivity, ensuring the service keeps improving. This means users can trust Copilot Chat to deliver AI assistance without compromising security or privacy. In short, it combines governance and personalization so users can confidently use Copilot Chat every day.
To achieve healthy adoption of Copilot understanding where in the organization it’s being used is foundational. This is available for the customers.
As a Partner you can also leverage the Copilot insights in Partner Center to understand your customers Copilot adoption: Unlocking deeper customer insights for smarter Copilot growth: New Copilot Opportunities in AI Business Solutions & Security Insights in Partner Center · FastTrack Partner Community Portal
Learn more: Copilot Control System for Enterprise-Ready AI | Microsoft
URL Checks in Outlook and Office apps (web and mobile) for Business Basic and Business Standard
URL Checks is a feature available in the Safe Links feature (Complete Safe Links overview for Microsoft Defender for Office 365 - Microsoft Defender for Office 365 | Microsoft Learn) included in Business Premium and available in the Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 add-on for Business Basic and Business Standard. Whether the full Safe Links feature will be included or not remains to be seen, as Microsoft calls it “URL Checks” it wouldn’t be very surprising if it’s a subset of the Safe Links features that will be available. Nevertheless, making clicking links safer is a good measure to secure users’ productivity.
The Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 add-on is $2 per month and user on an annual commitment, list price.
+50GB email storage
Business Basic, Business Standard and Business Premium get an additional 50GB of email storage included, increasing the max volume to 100 GB. To get additional mailbox storage today, a user needs the Exchange Online Plan 2 (P2) which is $8 USD per month and user. If the user only has the add-on for the extra mailbox storage, then this is an instant cost saving.
Copilot thrives on data, and making sure users can have more data in their mailboxes rather than archiving it makes Copilot more valuable. Also, the production cost of data storage has decreased, making it a cheap and easy value-add for Microsoft.
Increased value and pricing
Looking at the updated pricing from a change perspective will give pretty significant percent increases for Business Basic and Standard while Business Premium is not impacted at all.
| Current | New | Change in USD | Change in % | |
| Business Basic | 6 | 7 | 1 | 17% |
| Business Standard | 12,5 | 14 | 1,5 | 12% |
| Business Premium | 22 | 22 | 0 | 0% |
The prices are per month and per user on yearly commitments, as the Business suite is limited to 300 seats, the maximum financial impact is rather limited and predictable.
| Yearly | Current | New | Change in USD | Change in % | Impact on 10 seats | Impact on 25 seats | Impact on 100 seats | Impact on 300 seats |
| Business Basic | 72 | 84 | 12 | 17% | 120 | $300 | $1200 | $3600 |
| Business Standard | 150 | 168 | 18 | 12% | 180 | $450 | $1800 | $5400 |
| Business Premium | 264 | 264 | 0 | 0% | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
As mentioned above, the updates to Business Basic and Standard are partially features currently available in add-ons.
| Add-on | Monthly cost |
| The Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 | $2 |
| and Exchange Online Plan 2 (P2) | $8 |
While not directly comparable, a price increase of $1 for Business Basic and $1,5 for Business Standard and access to additional features currently accessible on bundles priced at $10 per user and month seems like a rather good deal – that’s before factoring improvements to Copilot Chat.
Mitigating the price increase
The easiest way to mitigate the effects on the price increase is to push it forward for as long as possible. There are a couple of ways to do this which your Partner Account Manager will be happy to walk it through with you.
If the customer is planning on adding M365 Copilot, there is a bundle promotion for customers using M365 Business Basic/ Standard/Premium combining the newly available M365 Copilot Business with Business SKUs. This promotion is also available for customers who are currently on M365 Copilot – instant cost savings.
Overall all these changes are well in line with the advancement of AI assistants from being a cutting-edge niche product to a mass-adopted productivity enhancer. The big winners in terms of added functionality vs. price increase are Business Basic and Business Standard.
Partners that live and breathe AI adoption are called Frontier Partners by Microsoft (Partners leading the AI transformation: Microsoft Ignite 2025 recap) and can now get a brand new badge to showcase it: https://aka.ms/frontier-partner
Lastly, the price increase won’t happen for another six months and a lot of things can happen during that period and it’s easy to forget. Making it a habit to regularly look at what customers have renewals coming up in the next 90 days is a good practice that will help you avoid price-related surprises. It also gives you a natural opportunity to discuss upgrades, downgrades and right sizing with your customer. You can easily find the information in our management portal or ask your Partner Account Manager to provide you with the data.
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