Microsoft 365 for Small Business

Microsoft 365 for small business is a subscription, not a mailbox

Microsoft 365 is a bundle, and mail is one part of it. Everything else in the subscription is what you are paying the difference for. The business email overview covers the basics this page assumes you already have.

Two things follow. You license people, not computers. And nothing is owned at the end of it: anyone who remembers buying a copy of Office once and using it for years is used to a different arrangement. Stop paying and the applications stop working the way they did.

Which applications are in which plan, how much storage comes with an account and what it costs all change. Every figure is left off this page on purpose.

What you are licensing

The unit is a person, not a machine, so one member of staff is one licence however many devices they read mail on. How many devices a single licence covers is a plan detail worth confirming before you buy. What catches people out is the other direction: hire three people and you need three more licences, and each one is a whole bundle, not just a mailbox.

So the cost shape differs from a plain mailbox plan. Both grow with the business, but with mailbox hosting you add mailboxes, and here you add whole subscriptions, whether the new person opens a spreadsheet or not.

What comes with it, and who has to run it

The Office applications, tied to the same account as the mail. Which applications, and whether they run on the desktop or only in a browser, depends on the plan. Add shared calendars and storage a team can reach, and that is the case for buying it: the things around the mail, not the mail.

What gets skipped is that a subscription with people in it is an account somebody has to run. Not much work, but it has to belong to a named person, and these decisions are easier before the accounts exist than after.

Somebody holds the administrator account. One person, named, a second trusted person able to reach it, and a written note of where those details are kept. A business locked out of its own administrator account is a slow and expensive problem.
That account is not the owner's daily login. Give the owner an ordinary account for mail. The login that can reset everybody's password should not be the one opening attachments from strangers all day.
Removing a licence is not deleting a person. When somebody leaves and the licence comes off, their mail and files do not stay reachable indefinitely. Decide where that mail goes, and put the forwarding in place, before the licence comes off rather than after.
Parts of it you will never open. A bundle sold to organisations of every size carries administrative tools a five-person company has no use for. Ignoring them is free of consequence. Moving up a plan to get one is a decision worth making deliberately.

The honest test

Ask about the team, not about yourself. Does more than one person need the same calendar, or the same document? If yes, the bundle earns its place. If one person needs mail and everyone else just needs an address customers can write to, it does not.

One person, an inbox and a phone. Mailbox hosting. Nothing to share, so nothing extra to pay for.
An owner who books the work and a manager who schedules it. Two people looking at one diary all day. This is the case it was built for.
An office of two and a crew of five. Licence the two. Give the field staff addresses that reach them rather than accounts they sign into. Mixing is usually right rather than a compromise.

Side by side, on the things that decide it

Microsoft 365 and plain mailbox hosting, on the decisions rather than the specifications
What you are weighing	Microsoft 365	Plain mailbox hosting
What you are buying	A subscription bundle that includes mail	A mailbox on your domain
The question it answers	Does the team need to work in the same tools?	Does everyone need a professional address?
How the bill grows	Per person, so it tracks headcount	Per mailbox
Desktop applications	Included on some plans, so check which	Not included, you keep whatever you use now
Shared calendars	A core part of the product, confirm which plan	Varies by provider, check before relying on it
Two people in one document	Part of what the applications do, plan dependent	Handled by whatever you already use
If you stop paying	Mail stops and the applications stop with it	Mail stops, the address is still yours

Notice what is not in that table: storage figures, mailbox counts, feature lists. They decide almost nothing at this size, and every comparison page leads with them.

What setting it up involves

Most of it is not particular to this product. The migration and the DNS work are the same whichever provider you move to, and are covered in the email migration guide and in how DNS management works. What follows is the part that only applies here.

Domain verification, and where it stalls

You publish a record on the domain and setup checks for it before the domain may carry mail. The registration and the website both stay where they are; only records are added. It stalls in two places: nobody at the business can sign in to wherever the DNS records are edited, which is the real first job, or the host field goes in the way the registrar's form suggests rather than the way the instructions read, so the record lands on the wrong name and the check fails on something you can plainly see is there.
The organisation name is chosen once

Signing up creates an organisation account and everything you buy afterwards sits inside it. The name is picked in the first few minutes, usually by whoever is nearest a keyboard, and it appears to be awkward enough to change later that it deserves five minutes now. Use the business name, not a person's name and not the one project that prompted the purchase.
Names first, then licences, then the copy

Decide on paper who signs in and who only needs an address. A person's mailbox appears once a licence is assigned, so the licences you hand out are both what creates somewhere to copy mail into and what you start being billed for. Doing it the other way round is how businesses pay for accounts nobody opens.
Nothing is live until you say so

New empty mailboxes change nothing on their own: the old ones carry on receiving, because the mail records still point at them. The trap is that setup will generally offer to update those records for you, and taking that offer before the copy has run sends new mail into empty mailboxes. Decline it, copy the mail, then change the records deliberately.

The mistakes that cost money

All of them are about paying a subscription for something a cheaper arrangement already covers.

Licences for people who only need an alias. The common one. A shared address like sales@ is not a person and does not need a person's subscription. Count who signs in daily; that is your licence count.
Buying it for the storage. A business that wants somewhere to put files reaches for the mail bundle because space comes with it. If nobody needs the calendars or the applications, that is a filing cabinet at office-suite prices.
Leaving a licence assigned to somebody who has left. Their address should carry on and forward to whoever took the work over. That is an alias. The subscription is not.
Paying twice. If your staff already have the applications through another arrangement, check that first. A short question worth asking before you buy.

One case where the answer is to leave things alone: if you already run Microsoft 365 and it works, there is no reason to move it to put the bill on one invoice. Consolidating suppliers is a convenience, not an improvement.

How AldoMedia helps

We size the licences with you first, because that is where the money is, then set the accounts up, run the migration and make the DNS change carefully. AldoMedia, LLC. has been building and maintaining websites for Western New York businesses since 1999, and email has always come with that work. We are an independent authorised reseller, not the platform operator.

Tell us how many people actually need an account, call 716-771-2536, or read the support page first. The website is a separate purchase again: see web hosting and what website security covers.

Microsoft 365 questions

Is Microsoft 365 just email with a different name?

No. Email is one part of a subscription that also carries the Office applications, shared calendars and file storage. Most small businesses buy it for the mailbox and then use a few of the other parts. If none of the rest sounds useful, plain mailbox hosting covers the mail.

Do I need a licence for every person on the payroll?

Only for the people who need their own account. Somebody who is simply one of the people reading a shared address does not need a licence of their own, because an alias delivers into a mailbox that already exists. Licensing is per person, so over-buying here is what makes the bill look wrong.

Can I use Microsoft 365 with a domain I already own?

Yes, and you do not have to move the registration or the website. You prove you control the domain by publishing a record Microsoft asks for, then point the mail records at your new mailboxes. Where the domain is registered and where the website is hosted can both stay exactly as they are.

Can I mix Microsoft 365 and plain mailboxes on the same domain?

Yes, in the way that matters. A domain's mail records point at one system, so the mix is not two providers on one name. It is Microsoft 365 holding the domain, with licensed accounts for the people who sign in and plain addresses delivering into an existing mailbox for everybody else. You pay per account, not per address.

Who should not buy Microsoft 365?

A one-person business that only needs a professional address, a team that does not share calendars or edit the same documents, and anyone already paying for the same applications somewhere else. Paying twice for Office is common.

Related guides and services

Business Email

The overview: mailboxes on your domain, aliases, and why the business should own the account.

Read the email guide

Email Migration

Moving mail from an existing provider without customers noticing.

How a migration runs

DNS Management

The records that decide where your mail goes, and why the website records are a different set.

DNS explained

Browse all guides, or check who your domain is registered to, since whoever controls it controls the mail.

Microsoft 365 for Small Business