From March 2022 Microsoft are changing the way they set pricing and subscription lengths for some of their subscriptions, including Microsoft 365 mailboxes. If we have specifically directed you to read this page then this applies to you.
What is the Microsoft New Commerce Experience (NCE)?
The Microsoft New Commerce Experience (NCE) is a new pricing model for Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Windows 365 and Power Platform subscriptions. NCE was designed to reduce complexity in billing processes and provide cost savings for longer term subscriptions.
What does this mean for our customers?
The way we purchase Microsoft services on our customers behalf will be now be different. At the moment most customers currently run mailboxes on a monthly basis and mailboxes can be added or removed as required and the prices goes up or down accordingly each month. While this flexible monthly subscription model remains available, Microsoft are making significant price increases to customers that stay on this monthly pricing model, with slightly smaller price increases being applied to subscriptions where there is an annual subscription commitment.
* To make this slightly more complicated, customers on an annual commitment will still be charged for and will still need to pay monthly albeit at a lower rate, but will at some point in 2022 revert to an annual subscription / annual payment model.
The new prices for mailboxes which are now available on a monthly or an annual basis will be published on our Microsoft 365 Mailbox page in due course.
Can I escape the Microsoft Monopoly?
Microsoft have made significant efforts into monopolising the email hosting market with what is admittedly a reasonably reliable and (now) feature-rich email hosting platform. While we do support customers that have a business need to choose Microsoft to host their email, we also like to educate customers about alternatives that could save money or tick the corporate social responsibility box. If you can migrate away from Microsoft hosted mailboxes and wish to save money, or increase brand image and business reputation, do take a moment to look at Alternative email services such as Hosted Exchange, Zimbra or even IMAP mailboxes.