Non-profits should pay: Microsoft strokes free M365 Business Premium

Microsoft asks non-profit organizations (NPO) to the cash register in the future. The US group announced that it would stop its free licenses for Microsoft 365 Business Premium and Office 365 E1 from July 1, 2025. New free licenses or extensions of expiring subscriptions are already no longer available. With this step, Microsoft wants to tighten his subsidized offers and simplify its portfolio for NPOS, according to the announcement. As an alternative, Microsoft offers the M365 package Business Basic.

NPOS lose office programs on the desktop

With the switch to M365 Business Basic, NPOs lose access to the desktop versions of the office programs, which are then only available as web and mobile applications. Likewise, the administrative platform Intune and the access management are not part of the basic tariff of M365 Business. The same applies to Microsoft Defender and Purview. However, the NPOS MS teams, Outlook and SharePoint, as well as a terabyte cloud storage per user in OneDrive are retained in the basic package.

Non-profit organizations that need more than 300 licenses or use services from the premium package inevitably have to pay. Microsoft offers a discount of up to 75 percent for other M365 packages, but it is $ 6.60 per user per month for the premium tariff. For the medium-sized M365 package Business Standard with desktop applications of the Office packages, but without Intune and Entra ID, $ 3.75 per month and user are due. With annual payment, the prices per user per user are $ 5.50 per month or $ 3.13.

Microsoft increases prices and urges subscriptions

With a study specially commissioned, Microsoft recently tried to lure his corporate customers into the Microsoft-365 subscription with alleged advantages of unlimited office licenses. In addition to access to the video conference tool and the AI ​​Chatbot Copilot, the US group advertised with a return on 223 percent. Copilot has only been part of the M365 portfolio for private customers since January 2025. Microsoft took the opportunity to increase the subscription fees by 30 percent.