Microsoft 365 pricing is changing from July: now is the time to review your licences

What is changing from July 2026?

Microsoft 365 pricing is changing from 1 July 2026, affecting new and renewing customers. Now is the right time to review your licences and understand what the changes could mean for your business.

For many businesses, this will mean an increase across commonly used licences, including Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Business Standard, Office 365 E3, Microsoft 365 E3 and Microsoft 365 E5.

The new per user, per month prices are as follows:

The changes reflect more than a price rise alone. Microsoft is also adding new capabilities across some of its plans, including increased mailbox storage of up to 100GB on the Business plans, enhanced protection against malicious links, and improved AI Copilot functionality.

Microsoft Copilot Chat (now referred to as Copilot Basic) gives eligible Microsoft 365 users access to AI-powered support at no extra cost. It can help people summarise information, draft content, find answers and work more efficiently using the tools they already rely on every day. The upcoming enhancements include greater awareness of inboxes and calendars, plus access to AI-powered agents in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Importantly, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Chat are built with enterprise data protection in place, meaning prompts and responses are protected under Microsoft's commercial data commitments, existing permissions and sensitivity labels are respected, and business data is not used to train foundation AI models.

For many businesses, though, the biggest opportunity sits closer to home.

Microsoft 365 is packed with useful tools, yet it is common for organisations to use only a fraction of what they are already paying for. Teams may rely on email and Word every day while overlooking tools such as Planner, To Do, Lists, Forms, Loop and the wider collaboration features available to them.

That is why the most important advice is simple: do not wait until renewal to look at your licences.

With the changes coming into effect from the beginning of July, there is now limited time to review your Microsoft 365 setup, understand what you are paying for, and make sure your licences still match the way your team works.

For some, the right answer may be to stay exactly where they are. For others, there may be an opportunity to reduce unused licences, move users onto a more suitable plan, review monthly versus annual commitments, or consider whether a different package offers better value when security, device management and productivity needs are taken into account.

This is especially important for organisations that have grown, changed structure, added new users, or built up licences over time. Microsoft 365 environments often evolve gradually, and it is easy for unused seats, duplicate tools or outdated licence choices to sit quietly in the background.

A licence review can help you:

• Identify unused or underused licences
• Check whether users are on the right Microsoft 365 plans
• Understand where pricing changes may affect your monthly cost
• Review whether annual or monthly commitments make more commercial sense
• Make sure you are taking advantage of the added storage, security and AI capabilities now available
• Identify where training could help teams get more value from the tools they already have
• Avoid last-minute decisions when renewal dates arrive
• Make sure your Microsoft setup supports your wider IT and security requirements

The July change should not be treated as a reason to panic. It is a useful moment to take stock, tidy up what is already in place, and make sure your people are getting the full value from Microsoft 365.

Flotek can review your current setup, explain where the changes may affect you, and help you make a commercially sensible decision before the new pricing starts to feed through.

We can also support your team with e-learning designed to help people make better use of Microsoft 365, from learning how to use Copilot effectively to getting more from Planner, To Do and the tools that often go overlooked.

If your Microsoft 365 renewal is coming up, or you are unsure whether your current licensing is still the best fit, speak to our team.

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