Microsoft Copilot Licenses: Which one to choose?

On January 15, 2024, Microsoft announced a significant expansion in the availability of Microsoft Copilot licenses for Microsoft 365, marking a major breakthrough for businesses of all sizes. Previously, Copilot for Microsoft 365 was only accessible to enterprise customers with an Enterprise Agreement purchasing at least 300 licenses. Now, this barrier has been removed, allowing small and medium-sized businesses to benefit from Copilot's advanced features without minimum license requirements.

Through the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program, you can easily acquire Microsoft Copilot licenses for Microsoft 365. This new flexibility allows you to integrate Copilot into your organization, significantly improving the productivity and efficiency of your teams. With Copilot, you can leverage advanced AI tools to optimize workflows, automate repetitive tasks, and facilitate collaboration among team members.

This initiative by Microsoft democratizes access to the powerful features of Copilot for Microsoft 365, making them available to a broader audience and offering scalable solutions to meet the needs of any company, regardless of size.

What is Copilot for Microsoft 365?

This blog assumes you already know what Microsoft Copilot is, but a brief review is necessary. Copilot for Microsoft 365 is the innovative generative AI technology developed by Microsoft, now integrated into the Office 365 product suite, including Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Excel, and Teams, which many use daily.

Thanks to the integration of Copilot for Microsoft 365, powerful language models, and business data within Microsoft 365 apps, an exceptionally powerful productivity tool has been created. The combination of these components has resulted in a product that could be considered one of the most advanced on the market. Research conducted by Microsoft with early users confirms this assertion convincingly.

Users report spending significantly less time searching for information (81%), achieving more efficient meetings (73%), reducing time spent processing emails (79%), and finding it easier to start an initial draft (94%).

It is important to note that this innovative technology is now accessible to a wide range of users thanks to Microsoft Copilot licenses, allowing businesses to fully exploit its extraordinary features without any usage constraints.

Microsoft Copilot License: How does it work?

You are surely excited to experience the power of this new generative AI technology in your daily work, but Microsoft Copilot licenses can be complicated if you are not familiar with the different licensing levels.

Microsoft recently announced that you can now purchase Microsoft Copilot licenses through the CSP (Cloud Solution Provider) licensing program. This program allows businesses of any size to purchase their licenses through an authorized Microsoft partner. This represents a significant change from the past when Copilot for Microsoft 365 was only available through an Enterprise Agreement (EA), where a customer purchased licenses directly from Microsoft.

The CSP program allows businesses of any size to purchase Microsoft Copilot licenses through an authorized Microsoft partner, offering greater flexibility and accessibility compared to the EA. This is particularly useful for small and medium-sized businesses that may not have the resources or need to enter into an EA but still want to take advantage of the powerful features offered by Copilot for Microsoft 365.

Microsoft Copilot License: Which one to choose?

Microsoft Copilot licenses are available as "add-on" licenses. This means that to purchase Copilot, you need to add it to an existing Microsoft 365 license. There are six existing license options to which you can add Copilot, offering flexibility that allows you to customize your work environment according to your needs.

In practice, to benefit from Copilot's advanced features, you must already possess one of the eligible base licenses.

Microsoft 365 Premium

If your company has 300 users or fewer, M365 Premium is an excellent choice to integrate Microsoft Copilot licenses. This license not only provides the advanced features needed to make the most of Copilot but also includes essential security controls crucial for data and AI conversations that Copilot for M365 requires.

Security controls are highly recommended, and with Microsoft 365 Premium, you will have access to detailed guidance to implement and manage these features. This ensures robust protection while integrating Copilot's advanced capabilities into your existing infrastructure.

Microsoft 365 Business Standard

If you have a Microsoft 365 Business Standard license and your organization has 300 users or fewer, it is important to carefully examine your security technology before proceeding with the Copilot purchase. This license offers a basic solution but may require additional precautions to ensure adequate data protection. Before integrating Microsoft Copilot licenses, we strongly recommend evaluating your current security infrastructure and making any necessary updates or changes to ensure the security of your sensitive data.

Microsoft 365 E5/A5

If you are considering security for integrating Microsoft Copilot licenses, the best options are Microsoft 365 E5 or A5 (the latter reserved for schools). Both offer an excellent level of security and are highly recommended. Microsoft 365 is a comprehensive package that includes Office 365, Windows, and Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS), a Microsoft security suite that includes a range of essential security technologies for data and AI conversations necessary with Copilot. Between the two options, the main difference is that the E5 level includes advanced security and compliance capabilities that go beyond what is included in the E3 level.

Microsoft 365 E3/A3

Among the licenses for Microsoft Copilot, you might consider Microsoft 365 E3 or A3. Both offer fundamental security controls, but it is advisable to get assistance before proceeding. Microsoft 365 includes Office 365 and EMS but does not include Microsoft Defender, a critical component for security. Before purchasing Copilot, it is important to review your security technology to ensure adequate protection of your data and business systems.

Office 365 E5

The Office 365 E5 license offers basic security, but caution is advised. Office 365 E5 includes the Office 365 suite but does not include EMS. However, it does include Microsoft Defender and other security features such as access and identity management, information protection, and internal risk management. While these features offer some protection, they may not be sufficiently robust for data and AI conversations necessary with Copilot without the inclusion of EMS.

Office 365 E3

This license includes only the Office 365 suite without any additional security or compliance features. The lack of advanced security features makes this option less ideal for integrating Copilot, especially considering the data protection and AI requirements. It is essential to exercise extreme caution and assess whether the minimal security offered by Office 365 E3 is sufficient for your organization before proceeding with the Copilot purchase.

Microsoft Copilot Availability

Microsoft Copilot with Business Data Protection (formerly Bing Chat Enterprise)

Prerequisites: Available for free to everyone with an ENTRA ID (formerly known as Azure Active Directory) and accessible via the web on Copilot. This means that regardless of your company's size, you can easily access Copilot's powerful features simply by having an ENTRA ID account.

Key features:

1. ‍Latest GPT Models
   • ‍GPT-4 Turbo by OpenAI: This advanced language model offers improved natural language understanding and generation, making interactions with Copilot smoother and more accurate.‍
   • Dall-E 3: This technology allows Copilot to generate images from textual descriptions, enriching responses with high-quality visual content.‍
   • Constant Updates: Copilot is constantly updated with the latest models, ensuring that responses are always based on the most advanced AI technologies available.
2. ‍AI Chat for Work with Business Data Protection
   • ‍Integrated Security: The chat is designed to ensure that all interactions are protected from potential threats, keeping business data safe.‍
   • Safe and Compliant Use: Copilot's AI is developed to operate in compliance with data protection regulations, ensuring that conversations and sensitive information remain private.
3. ‍User and Business Data Protection
   • ‍Non-disclosure of Data: Copilot ensures that no user or business data is shared or leaked outside the organization, maintaining a high level of privacy and security.‍
   • Advanced Encryption and Security: Data is protected through encryption and other advanced security measures, ensuring that information remains confidential.
4. ‍Web-based Data Responses with Verifiable Citations
   • ‍Comprehensive Responses: Responses provided by Copilot are thorough and based on current data available on the web, offering detailed and reliable information.‍
   • Citations and References: Each response includes verifiable citations, allowing users to trace the sources of information, ensuring transparency and reliability.‍
   • Visual Responses: In addition to text, Copilot provides visual responses that include graphs, diagrams, and images, facilitating the understanding and analysis of information.

Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365

Prerequisites: Before proceeding with the purchase of Copilot for Microsoft 365, ensure you have the necessary base licenses. These include Office 365 E3, E5, and Microsoft 365 Business Standard, Business Premium, Microsoft E3, and E5. Other license options are Microsoft 365 F3 and F1, Microsoft Business Basic, and Office 365 E1.

Key features:

1. ‍AI-powered Productivity Tool: Copilot leverages AI to integrate with your organization's Microsoft 365 apps, services, and graphic data, providing insights and personalized recommendations to improve productivity.
2. ‍Natural Language Interaction: You can communicate with Copilot naturally to receive assistance in writing, creating presentations, finding information, generating ideas, summarizing meetings, analyzing data, and more.

Copilot Pro for Private Users

Prerequisites: Before proceeding with the purchase of Copilot Pro for private users, ensure you have the necessary base licenses. These include the Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans.

Key features:

1. ‍Access to the Latest AI Models: With Copilot Pro, you will have access to the most advanced AI models, including the powerful GPT-4 Turbo by OpenAI, to enhance your user experience.
2. ‍Integration with Microsoft Apps: Copilot Pro seamlessly integrates with Microsoft apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote, making your work more efficient across different platforms, including PC, Mac, and iPad.
3. ‍Advanced AI-powered Features: Thanks to advanced AI capabilities, Copilot Pro allows you to generate documents, presentations, and emails with AI assistance. Additionally, you can enjoy innovative features such as image creation with AI, all within a unified platform.

Before proceeding with the purchase, note that Copilot Pro is available directly on the Microsoft website at a cost of 22 euros per month per user. However, it is important to note that this option is not available through cloud solution providers and is not intended for commercial use.

Copilot for Sales

Prerequisites: Before proceeding with the implementation of Copilot for Sales, ensure you have the necessary base licenses. These include Office 365 E3, E5, and Microsoft 365 Business Standard, Business Premium, E3, E5, and are included in Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise.

Key features:

1. ‍Native Integration with Dynamics 365: Copilot for Sales is directly integrated into Dynamics 365 but also supports other third-party CRMs like Salesforce. This ensures seamless operation with your current customer management tools.
2. ‍Customer Interaction Personalization: Thanks to AI-assisted insights and recommendations, Copilot for Sales allows you to personalize interactions with your customers, offering more targeted and efficient service.
3. ‍Data Integration between M365 Apps and CRM: With Copilot for Sales, you always remain in the workflow, thanks to complete data integration between Microsoft 365 apps and your CRM. This allows you to have the most relevant information always available without interruptions.
4. ‍Inclusion of Copilot for Microsoft 365: Copilot for Sales includes Copilot for Microsoft 365, offering a complete and powerful toolset to improve the productivity and effectiveness of your sales operations.

Copilot for Service

Prerequisites: Before proceeding with the implementation of Copilot for Service, ensure you have the necessary base licenses. These include Office 365 E3, E5, and Microsoft Business Standard, Business Premium, E3, E5. It is important to note that the list of supported licenses continues to expand to ensure that every organization can access AI's potential, now also including Microsoft 365 F3 and F1, Microsoft 365 Business Basic, and Office 365 E1.

Key features:

1. ‍Efficiency Improvement for Service Agents: Copilot for Service is designed to help service agents work more efficiently, providing advanced AI-supported tools.
2. ‍AI-assisted Diagnostics and Problem Resolution: With Copilot for Service, you can benefit from AI assistance to diagnose and resolve problems more quickly and effectively, improving customer satisfaction.
3. ‍Increased First Contact Resolution: Thanks to AI-based routing, Copilot for Service can classify issues and assign them to the best available agent, increasing the likelihood of resolving problems at the first customer contact.
4. ‍Inclusion of Copilot for Microsoft 365 for Integration with Teams and Microsoft 365 Apps: Copilot for Service includes Copilot for Microsoft 365, allowing efficient integration with Teams and other Microsoft 365 apps used in the customer service process.

Prerequisites for Copilot for Microsoft 365

From January 15, 2024, Microsoft has removed the minimum requirement of 300 licenses for purchasing Copilot for Microsoft 365. This change allows organizations of all sizes to access Copilot, with the possibility of licensing from a single user to an unlimited number of add-ons.

Conditions necessary to use Copilot for Microsoft 365

To enable a user to use Copilot for Microsoft 365, it is essential to meet two conditions:

1. ‍License prerequisites: Each user must have one of the following base licenses:
   • Microsoft 365: F1, F3, E3, E5, A1, A3, A5, A3 for faculty, A5 for faculty.
   • Office 365: E1, E3, E5, A1, A3, A5, A3 for faculty, A5 for faculty.
   • Microsoft 365 Business: Basic, Standard, Premium.
2. ‍Additional licenses for Copilot for Microsoft 365: In addition to the base license, each user must have an additional Copilot for Microsoft 365 license, at a cost of 28.10 euros per user per month.

Implementation and consultation

To ensure a correct implementation of Copilot for Microsoft 365 and optimize the investment based on your organization's specific needs, it is advisable to consult a trusted Microsoft Partner. This will help you navigate through the various licensing options and find the most suitable solution for your business case, ensuring that all Microsoft Copilot licenses are correctly configured and that you can fully exploit AI's potential to improve productivity and efficiency.

Microsoft Copilot License: How much does it cost?

Microsoft Copilot License: Standard Version

If you already have a Microsoft license, you can access the standard version of Copilot for free, a powerful AI tool designed to improve your productivity. The standard version of Copilot, formerly known as Bing Chat or Bing Chat Enterprise, is primarily intended for home users. This version includes text, voice, and image functionalities, plugin support, and up to 15 boosts per day. It is available at the top of the Bing search engine, offering an integrated AI chat solution to simplify your daily activities.

Necessary Microsoft Copilot Licenses

To use the standard version of Copilot, you need one of the following Microsoft licenses:

• Microsoft 365: E3, E5, F3, Business Standard, Business Premium, A3, or A5 for faculty and higher education students (18+).
• Office 365: A1, A3, or A5 for faculty and higher education students (18+).

These licenses already include access to Copilot, allowing you to exploit AI's advanced capabilities at no additional cost.

Copilot Capabilities

With the standard version of Copilot, you can:

• Use natural language processing tools to create texts, answer questions, and generate ideas.
• Leverage voice functionalities to dictate commands and receive audio responses.
• Create and edit images using AI.

With Microsoft Copilot Standard licenses, you can access advanced features such as image creation via DALL-E and plugin support. These features make Copilot a versatile and powerful tool to improve productivity.

Image Creation with DALL-E

Thanks to DALL-E, you can generate images with Copilot. With standard licenses, you have 15 "boosts" per day. These boosts allow Copilot to produce images faster during peak demand periods, ensuring optimal efficiency even during peak times.

Plugin Support

Another key feature of Microsoft Copilot licenses is plugin support. This allows you to integrate additional plugins, expanding Copilot's capabilities and customizing functions according to your specific needs. Plugins can add new features and enhance overall interaction with Copilot.

Web Grounding: Information Accuracy

What is "web grounding"? It is a technology used by Copilot to gather accurate information from various web sources. When you interact with Copilot and provide prompts, it uses the Bing Web API service for web grounding. This process, called web grounding, allows Copilot to provide precise and verified responses, relying exclusively on Bing. Microsoft has chosen to use Bing for web grounding because it is a product of its ownership and creation, ensuring optimal integration and consistency in results.

Microsoft Copilot Pro Licenses

If you are looking to maximize AI capabilities, the Copilot Pro license might be the right choice for you. At a cost of 22 euros, this license offers a range of advanced features that surpass those of the standard version of Copilot, making it ideal for both home users and small businesses.

Features included with the Copilot Pro License:

1. ‍Text, Voice, and Image Capabilities: Copilot Pro offers advanced text, voice, and image generation and manipulation functionalities, providing a wide range of tools to enhance your productivity.
2. ‍Priority Access to GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 Models: With Copilot Pro, you will have priority access to OpenAI's latest and most powerful AI models, GPT-3.5 and GPT-4. This means faster and more accurate responses to your requests.
3. ‍100 Image Boosts Per Day: Compared to the 15 boosts offered by the standard license, Copilot Pro allows you to generate images faster during peak periods, with 100 boosts available each day.
4. ‍Plugin Support: The Copilot Pro license supports plugin integration, allowing you to add extra features to Copilot and customize it according to your specific needs.
5. ‍Integration with Microsoft Office Applications: With Copilot Pro, you can use Copilot directly within Microsoft Office applications like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. This allows you to draft documents, make revisions, analyze data, and much more directly within your daily applications.

Differences with Copilot for Microsoft 365

An important aspect to note is that Copilot Pro does not include Microsoft Teams. This is one of the main differences compared to Copilot for Microsoft 365, which instead offers greater integration with business applications and collaboration tools.

Implementation tips

To make the most of Microsoft Copilot licenses, it is essential to evaluate your organization's specific needs and choose the most suitable license. Although Copilot Pro offers many advanced features, small businesses are advised to consider higher licensing levels to ensure greater data security and better integration with the existing corporate infrastructure.

If you need further advice on which Microsoft Copilot license to choose and how to implement it best in your organization, consult your trusted Microsoft partner.

Microsoft Copilot License for Microsoft 365

To access the power of Copilot in a business environment, you need the Copilot license for Microsoft 365, available at a cost of 28.10 euros per user per month, depending on the country you are in.

Key features:

• ‍Copilot in All Office Applications: Copilot for Microsoft 365 gives you access to Copilot in all Office applications, including Microsoft Teams. This means you can leverage Copilot's capabilities to perform a wide range of tasks, such as summarizing meetings, retrieving information, and more, directly from your favorite apps.
• ‍Business Data Protection: Copilot for Microsoft 365 is designed to respect and understand all the security and compliance controls you have applied to your Microsoft 365 environment. This includes business data protection, compliance controls, data loss prevention, and information protection. With this license, you can be sure that your business data is safe while using Copilot.
• ‍Priority Access to AI Models: With the Copilot for Microsoft 365 license, you have priority access to the latest AI models, such as GPT-3.5 and GPT-4. This means you can get faster and more accurate responses to your questions, improving your productivity.
• ‍Copilot Studio: With the Copilot for Microsoft 365 license, you have access to Copilot Studio, where you can customize and create your Copilot. This allows you to tailor Copilot to your company's specific needs and further improve your user experience.

Conclusion

The availability of Microsoft Copilot licenses to a broader range of users, along with the variety of options and features offered, represents a significant step towards the widespread adoption of this innovative technology. Whether you are a home user looking for advanced support for your daily activities or a business eager to improve operational efficiency and team productivity, Microsoft Copilot licenses offer tailored solutions to meet your needs. With a wide range of features, business data protection, and priority access to the latest AI models, Copilot positions itself as an indispensable tool for the challenges and opportunities of the modern work world.

FAQ on Microsoft Copilot licenses

What is Microsoft Copilot?

‍Microsoft Copilot is an AI-powered tool integrated into Microsoft 365 apps like Word, Excel, and Teams, designed to enhance productivity by automating tasks and providing data-driven insights.

How do I purchase a Copilot license?

‍Copilot licenses can be purchased as add-ons to existing Microsoft 365 licenses through the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program, making them accessible to businesses of all sizes.

Which base licenses are required for Copilot?

‍To use Copilot, you need a base license like Microsoft 365 E3/E5, Business Standard, or Office 365 E3/E5.

What security features are included?

‍Higher-tier licenses like Microsoft 365 E5 offer advanced security features essential for protecting data when using Copilot.

How much does Copilot cost?

‍Copilot for Microsoft 365 costs around 28.10 euros per user per month, while Copilot Pro for personal use is 22 euros per month.