Advise please: which MS 365 plan should I choose?

[Frank0009]

Greetings to all!

I am currently working for an agency where I am the administrator of Office 365, as well as an Azure administrator. BUT I am leaving this agency soon, and when I do I will want to establish an Office 365 account that gives me access to the usual Office products, PLUS SharePoint and Exchange online. I will also want access to Azure. So my question is just which MS online package should I sign-up for.

NOTE that the ablity to use POWERSHELL to set-up and manage a Sharepoint/Teams site is EXTREMELY important to me, as is being able to use POWERSHELL to manage Exchange operations. In fact, the primary thing I'm interested in is being able to further my PowerShell experience in the management of O365.

So I'm looking at the "Microsoft 365 Business Premium" account. But I have a couple of questions...

1) The Premium plan lists SharePoint and Exchange; but does this mean that I can use PowerShell to set up sites and manage these products?

2) The Premium plan also lists "Azure AD Premium P1"; will this plan allow me to use PowerShell to create and manage Azure resources? Of course I would expect this Azure access to be a "pay-as-you-go" situation, which would incur additional fees for the resources I use and create.

THANK YOU!!!

[#2]

There are no restrictions as to the use of PowerShell in any given plan, so choose the one that best fits your other requirements. Also keep in mind that Microsoft 365 and Azure are two separate services, not covered by any single plan. Azure AD is the underling directory/auth service for M365, it does not expose any additional Azure resources.

[#3]

THANK YOU Vasil for your prompt response!
Here's an issue I just thought about but did not mention in my previous post; I'm going to need to set-up a number of "test" user accounts to experiment with, and I would guess that the "Microsoft 365 Business Premium" will impose a per-user fee for every additional user-account. If this correct, and do you know what that fee would be?
Thanks again!

[#4]

There's no such fee, you can create as many users as you want. Well, Business subscriptions are usually limited to 300, but you can remove unneeded ones, etc.

[#5]

@Vasil Michev 

Thank you Vasil for your reply - but an MS representative here in my area said that each user will have to pay the monthly or yearly fee. Yes, you can create up to 300 users, but each user account will cost you a fee.

[#6]

Hi @FrankAdmin,

you are correct. You can start the trial and you will get 25 users for free for one month. After one month, you will have to pay for the users that will keep the license.

Answer to your questions:

1)  Yes, you can use Powershell.

2) Yes, you can use Powershell. And yes, for Azure consumption you will have to pay.

Good luck!

[#7]

@Adin_Calkic 

Thank you for your reply to my message! What you're saying is exactly what the MS representative told me.

Take care!

[#8]

No problem. Good luck and take care!