Guide
Microsoft 365 licensing versus migration cost: two separate bills
Updated
The most common budgeting mistake is treating the migration quote as the cost of moving to Microsoft 365. It is one of two bills, and it is the smaller one over time.
The two bills
- Migration: one-off professional services
- Scoping, tenant build, data migration, cutover and post-go-live support. Quoted as effort, delivered once, and finished. See what drives that quote.
- Licensing: ongoing subscription
- A per-user, per-month subscription bought from Microsoft or through a reseller. It starts before the migration finishes, continues indefinitely, and is set by Microsoft rather than by your partner.
We do not publish Microsoft licence prices on this site. They are set by Microsoft, differ by plan, commitment term and billing frequency, and change. Anyone quoting you a licence price from memory, including us, would be quoting a figure that may already be wrong. Check the current plans and prices directly with Microsoft, or ask your partner to quote licences as a dated, separate line.
Why a partner cannot fix your licence cost
- Microsoft sets list pricing and changes it; resellers work within that.
- The price depends on the plan you choose, and the right plan depends on requirements the migration itself often clarifies.
- Commitment term and billing frequency change the effective price, and annual commitments constrain later flexibility.
- Add-on licences for security, compliance, telephony or archiving are separate again, and are commonly the difference between a plan that works and one that does not.
Getting the comparison right
- Ask every partner to quote migration and licensing as separate lines, with the licence line dated and the plan named.
- Model the three-year picture: one-off migration plus thirty-six months of licensing. That is the number that decides whether the cheapest migration quote is actually the cheapest outcome.
- Include the overlap period where you pay for both the old platform and the new one, and decide who owns closing the old one down.
- Ask whether you can hold the subscriptions yourself. Buying licences through the partner is convenient; holding them directly keeps your options open if you change provider.
- Separate ongoing IT support from both. Day-two support of the new environment is a third arrangement, and bundling it into a migration quote hides its real cost.
Nothing here is procurement or tax advice. Licence prices and plan contents change; confirm both with Microsoft or your reseller at the point of purchase rather than from any figure published on a third-party site.