I do appreciate that the water between the two tools is less muddy. It’s still not clear. There is still confusion among the average users, but it’s a little less murky. That’s a good thing.
This is also coming with a price increase effective in July 2026:
Apparently, instead of purchasing M365 licenses and then additional Teams licenses, your M365 licenses will come in with or without Teams flavors.
Forgive me for picturing your MS partner with a headset asking, “Do you want Teams with that?”
That seems to be how we’ll be ordering our licensing in the future, though.
There is more detail in the announcement above, but the bottom line is this. You can get Defender and a range of e5 Purview tools for an additional $15 USD per month per user. With Business Premium costing $22 per month per user when paid annually, that’s a significant savings over a full E5 license if you have fewer than 300 users.
