Microsoft for Startups Program Graduation

Microsoft for Startups is designed as a time-bound program, and graduation is a normal milestone as companies grow. Graduation does not impact your ability to continue building with Microsoft.  

Continue Scaling with Microsoft 

Graduation marks a transition. It is not the end of your relationship with Microsoft. As you grow beyond the program, you can continue to build on our technology and rely on Microsoft’s enterprise-grade infrastructure, security, and AI services to support you at every stage of growth. 

As you continue to scale, Microsoft gives you the tools to optimize performance, manage costs, and run production workloads with confidence. You also have access to Microsoft documentation, support plans, and a broad partner ecosystem as your needs evolve. 

What Happens After Graduation 

Your Azure subscription continues without interruption
Any remaining credits associated with the Microsoft for Startups program have expired. Going forward, your subscription will operate under the standard pay-as-you-go billing model, and usage will be billed to the payment method associated with your Azure account. 

Program benefits conclude
  As part of your graduation from Microsoft for Startups, the program-specific benefits associated with the Microsoft for Startups program have now concluded.  

Microsoft continues to offer resources designed to support you in your continued growth:  

• Technical and go-to-market support is available through ISV Success, which provides guidance and resources for building and publishing solutions on Microsoft platforms.
• Azure support plans are also available to help you manage the support you need as you scale.  

Azure access continues
  You can continue using Azure through standard Azure subscriptions and services. 

Check Your Payment Information
To ensure a seamless transition now that your credits have expired, please confirm that your billing information is up to date. 
Check your payment information  

Optimize and Save on Azure 

As you continue building with Microsoft, there are several tools and best practices available to help you improve performance while managing costs.  

Optimize your virtual machines
  Review simple strategies to right-size workloads, improve efficiency, and reduce unnecessary compute spend. 
Quick tips to optimize virtual machines on Azure 

Monitor and manage your costs
  Use Azure Cost Management tools to track usage, forecast spending, and identify opportunities to optimize your environment.  Introduction to cost management and savings 

Prompt engineering techniques
  Leverage practical patterns for getting better, more reliable outputs from your models.  Prompt engineering techniques 

Azure AI security best practices
  Secure Azure AI workloads with governance, identity and network controls, and data protection best practices.  Azure AI security best practices