How to license my users correctly

Question

How to license my users correctly

Mathijn Smit 0

I have a questions about MS365 licensing.

As an example;

I have a customer who will have 10 Business Premium users and 5 Business Basic users. With Business Premium, I can enable Conditional Access policies to enforce MFA for all users. However, by doing this, my 5 Business Basic users will also benefit from the features of Entra ID Plan 1. According to Microsoft, I need to license my 5 Business Basic users with an Entra ID Plan 1 license. The same goes for users who only have access to a mailbox with Exchange Plan 1. Will they also need to be licensed with an Entra ID Plan 1?

I’m curious how you will handle these kinds of situations.

Are you excluding these users from the Conditional Access policy and instructing them to manually configure MFA?

The same goes for the anti-spam filtering options you have with Business Premium. Do you exclude these users from the advanced filtering options?

Akhilesh Vallamkonda 15,355 Reputation points Moderator

2024-10-17T19:31:36.8333333+00:00

Hi @Mathijn Smit

Following up to see if the above answer was helpful. If this answers your query, do click Accept Answer and Yes for was this answer helpful. And, if you have any further query do let us know.
Akhilesh Vallamkonda 15,355 Reputation points Moderator

2024-10-21T20:59:29.8166667+00:00

Hi @Mathijn Smit

Following up to see if the above answer was helpful. If this answers your query, do click Accept Answer and Yes for was this answer helpful. And, if you have any further query do let us know.

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Akhilesh Vallamkonda 15,355 Reputation points Moderator

2024-10-17T19:31:36.8333333+00:00

Hi @Mathijn Smit

Following up to see if the above answer was helpful. If this answers your query, do click Accept Answer and Yes for was this answer helpful. And, if you have any further query do let us know.
Akhilesh Vallamkonda 15,355 Reputation points Moderator

2024-10-21T20:59:29.8166667+00:00

Hi @Mathijn Smit

Following up to see if the above answer was helpful. If this answers your query, do click Accept Answer and Yes for was this answer helpful. And, if you have any further query do let us know.

Answer 1

Vasil Michev 126.9K MVP Volunteer Moderator

If you want to stay compliant with Microsoft's licensing requirements, you either have to purchase/assign suitable licenses for said users, or exclude them from any functionality that requires such licenses. The only exception would be when Microsoft hasn't provided the necessary controls for this (which of course doesn't mean you're allowed to use features unlicensed).

Mathijn Smit 0 Reputation points

2024-10-23T07:04:27.6833333+00:00

Thank you for your reply. Just curious how others would handle this.

Excluding user from a CA policy which enforce MFA is obvious not what you should do ever. So, basically Microsoft license requirements are to license the mail only user with a entra ID plan 1 when MFA is enforced with a CA policy. Or is there a license exclusion for these kind of user types and MFA policies.
Vasil Michev 126.9K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2024-10-23T07:51:31.93+00:00

You can still use the good old per-user MFA controls, which are included for free in each O365/M365 plans.
Mathijn Smit 0 Reputation points

2024-10-23T10:07:50.9866667+00:00

Yes, I think that will be the only way. I thought they would replace this. It’s not very safe to use as it needs to be activated manually, and it can easily be forgotten. Thank you for your answers. I think the best approach is to guide the customer towards certain licenses that comply with Microsoft licensing terms and also ensure their security is in place.
Vasil Michev 126.9K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2024-10-23T10:44:55.0233333+00:00

There's also Security defaults, if you want a tenant-wide enforcement. The per-user MFA controls give you granularity, Security defaults do not (though they cover more than just MFA).

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How to license my users correctly

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