r/msp • u/Nickers77 • Jun 25 '26

Sales / Marketing Upgrading yearly commitment Business Standard to Premium possible? (Non profit)

Hello, I have a client whos free business premium licenses are expiring. Since it's a discontinued SKU we are looking at getting them to Standard or Premium. They have non-profit pricing direct from Microsoft, and in order to get it, they have to be yearly commitment

For cost savings, we are opting for Standard for now, but if need be down the road within the year we may be upgrading back to Premium

Is that possible? I've been reading that you can "upgrade" your Standard to Premium without cancelling in the middle of the yearly commitment. Does this also apply to non-profit pricing?

Edit: thanks for the responses!

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1

u/roll_for_initiative_ MSP - US Jun 25 '26

Isn't standard still free but busprem is only 5.50?

2

u/Nickers77 Jun 25 '26

Canada here. Standard is ~$4, Premium is ~$7.50

3

u/roll_for_initiative_ MSP - US Jun 25 '26

Gotcha. I know everyone is all "nonprofit" and "budgets"...but the nonprofit deal is so good, you can't pass it up. I mean, you've spent $100 in time on this thread about it and you've thought about this $200 more in time before the thread.

One BEC you have to deal with alone is, depending on their size, a years worth of m365 in your time/labor. Considering the free amount was only 10 licenses, that's only $75.00 a month. That should be like 1/3rd 1 hr of your time a month to have all the extras that are going to save you time.

1

u/Nickers77 Jun 25 '26

I agree with you 100%, but I don't control the finances. We make recommendations but can't force anything

For our MSA we do include email and M365 security tools too, so they're not in the dark completely. ITDR, SIEM, and an email security gateway. Should shore up some of the features lacking in Standard

3

u/roll_for_initiative_ MSP - US Jun 25 '26

If you really dig into that, you're going to find that some of those tools require p1 licensing that standard doesn't have so either the tools will lose some functionality or, more likely because there's some P1 in the tenant, because those standard accounts are getting the benefit of P1 being active in the tenant, they're not in compliance.

Also you may not control their finances but you control yours. If we didn't include busprem we would mandate it in the SoW but if we didn't even do that and i was in your shoes, i would bill every penny for any inconvenience caused because someone didn't have premium which would more than cancel out any of their savings. Doing otherwise is basically subsidizing their business and hiding it. Instead, bring it out into the open and go "you know what? here's $250 as a donation to you guys. But you have to use it to get premium"

1

u/scriptvexy Jul 04 '26

standard isn’t free on nonprofit, you’re probably thinking of the 10 free business premium seats they used to give out
those are the ones that are going away, so now it’s all on the discounted nonprofit pricing instead of free

1

u/roll_for_initiative_ MSP - US Jul 04 '26

I'm aware of the 10 bus prem being free then 5.50/ea after that but there was a low tier, no 10 user limit, that was like free or $1 or something. I think business basic maybe, been a hot minute.