Office 365 customers can more easily switch plans with new Office 365 Upgrade Options
“We’ve been listening to your feedback and today we are announcing the ability for customers to more easily switch between Office 365 business plans.”
Well, really more like HALF listening.
Microsoft is finally updating its promised Office 365 switching capability, allowing users to upgrade to new plans more easily and quickly; which is a good thing. Customers SHOULD be able to decide what products and services they want to buy from a company. The problem is, and this is the half listening part, customers cannot back track to a less costly plan.
Customers are also saying, rightfully so, they want and should be able to easily downgrade to different plans, should their needs change.
But hey, it’s a step in the right direction. Caveat, only those with plans covering 300 users or fewer can use the automatic switching wizard at this time.
Before Microsoft introduced this swtiching capability, customers had to manually re-assign user licenses and call Office 365 support to cancel their old subscriptions. The new Switch plans wizard allows some plan changes to be done automatically and without calling support.
The chart below provides more details on the Office 365 upgrade options and switchable plans.
| Available now | ? |
| From | To |
| Small Business P1 | Small Business Premium P2 |
| Enterprise K1, Exchange Online (Plan 1), Lync Online (Plan 1), Lync Online (Plan 2), SharePoint Online? (Plan 1) | Enterprise E1, Enterprise E3, Enterprise E4 |
| Enterprise E1, SharePoint Online? (Plan 2), Exchange Online (Plan 2) | Enterprise E3, Enterprise E4 |
| Education A1 | Education A2, A3 |
| Education A2 | Education A3 |
| Exchange Online Kiosk | Enterprise E1, Enterprise E3, Enterprise E4, Enterprise K1, Exchange Online (Plan 1), Exchange Online (Plan 2) |
To get more details and read the FAQ, follow this link:
http://blogs.office.com/b/office365tech/archive/2013/08/01/office-365-customers-can-more-easily-switch-plans.aspx