In addition to the standalone Copilot Chat app, users with a commercial Microsoft 365 plan can currently access Copilot from inside apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. As of April 15, 2026, however, Microsoft will remove access to Copilot from within the M365 apps in organizations with more than 2,000 users, unless those organizations pay for the M365 Copilot add-on license. Enterprises with fewer than 2,000 users will still be able to access Copilot from the M365 apps but will be subject usage limits. Copilot access will continue in Outlook but no other M365 apps.
To help users distinguish between the two versions, Microsoft is introducing two in-product labels: “Copilot Chat (Basic)” if they don’t have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license and “M365 Copilot (Premium)” if they do.
There are other Copilot add-ons as well, including Security Copilot and Copilot Studio, a low-code tool for building AI agents. Both offer usage-based pricing.
Microsoft Power Apps offers three primary pricing tiers tailored to different organizational needs. The Developer Plan is free for building and testing apps in a dedicated environment. For production use, Microsoft offers the Premium Plan. The first version costs $20/user/month (billed annually), allowing users to run unlimited applications. Organizations with large-scale deployments can access a discounted rate of $12/user/month with a 2,000-seat minimum.
All paid plans include access to the Dataverse, prebuilt connectors, and managed environments. Additional add-ons are available for Dataverse storage capacity ($40/GB) and Power Pages authenticated users.
There’s also a Teams add-on package, Teams Premium, which provides access to several features not included in the core app for an additional $10/user/month (currently on offer for $7/user/month). This includes live caption translations, custom branding in Teams meeting “lobbies,” AI-generated tasks and notes, end-to-end encryption for group calls, and more.
Microsoft has also introduced premium add-on packages branded as “suites.” Take Microsoft Viva, for instance, the set of employee experience applications that includes Viva Learning, Viva Engage, Viva Connections, Viva Glint, and more. While certain features of each Viva are available within most enterprise M365 subscriptions, others can be purchased individually (Viva Glint, for example) or via one of three Viva add-on bundle tiers. Viva Suite is the most comprehensive of these, with access to all the Viva features for an extra $12/user/month.
Entra Suite, a collection of identity and access tools, and Intune Suite for endpoint management and security are other examples of bundled add-ons available for additional monthly fees.
Tracking M365 sales
Microsoft still blends Microsoft 365 and Office 365 sales in its financial reports, so it’s difficult to track exact splits. However, the trajectory is clear: Microsoft is moving from productivity to AI-led operations.
Office 365 commercial seats have passed 450 million globally. While seat growth has slowed to single digits (5-6% year-over-year based on 2025 earnings), revenue growth remains in the double digits — thanks largely to Microsoft aggressively pushing toward E5 upgrades and upselling Microsoft 365 Copilot.
As a comparison, Google Workspace — M365’s primary rival — reported surpassing 12 million paying organizations in late 2025. While Google remains a viable alternative, Microsoft’s entrenched position in the enterprise benefits from the October 2025 end-of-support for Windows 10. This has forced a massive hardware refresh cycle, pushing Windows 11 adoption past the 55% mark and pushing more organizations to M365 E3/E5.
What’s new in M365?
The integration of Copilot across M365 apps has undoubtedly been the major focus for Microsoft in the past couple of years. It’s rare to see a product news update on the Microsoft 365 blog that doesn’t reference the AI assistant in some way.
Recent feature additions include a new Team Copilot that provides AI assistance in group meetings and makes suggestions for task management; Copilot Studio for customizing Copilots in M365; access to OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo model; and the general availability of Microsoft’s Designer AI image generator. Other new apps and features include Mesh immersive meetings for Teams, Places for hybrid work coordination, and a UI refresh for the Loop collaboration app.
According to Microsoft, the new Microsoft 365 E7 suite (announced in March) marks a shift toward the agent-operated enterprise. Launching May 1, 2026 for $99/user/month ($90.45 without Teams), E7 is designed to unify the M365 E5 offering with Microsoft 365 Copilot and the upcoming Agent 365. Also available as a standalone service priced at $15/user/month, Agent 365 essentially acts as the “control plane” for IT to see what your AI agents are actually doing.
A Microsoft 365 glossary
Browsing through M365 plans and add-ons turns up a bewildering list of included apps and services. Here’s a brief guide to what the main product names mean.
Core M365 apps and services
- Word: word processing app (see tutorial)
- Excel: spreadsheet app (see tutorial)
- PowerPoint: presentation app (see tutorial)
- Outlook: email, calendar, and contacts app (see tutorial)
- OneNote: notes app (see tutorial)
- Teams: optional group chat and video meeting app (see tutorial)
- OneDrive: cloud storage with versions available for both individuals and corporate users (see tutorial)
- SharePoint: business/enterprise platform for shared content, sites, and apps
- Exchange: hosting/management service for business/enterprise email, calendar, and contacts
- Windows: desktop operating system (included only with M365 E3 and E5 plans)
- Copilot: catch-all term for Microsoft’s generative AI assistant in various forms, from a basic, free tool to an advanced agentic orchestration tool that requires an add-on license
Additional M365 apps and services (not included with all plans)
- Access: database creation app (Windows only)
- Bookings: appointment scheduling and management app
- Clipchamp: video editing app
- Forms: survey and form creation app (see tutorial)
- Lists: spreadsheet/work tracking app
- Loop: shared workspace app (see tutorial)
- Publisher: desktop publishing app (Windows only, will be discontinued Oct. 2026)
- Planner: work management app (see tutorial)
- Power Apps: low-code development platform
- Power Automate: workflow automation app (see tutorial)
- Power BI Pro: analytics and data visualization app
- Stream: enterprise video streaming and sharing platform
- Sway: publishing app for presentations, reports, newsletters
- Teams Phone: enterprise telephony service for Microsoft Teams (requires additional monthly fee per user)
- To Do: task management app
- Visio: diagram and vector graphics app (see tutorial)
- Viva Amplify: employee communication management app
- Viva Connections: intranet app
- Viva Engage (formerly Yammer): enterprise social network app
- Viva Glint: organization-wide employee feedback/survey app
- Viva Goals: objective setting and tracking app
- Viva Insights: productivity and wellbeing analytics app
- Viva Learning: learning and development app
- Viva Pulse: self-service employee feedback app for team leads
Security and management tools (not included with all plans)
- Defender: set of enterprise security apps and services, or a security app for consumers
- Entra: set of enterprise identity and access management tools, includes Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory)
- Intune: set of enterprise endpoint management tools
- Priva: set of enterprise data privacy management tools
- Purview: set of enterprise data governance, security, risk, and compliance tools
Valerie Potter contributed to this article.
This article was originally published in May 2018 and most recently updated in April 2026.
