Microsoft 365 Business Reviews

Microsoft 365 Business is used within businesses for all the Office applications within the package. The reality is most of my clients are using Google Docs or Google software but some clients need to have an offline solution. They will have Microsoft software that synchronizes to the cloud.  Microsoft 365 Business comes with all the Office software, such as OneDrive, Outlook, and Exchange.  It is good for collaboration and sharing. The largest benefit today is that it integrates with Teams which is quite useful and the overall integration is good.

Microsoft 365 Business has an abundance of features.

Google Docs and Google Sheets are much more flexible than Microsoft 365 Business software. Additionally, I have found one of the biggest issues with any of the Microsoft management platforms is they are tremendously unintuitive. However, you get used to it, you accept it, and you work away on it.

Google is much more versatile, and they provide a different experience. That is not to say that they are better or worse.

The solution could improve on the synchronization. The synchronization depends on the time of the day and what is happening in the USA. For example, when Americas wakes up, everything slows down at that point but it is to be expected. Sometimes it can take up to 24 hours to synchronize changes. The same is true for Google but they do it differently. There is a lot less frustration around Google Workspace than there is around Microsoft 365.

I have been using Microsoft 365 Business for approximately a couple of years.

The solution is stable. However, the problem with Microsoft, in general, is the management platform is incredibly slow. The synchronization and platform can be very slow because you have one platform with probably millions of dependencies, this can affect performance. You do not have these issues with Google, G Suite, or Google Workspace. When you make any kind of change to Microsoft 365 business, nine times out of ten, it is going to work. It is a very complex platform but it does not have to be.

Microsoft 365 Business is scalable enough.

I have approximately 50 customers using the solution. The majority of my customers are using Google Workspace.

Microsoft technical support is good. A lot of the time I know more than tech support, but that is only because I have been using these solutions for a long time. You have to go through the process to get technical support similar to any big company. They are professional and good communicators. However, it is a bit of a lengthy process to actually get to where you need to go, this is something you have to accept. There are different levels of support and you have to follow the process which is understandable.

I have used Google Workspace.

The implementation of Microsoft 365 Business is easy. You have an installer, you deploy it, and it installs offline. You can also access the solution through the portal.

I have been involved in the implementation of the solution. I work with other companies and their IT departments to oversee the operations. I help with configuration changes, some training, and anything else they might need.

The price of the Microsoft 365 Business is fair. It is a great suite of products, but then there are other great products on the market as well. The main concern is competition. With Microsoft generally, it comes down to what people have become familiar with, what people have grown up using when they were younger, and when they are older. It depends on the actual adoption of the environment that they work in. The price is not an issue, it is about what people are used to using, and what they are familiar with is what influences their purchase.

Customers can sign up for an annual commitment where they are paying monthly, but it is an annual commitment. I mostly sell annual commitment and it is paid monthly. Which allows them in certain situations to roll the license over. For example, If someone leaves the company, then the license can be allocated to somebody else without having to buy an additional license.

I have evaluated other solutions.

I have been using Microsoft for over 20 years and when you use Microsoft for a certain period of time, you get used to the way they do things, whether or not you like it, it does not matter. Microsoft is not the most intuitive of platforms, with regards to their Azure cloud. From a UX point of view, I would rate it approximately a six or seven out of ten. However, from a functionality point of view, I would rate it approximately an eight out of ten.

If someone is looking for a fully integrated solution that is not Google, then the next best choice is Microsoft 365. From a cost point of view, Google Workspace and Microsoft costs are not complicated anymore. Microsoft does become more expensive when you start adding on features. Google does not have that issue. I mostly recommend Google Workspace over Microsoft. The only reason somebody would want Microsoft over Google is that they are used to the Microsoft desktop applications. Microsoft Azure is not the most user-friendly platform compared to AWS, for example.  Most of the time, I recommend Google Workspace.

I rate Microsoft 365 Business a seven out of ten.

We are using Microsoft 365 Business for many of the applications that it includes, such as all the office applications, Dynamics, and Power BI.

We moved from the on-premise version of Office which had limitations. The cloud version has given us more agility and the ability to focus on the service instead of on the administration. We can spend more time on our core business instead of on the IT teams.

The current product they provide has been very satisfying. The email service has been operating perfectly. Dynamics CRM is the best and competes well with the non-CRM products in the market, such as Salesforce.

Microsoft needs to enhance its part in service management. I believe they have a product called Orchestrator, it does not get the same benefits and functionality as the rest of the solutions such as Dynamics or Office 365. They can improve by providing more integration with other solutions to cover the full business spectrum of needs, this would be a great benefit.

Office 365 Business needs to fully be shifted to the cloud because of the improved functionality. Many corporations, such as ours, are looking to be fully implemented on the cloud. The domain functionality and active directory should be fully available on the cloud platform. They need to look at this point because having things local, such as local domain and local policy, need to be shifted and available on the Office 365 platform. This would be good for corporations to have a full cloud solution.

I have been using this solution for approximately nine years.

The solution is highly stable. If there is ever an issue it is minor, they provide an uptime of approximately 99 percent.

Microsoft 365 Business is scalable.

The basic support is not very good. The first level technical team, they need a big improvement because their knowledge is very limited. I think they are just reading a knowledge base script and trying to solve the problem. They are not very technical to be able to solve a problem directly. You need to go around and around with Microsoft in order to get your problem solved. However, if you have the premier support contract, this would be easy for you to manage your issues, even if you have big problems. For the normal support basic support, they need to improve it. I think this is the weakest point for Microsoft.

The initial installation was very easy.

The solution is expensive. Basic support comes free with the regular subscription but the premier support cost extra.

I would highly recommend this solution to others.

I rate Microsoft 365 Business a nine out of ten.

We are moving most of our applications to the cloud with Microsoft 365 Business. We use many of the applications, such as OneDrive, Teams, and add-ons.

One of the most valuable features is this solution makes a lot of tasks easier, such as storing files and the maintenance of your infrastructure. additionally, the solution is easy to use.

One of the only aspects that I do not like about Microsoft is that they release solutions into the market without testing them and rely on users to test them.

I have been using this solution for more than one year.

I have had no problems with the stability of Microsoft 365 Business.

The solution in my experience is scalable.

We have approximately 3,500 Active Directory users in my organization and all of them are using Microsoft solutions.

When I started out at the company I work for we were previously using an email solution called Lotus Notes.

The installation is not my department. However, from what I have heard it seems some of it is easy, while others parts are more difficult.

The price of this solution is expensive and the price could be reduced. The licensing cost is very high because we are using an E5 license for Microsoft.

I recommend this solution to others.

I rate Microsoft 365 Business an eight out of ten.

We are primarily using it for our office. 

We are using it for email as well. Our Outlook email is on Office 365.

We also use the other items that come with Office. It's great for task managers, schedulers, and has great document sharing software. We use Sharepoint.

Overall, it is a great product. So far, we are enjoying it.

In Office 365, the collaboration part whereby you can actually type your document on your machine, then upload or save it onto your Office 365, and share it with anyone that you want. You can actually edit it in real-time. That's one of the great strengths of Office 365.

The solution is very stable.

The solution scales well.

The product has good pricing. It's quite inexpensive.

We haven't used the solution for very long just yet. I can't say that I have come across missing features or faults in its design.

The customization after the initial setup can take a while.

The solution could always be cheaper, as we like to pay the least amount possible.

As long as the solution continues to add new features and grow out the offering, we will be very happy.

I've been using the solution for about a month or so now. It hasn't been that long. It's still quite new.

The stability has been good so far. It does not crash or freeze. There are no bugs or glitches that I have experienced. it's reliable. The performance has been quite good.

The scalability of the product is quite good. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so with relative ease. 

We have roughly 2,500 users on the solution currently.

Even though we have only used the solution for about a month or so, we have been in touch with technical support and we have found Microsoft to be helpful and responsive. We're satisfied with their level of service so far.

I didn't directly participate in the initial setup and therefore can't speak to how easy or difficult the product was to install. Microsoft handled it for the most part. We, however, did the work of customizing it on our end. For us, the customization and configuration took us a few days. It was more than a week. It took some time.

The technical team that deals directly with the product is a team of about ten or so people. 

The installation was mostly handled by Microsoft.

I'm not quite clear on the financials. I'm just too technical, and I don't work directly with billing and payments. But I think from what we have seen so far, it's been quite cheap.

Overall, I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten. It's been very capable so far, and we enjoy the real-time file sharing and editing aspects.

I'd recommend this product to other organizations and users. 

As a business intelligence specialist and business owner, I primarily use the standard apps in this solution. I enjoy the fact that there's a smorgasbord of additional apps that make for great productivity within the business - especially when you realize what all the apps can do for your business.

MS365 Business has offered me a robust infrastructure with the out of the box standard offering but also provided amazing apps and features to encourage growth in other areas of my business.

I like that the standard solution is easy and intuitive. It's worth taking the time to go and poke around all the other apps, though. 

There are rules of engagement that are important to know and it can be overwhelming at first if you're never been a Sysadmin. The Apps within the solution provide different business functions so you don't have to hire anyone - you can actually do most of it yourself. It's a huge cost saving for a small business and with the subscription, it's actually much cheaper than buying the products outright, as you would have had to do in the past. You can get everything you need for a reasonable price e.g. if you wanted, say, five features/ functionality you'd pay between $100 and $1000 for each, potentially spending close to $5000 once off but then next year arrives and you need to buy the next version and again you're spending precious funds. Instead, with subscription plans, you get between ~20 features/ functions. My plan, plus the add-on Apps costs my business $12.50x2 + $30 +$9.99  per month = $780 annually - the key is TODAY'S cash stays in my pocket.

You have to buy licenses for everything, but the pricing structure is very competitive. From a small business perspective, there's lots of advantages to going with 365, because not only are you getting the standard tool set to actually just run a standard business, but you're getting add-on Apps/features that open up opportunities that you might not have thought of and... the realization that you don't have to pay another entity because you can do it yourself e.g. sway and bookings

I think where Microsoft could help with the product is to perhaps have an agent/ comprehensive start up video, that can assist with the initial setup since you're now dealing with several admin panels. You can learn it yourself but there are certain tips and tricks that could much more easily be communicated in a conversation. For example, know that if you go into an admin portal, you're going to need five things; and you need those five things before you go into the portal and they each may need their own setup/initiation.

I submitted a good few support tickets early on because some of it was a bit overwhelming. When you're a small business and you suddenly realize that there are various admin portals which all do different things and you set something up in this portal and then you have to go set something up in another portal and connect the dots. If you don't know to do that and you haven't yet read ALL the documentation, it can be very overwhelming and you can feel a little lost. But once you get your head around it all, it's quite brilliant - the architecture and how they set everything up in the background.

I've been using the MS365 Business standard plan for two months. 

The stability of this solution is superb. No issues. Just know that when you make updates or edits in the admin panels, the change(s) may not take effect instantaneously, in some cases.

I haven't tested scalability as we are a new business, just starting out. There is only one other person working with me and I purchased two licenses even though the other person in the company doesn't yet use the product. You have to have one license per user even though each user gets to load it/ use the license on several other devices. It might be a waste but I wanted to do the right thing. It would be helpful if they provided an option for two licenses so you could legitimately have it on a second computer. 

I've bought additional licenses for other apps because my business is going to be delivering a very comprehensive business intelligence/ project management service offering. I expect to expand use and embark on several upgrade routes available to me, when the time is right.

Very responsive, thorough and professional. Just be aware that they have teams with specialities and they don't cross lines e.g. I needed help with Power BI so you have to specify that in your ticket or deal with a generalist who will not be able to help you. I learned to state the product first then state your issue.

I've used Google in business as well, and I like the ability of being able to collaborate that they offer, but Microsoft 365 actually fixed that and you are now able to collaborate in the documents e.g. Word and Excel. So I really didn't see the need to stick with Google. The only thing that Microsoft wasn't able to deliver for me was photo and video organization/editing. Even if you're not a photographic business, you do still take photos and videos for your business. I do still use Google for all my photos and images.

The intial setup was very straightforward and took me less than an hour but all the administrative elements can take longer, depending on what you choose to do. You need to configure it with all it's variables and that can take extra time. The basic setup to just start work, was super quick. If you have a powerful computer it's about the download time and then some setup time. It's the Sysadmin leg of work that was a steep learning curve for me.

Handled it by myself with great support from a very responsive MS365 Tech team.

incredible. Very lower startup cost.

For the standard plan, the cost is USD $12.50 per month, committed annually. There are often discounts offered versus month to month.

I wanted to stick with the best and only evaluated all the different price plan options. For my size and stage of business the standard option offered everything I needed, plus some.

I would rate this solution a 10 out of 10. 

The basic solution we mostly need Microsoft 365 Business for, is to use Excel to support the internal sourcing process and retain our core competency.

It gives us all the tools we need to practice business in a single, unified, compatible package.

The most valuable feature in this product is that it allows for fairly high productivity without the requirements for bespoke (i.e., custom made) tools. Microsoft 365 is like a Swiss army knife. You can do pretty much everything you need for a company with it all in one compatible package without deploying multiple solutions.

The parts of the product that can be improved are the Forms and Flow features. They can be more intuitive and productive. 

I think what Microsoft has provided is certainly a stable and mature solution.

This is scalable product both in component deployment and utility for business practices.

I have not personally really had any reason to contact technical support. If I have any issues, I can answer my own questions. I normally use the various forums and internet support communities.

No serious technical issues have ever occurred.

The product was simple to install in my own deployment and begin to use. Our IT department did the deployment for the company, so I can not say how long deployment takes when deploying on a network.

Our internal IT department does deployments and monitoring of applications and services for the company.

My advice to people who are considering the use of this product is that if you are starting from scratch — from absolute zero — take some courses or training in the product to make sure you have some basic understanding of each of the products in the suite. You need to know what they do and have some basic skills or you will spend a lot of time finding out for yourself what is already easy to learn.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product as an eight.

What it can do in the next release to be closer to a ten is to integrate the components better. I would like to see all of the functionality come together in one workspace. I would prefer not to have the work separately with an Excel spreadsheet and a separate PowerPoint interface for presentation and a Flow interface for workflow. This is a little clumsy. I would prefer further integration of all the products into one single solution so it is not necessary to switch back-and-forth as you work. Or have the option to customize how you integrate according to the way you work.

We use the product as it was selected by our client for their environment. You can implement organizational compliance policies and make your devices secure. Companies can keep track of devices and users over the internet itself. The product is cloud-based. Therefore, you do not need a dedicated IT system and hardware.

I am impressed with the MDM feature.

The solution has a lot of areas to be improved. The tool needs to improve its background synchronization of data between the platforms. It can facilitate better decision-making and analysis of data. The tool should also make improvements to responsive mechanisms which can eliminate any bottlenecks.

I have been working with the solution for four to five years.

The solution is stable.

If you use the user portal, then you need to have some credits. On the other hand, if you have a license, then support is free. The support responds on time.

Neutral

The solution’s deployment takes two to three months to complete.

We have seen ROI with the tool’s use. The solution removes the burden of decision-making of compliance policy management.

The tool’s licensing and pricing are interconnected. There are different levels of licensing.

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. The solution does not require any maintenance from our end since it is deployed over the cloud. Before choosing this solution, you need to get the gist of it. If you do so, then it will not take long for you to onboard.

We are using the product primarily for all of our internal documentation and exchanges. The use cases are nothing special. It's quite basic for the most part.

The fact that it's completely on the cloud is one of its most useful aspects. We do not have to manage anything. 

We use the Office and Teams mostly. They are very helpful applications for our office.

The solution is very easy to use. It's completely transparent and extremely easy to navigate.

The stability is quite good. 

We found the installation to be very simple.

The solution offers good security and compliance.

From time to time we have some issues with OneDrive. OneDrive is not perfect. It's nice, however, from time to time we have some problems specifically with reloading the replication. We have to set it up again and again. It's not very stable.

The technical support process could be a bit more secure. The information should stay within the ticketing system itself and not be passed via email.

We've been using the solution for three years or so. We've used it for a while now.

The solution has proven to be quite stable. Its performance is good. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze on us. 

We don't really scale the solution. We're a pretty small company. We're only three users, and therefore do not need to scale at all. Therefore, I can't really speak to its capabilities. However, in the future, we are likely to expand usage.

I've only had one experience with technical support. It was not for me. It was for one of the customers. However, the experience was really, really good. 

Once it was finished, they ask for feedback. Technical support was perfect, however, the ticketing system was not that great. Once you've created a ticket, all the next steps are through email. Yet, if there is an email or something which is private, it should not be sent by email. That's why they have to improve the ticketing process. They should send a link to your ticket via email and always keep the information itself within the ticketing system.

The company is quite new. Before I was working at a bigger company which was completely different. However, when we started this new business, we decided to make it as simple as possible for us. That's why we decided to move to the cloud completely.

We also use Zoho for the cloud, for all our accounting, and invoicing, and so on. There is no Microsoft offering for that. It's completely separate. There is no link between them.

The initial setup is not difficult or overly complex. It's pretty straightforward and simple. 

The deployment is quick and only takes a few clicks. Implementation is only a few minutes. From an end-user point of view, it's even faster as it's just a click or two.

We don't need anyone to handle deployment or maintenance.

We handle the implementation ourselves. We have an IT team and we are quite capable of managing the implementation. Therefore we don't need the assistance of any integrators or consultants.

We have a license that we pay on a monthly basis.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing Microsoft.

We're just a customer and an end-user.

We are using the latest version of the solution.

We are like customers. Even if we do not sell these kinds of services, when customers ask us for advice, we recommend them to move to Microsoft. One of our business lines is in GDPR. For that, we recommend them to move to something which is completely secure. Microsoft Office 365 is one of them. We recommend customers move to Office 365 for that reason. 

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.