Licensing and Pricing

Microsoft Online Services are purchased as annual subscriptions that license services, users of those services, and sometimes devices that use services. Microsoft offers discounts for customers who use both online services and more traditional on-premises server software and devices, but in most cases users are likely to use one or the other, not both.

Dedicated Licensing

Online Dedicated services employ two tiers of license. A Service Subscription License (SSL) covers the first 5,000 user accounts, and each additional user must have his own User Subscription License (USL). The cost of the first 5,000 Dedicated accounts is more than twice the cost of Standard USLs for 5,000 users; the extra cost pays for dedicated hardware and more advanced services and customization. But as large customers put more users on the service, their cost per user begins to approach that of the Standard level of service.

Exact pricing for the Online Dedicated services SSL and USLs are not public; customers have more options to customize the services to suit their requirements and will typically have a three-year customized Service Subscription Agreement contract with Microsoft (separate from any volume licensing program contract) whose price will reflect the specific services that they want.