Microsoft Price Increase/NCE

Would be interested to see how Tom and gang might be dealing with the recently announced price increase from Microsoft for NCE month to month licensing, esp Office 365. We are looking at a 20% premium if we want to stay month to month, and as a smaller MSP where my clients are adding/subtracting all the time, it’s not an option to prepay annually.

Luckily, I’ve got less than 1K monthly reselling to my client’s, so the impact is fairly workable, but larger MSP’s dealing with many more licenses, etc, I wonder what route you’re taking?

I tell people Microsoft is jealous that Apple hit a trillion before they did so they are raising prices. Lots of our clients pay MS direct so it’s not really an issue, just the usual price increase.

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Those that can’t/won’t pay the increase can go to a different platform,G Suite being one of them. For those that don’t need the cloud stuff, Open/Libre Office works just fine for docs and spreadsheets.

I’d research some options that you can present and let the customer chose.

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That Apple comment made me giggle. My thoughts were exactly what you mentioned, to have the client go MS direct moving forward and pay however they like. The markup is so small, it’s not even worth the trouble imo.

Yes, that’s a good thought on G Suite. While I’ve never been a fan of them, it’s something I may need to be open to.

We all knew it was coming for a while, we are not reliant on the tiny margins to run our business. We moved to a new partner and just pulling out dealing with all of it. So clients move onto annuals and have a couple of more expensive floating licenses if they need flexibility. Price rises are imminent everywhere, inflation is a thing you know. I like suite but makes less sense as we have to pair it with slack and zoom so monthly comes in as high as other plans. Also business premium for MS shops is no brainier, the extra tooling is vital.

I’ve been told inflation is transitory, not a permanent thing.

Lol, i think you will find that if the Fed keeping printing money the way they are at moment and with the gernal f**kery of the financial institutions syphoning money out of economy as fast as they can, it is far from transitory.

Microsoft hasn’t really raised prices on 365 since it came out…back in 2006 I believe. Back then, E3 plans were $20/user/month on annual.

So over 15 years later…they’re raising prices. Not really much of a hike. And you get SO MUCH MORE, our standard sub now is M365 Business Premium. A LOT of value in that when you add up all that you get, best in breed spam protection, Azure AD, mobile device manager, conditional access, now they bundle managed antivirus, etc etc.

This price hike has been announced since end of last summer/early fall. I’ve spent the past 6 months preparing clients for a slight increase in price. We simply resell at MSRP…so…easy enough. Most of our clients are on monthly. Just a small few on annual. can get creative and combine a basic annual amount with a few monthlies to accommodate changes.

For MSPs, the price hike is no big deal. The real issue is that if you sign up for the NCE licenses for your client, and your client goes bankrupt, you still have to pay for those licenses for the rest of the year and you can’t transfer those licenses to another tenant. Totally unfair.

I can see them not wanting to lose any MMRR (minimum monthly reoccurring revenue) , but not letting us transfer licenses is totally unreasonable.

To answer @it.brian 's question, I’m meeting with all my clients and starting a new 1 year contract now that will line up with the new NCE agreement.