Microsoft 365 for Small Business: What You Get and Give Up
Microsoft 365 is the default answer for a lot of small businesses in Edinburgh and the Lothians, and for many of them it's the right one. But it's a subscription, not a purchase, and it isn't the only sensible option. Here's a straight look at what you get, what you give up, and when it's more than you need.
What you're actually paying for
Most people think of it as "Office plus email", but that's the visible part of a larger bundle. Depending on the plan, a subscription brings together:
- Business email on your own domain, with spam filtering and mailboxes handled for you rather than by a server you maintain.
- The desktop apps — Word, Excel, Outlook and the rest — installable on several devices per person, plus browser and mobile versions.
- File storage and sharing through OneDrive and SharePoint.
- Teams for chat, meetings and internal calls — increasingly sold separately rather than bundled, so check what a quote includes.
- Central admin control — adding and removing staff, resetting passwords, enforcing multi-factor authentication and wiping a lost phone from one place.
That last point is the most overlooked: when someone leaves, disabling their account and handing on their mailbox takes minutes.
Licensing, not owning: the real trade-off
You are renting. Stop paying and the desktop apps drop into a read-only state where you can open documents but not edit them, and after a grace period the cloud storage goes too. Your files remain yours, but access is tied to a live subscription. Microsoft still sells a one-off version of the desktop apps, which suits a business that wants Word and Excel and nothing else, though it gains no new features and eventually falls out of support.
The honest question isn't "subscription bad, purchase good", it's whether hosted email, central control and current software are worth a cost that rises with headcount.
OneDrive and SharePoint in plain terms
These two confuse almost everyone. OneDrive is one person's work drive, synced to their laptop and phone. SharePoint is the shared area the business owns — the modern version of the office shared drive, with permissions per team or folder. Files shared in Teams live in SharePoint behind the scenes.
Anything the business depends on belongs in SharePoint, not in an individual's OneDrive: work that lives only in one person's account walks out of the door with them. If you're weighing this against a server in the office, our cloud versus on-site server comparison goes through the trade-offs.
Working offline
The installed desktop apps work without an internet connection, and files marked to stay on the device stay editable, syncing back when you reconnect. What you lose is new mail, files you haven't cached, Teams and anything browser-based. If your broadband is unreliable, use the desktop apps rather than web versions and keep key folders available offline.
A subscription is still not a backup
This is the misunderstanding that does the most damage. Microsoft keeps the service running and protects against its own hardware failing. It doesn't protect you from staff deleting a folder, ransomware encrypting synced files, or a compromised account quietly losing its mail. Whatever you use, you still need your own backup strategy, and multi-factor authentication on every account should be the first thing you do.
When it's overkill
- Sole traders and very small teams who barely share files are paying for collaboration they'll never use; a mailbox on your own domain often covers it.
- Businesses already on Google Workspace. Running both duplicates the cost and the confusion about where the current file lives.
- Staff who barely touch a computer. A full licence for a workshop or reception machine is often unnecessary.
- Buying the top tier by default. The advanced security and device controls sit in higher plans: useful if you configure them, wasted if nobody does.
Planning the move, or the alternative
Start by asking how many people genuinely need the full desktop apps rather than just email, and whether Cyber Essentials or a security questionnaire is driving the decision. We're in Wishaw and we plan and run Microsoft 365 moves for teams across Edinburgh and Livingston — tenant setup, mailbox and file migration, multi-factor authentication and the admin side afterwards. Where the full bundle is more than you need, we host business email on your own domain without the rest of it, and we design, host and look after business websites, so the mail, the site and the support sit with one team. See our business IT support and managed IT services, and you'll get a clear quote before any work starts.