Is Microsoft 365 Business Premium Worth It for a Small Business?
Microsoft 365 Business Premium costs more than Business Standard, so the obvious question for a small business is simple: is the extra cost actually worth it?
For many businesses, our answer is yes, but not simply because Premium gives you more Microsoft features.
The real difference is security and management. Business Standard gives you the familiar Microsoft 365 productivity tools most businesses expect. Business Premium takes that foundation and adds considerably stronger controls around your users, devices, email and business information.
If you are still deciding between all three main Microsoft 365 business plans, start with our Microsoft 365 Business Basic vs Standard vs Premium comparison. This article looks specifically at whether moving up to Business Premium is worth the investment.
How much more does Microsoft 365 Business Premium cost?
As of 7 September 2026, Microsoft's UK annual pricing including Teams is £10.80 per user/month for Business Standard and £16.90 per user/month for Business Premium, excluding VAT. That means Business Premium currently costs £6.10 more per user, per month.
Microsoft also offers versions without Teams. At the time of writing, Standard without Teams is £8.30 and Premium without Teams is £14.40, so the difference is again £6.10 per user/month. Microsoft pricing and licensing can change, so always check the current Microsoft UK pricing before making a decision.
The useful question therefore becomes: what are you getting for that extra £6.10, and does your business actually need it?
What are you really paying extra for?
Business Standard already includes the desktop versions of familiar applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, alongside business email, OneDrive, SharePoint and other Microsoft 365 services. Business Premium includes those productivity capabilities too.
The extra value comes mainly from the additional security, identity and device-management tools. These currently include:
Microsoft Defender for Business to help protect devices against malware, ransomware and other cyber threats.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 for additional protection against phishing and email-based threats.
Microsoft Intune Plan 1 for managing and protecting company information across laptops, phones and tablets.
Microsoft Entra ID Plan 1 for stronger control over identities, sign-ins and access to business applications.
Microsoft Purview capabilities to help protect sensitive business information and reduce data-loss risks.
Those names can make Business Premium sound more complicated than it needs to be. For a business owner, the practical question is what those tools help you do.
Business Premium is worth considering if your staff work away from the office
Small businesses rarely operate from one building and one desktop computer anymore. People work from home, travel, use laptops in different locations and access company information from phones and tablets.
That flexibility is useful, but it also means company information is being accessed from more places and more devices. Business Premium gives you much stronger tools for controlling that environment.
For example, device management can help you apply business policies to laptops and mobile devices and protect company information if a device is lost or stolen. If your team works remotely or uses portable devices regularly, that alone can make the Premium conversation worthwhile.
It can be valuable if Microsoft 365 contains important business information
Think about what would happen if you suddenly lost access to Microsoft 365. For many small businesses it contains:
email
customer conversations
documents
financial information
shared files
Teams conversations
calendars
contacts
internal business information
Microsoft 365 is no longer simply a copy of Word and Excel. It can be one of the most important systems in the business. The more important that information becomes, the harder it is to justify choosing a licence purely because it saves a few pounds per user.
Business Premium makes more sense when you need control over company devices
Imagine somebody leaves your business but still has company information stored on a laptop or phone. Or a laptop disappears from the back of a car. Or an employee uses a personal device to access business information.
For a business with no internal IT department, dealing with those situations can quickly become difficult. Microsoft Intune, included with Business Premium, provides tools for managing devices and protecting work data on both company-owned and personal devices.
That does not mean every business needs complicated device policies. It means you have the tools available to manage access properly rather than hoping nothing goes wrong.
The security difference is bigger than many businesses realise
This is probably the biggest reason we often look seriously at Business Premium. A small business may initially compare Standard and Premium based on Office applications and storage. But those are not really the important differences.
Premium introduces additional protection across devices, email and collaboration, user identities and access, device management and sensitive information. For a business owner, the value is not having five more names on a Microsoft feature list. It is having a stronger foundation on which your wider cyber security can be built.
Does Business Premium replace the need for cyber security?
No. Buying Microsoft 365 Business Premium does not automatically make a business secure. The tools still need to be configured properly, monitored and used as part of a wider approach to cyber security.
You still need to consider areas such as:
staff security awareness
passwords and multifactor authentication
backups
email threats
device updates
monitoring
what happens when somebody joins or leaves
incident response
how your security is managed day to day
This is why at Cache4 we treat Microsoft 365 as the technology foundation. Our Cyber Security services then help protect that foundation, and ongoing IT support helps keep everything properly managed. A licence is a tool. The important part is what you do with it.
When might Business Standard be enough?
Business Premium is not automatically the right answer for everybody. Business Standard may be perfectly suitable where:
you mainly need email, cloud storage and desktop Office applications
you already have properly managed security and device controls elsewhere
there is no requirement for Microsoft-based device management
your IT provider has deliberately designed another appropriate security approach around your Microsoft 365 environment
The important word there is deliberately. Choosing Standard because somebody has assessed the requirements and decided it is appropriate is very different from choosing Standard because it is cheaper and ignoring security altogether.
What if you only have three or five employees?
Business Premium is not just for larger organisations. A three-person business can still hold sensitive customer information. A five-person business can still suffer a phishing attack. A lost laptop does not become less serious because the company only has four employees.
For smaller organisations, the question is therefore not whether you are big enough for Business Premium. It is how important your users, devices and business information are, and how well you need to protect them.
Buying Premium is not the same as using Premium
A business can pay for Business Premium and still get little additional value from it if the security and management features are never configured. We regularly see organisations paying for Microsoft 365 without making full use of what their licences already include.
The licence is therefore only part of the decision. You also need to think about:
how Microsoft 365 will be configured
which security controls should be enabled
how devices will be managed
who looks after changes
how new employees are set up
how leavers are removed
whether anybody is reviewing the environment as the business changes
That is where good Microsoft 365 management matters as much as choosing the licence itself.
So, is Microsoft 365 Business Premium worth it?
For many small businesses, yes. Particularly if Microsoft 365 contains important company information, employees work remotely, people use laptops and mobile devices, you need stronger protection against phishing and ransomware, you want better control over users and devices, or you do not have an internal IT team managing those things separately.
Business Premium will not be right for every individual user or every organisation. But if the difference between Standard and Premium is currently £6.10 per user/month, the decision should not be based on price alone.
The better question is: what would it cost your business if the security and management controls you decided not to have were the ones you later needed?
Not sure whether Business Premium is right for you?
You do not need to become a Microsoft licensing expert. At Cache4, we help small businesses understand what they actually need, set Microsoft 365 up properly and keep it managed without unnecessary complexity.
If you are in Carlisle, Cumbria or further afield and are unsure whether Business Standard or Business Premium is the right foundation for your business, book a free Discovery Call. We will look at how your team works, the devices and information you need to protect, and the Microsoft 365 setup you already have. Then we can recommend what makes sense rather than simply selling you the licence with the longest feature list.
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