Microsoft Teams Phone System: Do you need an E5 license?

Does your company need a 365 E5 license, for Microsoft Teams Phone System?

In the video below, Mike explains why your company doesn’t need an E5 license for Teams Phone System, (but might want to upgrade anyway), because sometimes the math just makes sense!

Want Mike’s recommendations on the best VoIP providers to quote for Operator Connect or Direct Routing as a Service? Click the button below and ask him today.

About Mike

Mike Smith is the Founder and President of AeroCom and has been helping companies with telecom and cloud services since 1999. He has been the recipient of numerous business telecommunications industry awards, including being recognized as one of the top 40 business people in Orange County, CA., under 40 years old. You can also hear him as the host of the popular Information Technology podcast, ITsmiths with Mike Smith. Follow Mike on YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit and SpiceWorks.

Transcript

Does your company need an E5 license in order to have Microsoft Teams Phone System? That’s a great question. I get that question asked almost every single day from companies that are looking into Team Phone System, is, “Hey. Do we need to upgrade to E5 in order to get Teams Phone System?” Well, the answer to that is no, you do not need E5 in order to have a Microsoft Teams Phone System, but you may want to have E5 for Microsoft Teams Phone System.

Quick Answers

So before I get too far into that, though, really quick, if you want to know which Teams Phone System calling plan service providers, like direct routing service providers or operator connect service providers, you should be quoting for your organization, there’s definitely a small handful that you should definitely be quoting. All the other ones, you should be ignoring. Reach out and contact me, by email or phone (714.593.0011). I’ll tell you more information on that at the end of the video.

Do you need E5?

So do you need E5? No. You don’t need E5. If you have E1 or E3 or Business Premium or Business Standard, you don’t have to change your 365 licensing at all.

You can just get Teams Phone System by adding Microsoft Teams Phone Standard, which used to be called the Phone System feature, to your Office 365 licensing. That will give you the dial pad and all the calling features, and then you just add a calling plan to that, as well.

The Math Behind E5

So you don’t need to upgrade to E5 licensing, but you may want to upgrade to E5 licensing. The reason is because the dollar amounts you’re looking at, especially if you have, say, E3. Let’s just take E3 for example. If you have E3, you’re probably paying … I think the standard price right now, or when I’m doing this video is around $20 per user per month for an E3 license. An E5 license in Office 365 is like $35 per month per user.

Well, E5 comes with the Microsoft Teams Phone Standard feature. It also comes with the conferencing feature. Those two features, standalone, are $8 and $4 respectively. So if you add those to E3, which you’re already paying $20 a month for, you add $12 more per month, you’re at $32 per month per user. So for $3 more per user, you can get E5. So that’s why a lot of companies go to E5, is because they want to add the additional features that E5 comes with for only $3 more per user if they’re looking at getting that Microsoft Teams Phone Standard feature anyway or maybe thinking of that and a conference bridge for everybody anyway.

Use Phone System to Get Better Security

So a lot of times, the IT departments, they’re trying to find any reason they can to upgrade to E5 because of all the cool security features there, and especially if you want to upgrade to Microsoft 365 E5. You can get Defender for Endpoint and a lot of other cool security features with Microsoft 365 E5, more so even than Office 365 E5.

So a lot of IT teams want to find a reason to upgrade to E5 so they can justify it, budget-wise, to management, and Phone System seems to be one of those catalysts where they can say, “Hey. We want to go to Microsoft Teams Phone System, and since we’re going to be paying for some of these features a la carte anyway, why don’t we just get E5 and get the Phone System features plus all the other stuff?”

Does E5 include everything I need?

But one word of caution. Even if you do get E5, that does not come with the dial tone. So you still have to get a calling plan in addition to E5. You have to get some type of dial tone. Either you have to use your own dial tone through direct routing, or you have to get dial tone from a calling plan. I recommend direct routing as a service or operator connect through a third-party service provider. If you want more information on that, watch my other videos on all that good stuff.

You need a human touch!

I hope that helps a little bit. If you’d like my recommendations on the best companies to quote for operator connect or direct routing as a service, don’t Google it. You’ll be searching for hours on that stuff. Just reach out and contact me. I’m a broker for all the major service providers who offer that, and there are specific companies that’ll be a better fit for your organization, in particular, based on your requirements. So reach out, contact me, via email or phone (714.593.0011). Just don’t pick it randomly from the Microsoft Admin Center or through the internet. You’ll probably end up with the wrong company.

The nice thing is is that if you find a service provider that you like for one of those calling plans, and you guys purchase from them, that company pays me my broker fee. So you don’t have to pay me anything for my recommendations. So no excuse not to at least reach out, see what I have to say, and go from there. But hope you like the video. If so, don’t forget to hit the like button down below and subscribe to the channel. I will catch you on the next one.