Microsoft has raised the price of its Microsoft 365 plans again and, along the way, reshuffled the line-up: plans that change names, features that move around, and add-ons that used to be included and are now billed separately. The typical company reaction is to pay the new invoice and carry on. That is the most expensive mistake of all.
Because most companies don’t overpay because of Microsoft: they overpay because nobody has reviewed their licensing in years. Licences assigned to people who have already left, premium plans for profiles that only use email, add-ons that duplicate what was already included. A price rise is, in reality, the best excuse you’ll ever get to clean house and cut your Microsoft 365 costs without losing a thing. Let’s get to it.
Why almost every company overpays for Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 licensing is quick to sign up for and slow to forget. You buy licences to get started, the company grows, people come and go, and nobody ever looks at the list again. The result is an invoice that climbs on its own, and not just because of Microsoft’s prices. These are the three leaks that show up in almost every audit.
The first is unused licences. Accounts assigned to employees who have moved on, to a summer intern, to a project that closed months ago. The licence stays alive and keeps billing month after month, because offboarding someone almost never includes freeing up their plan. In a workforce with turnover, that’s hundreds or thousands of euros a year spent on empty chairs.
The second is the oversized plan. A powerful plan was signed up for “to have everything covered” and rolled out identically to the entire workforce. But the warehouse operator who only clocks in and checks email doesn’t need the same plan as the finance director. Paying for the most expensive plan across 100% of your people when half of them use 10% of its features is throwing money away with style.
The third is duplication: add-ons and services you pay for separately when they already come bundled with your plan. Extra storage, a security tool, a third-party video-calling solution… that your own Microsoft 365 already covers. They pile up because each one was signed up for at a different moment and nobody has the full picture.
Your Microsoft 365 invoice doesn’t grow because your company grows. It grows because nobody is watching it.
How to audit your licensing (without guessing)
Optimising isn’t “buying the cheapest plan”. It’s matching every licence to a real person and a real need. That takes a methodical audit, not a hunch. These are the four cross-checks you need to run.
- Real users vs. licences purchased. The first number that surprises everyone: how many licences you pay for versus how many people actually work here today. That gap is usually pure money.
- What each profile needs. Group your workforce by real usage: who needs the desktop apps, who works only in the browser, who does nothing but check email. Not everyone needs the same thing, and that’s where the saving lives.
- Mailboxes that don’t need a licence. Addresses like info@, sales@ or support@ can run as shared mailboxes, which are free and consume no plan. If you have them set up as licensed users, you’re paying for a mailbox that shouldn’t cost anything.
- Ex-employee accounts. Review who’s actually active. Plenty of accounts belonging to people who left long ago stay licensed “just in case” to keep their email, when that content can be archived without keeping the licence alive.
With those four cross-checks on the table you have the map: you know how much you pay, why, and how much of it is surplus. It’s exactly the kind of work we do when we manage a company’s infrastructure and workplace, because the licence is only the tip of the iceberg of your real IT cost.
The savings levers that actually work
Once the audit is done, the saving materialises through concrete actions. These aren’t tricks: it’s assigning what you already pay for correctly and stopping paying for what you don’t use.
Match the plan to each profile. Downgrade anyone who doesn’t tap into the premium features and keep the powerful plan only where it earns its keep. Multiplied across the whole workforce, changing the plan for a third of your users is the lever that moves the invoice most. The key is to do it by profile, not across the board.
Annual commitment vs. monthly. Microsoft charges a premium for the flexibility of paying month by month. If your core headcount is stable, committing those licences for a year cuts the unit price. The clever tactic is to combine the two: a stable base on an annual commitment plus a small monthly buffer for peaks and temporary hires. That way you save without locking yourself in.
Drop unnecessary add-ons and use what’s included. Before renewing any third-party tool, check whether your plan already covers it. Storage, video calls, basic security, device management… Microsoft 365 includes far more than most companies ever switch on. Paying twice for the same feature is the most common duplication, and the easiest to cut.
The balance: saving without cutting security short
Here comes an important warning, because optimising badly is dangerous. Trimming licences to save is fine; trimming security to save is a mistake that can cost you a thousand times what you save. And it’s a real temptation: some of the features billed separately or bundled into the higher plans are precisely the protective ones.
Don’t touch what protects your company. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is non-negotiable and is largely available even on the basic plans: there’s no excuse for having it switched off. The Defender layers —anti-phishing, email and endpoint protection— aren’t a dispensable luxury when ransomware arrives by email every single day. Downgrading a user who just checks email is fine; leaving your entire company without anti-phishing filtering to save a few euros is opening the door.
The right goal is to pay for what you use and protect what matters. Real optimisation is knowing where to cut (oversized plans, dead licences, duplicated add-ons) and where not to touch a single euro (identity and security). That line is exactly what separates a smart saving from a future problem, and it’s where having someone with judgement makes the difference. If you already have a managed IT maintenance service, the licensing review should be part of it.
What MagicBoxDesk offers: Microsoft 365 optimisation and management
At MagicBoxDesk we do this for you, with the numbers on the table. We don’t sell a generic report: we audit your actual licensing, show you exactly how much is surplus and carry out the change. And we don’t stop there: we manage your Microsoft 365 on an ongoing basis so the invoice doesn’t quietly inflate itself again every time someone joins or leaves. It’s the natural way to outsource your IT without losing control of the spend.
- Full licence audit: real users vs. licences, usage profiles, shared mailboxes, ex-employee accounts and duplicated add-ons.
- Savings proposal with real figures: what you pay today, what you’d pay optimised and exactly what changes. You decide with data, not promises.
- Reallocation carried out: we change plans by profile, free up what’s surplus and switch on what you already have included, with no outages or data loss.
- Ongoing management: onboarding and offboarding, regular licensing reviews and security (MFA and Defender) always in place. A monthly fee with no surprises.
You take it on as a managed service for businesses, with a clear monthly fee, and what you gain is twofold: a lower Microsoft 365 invoice and the peace of mind that someone is watching it for you. In most cases, the saving pays for the service several times over.
If the latest price rise has made you look at the invoice with fresh eyes, now is the moment to do the maths properly. Request a no-obligation quote and we’ll tell you how much you can genuinely save on your licences, with concrete figures and without touching your security. You can also get in touch and we’ll go through it with you.
