I currently have a client with a trial of Office 365 E3.

They are all in one Office and they really do not need the other benefits of Office 365, so I think it is best just to move them to Exchange Online Plan 1.

Am I best off just purchasing the licenses now and migrate the data across from their other Email provider, or, if I migrate their previous emails whilst on the E3 Trial, is it easy to downgrade to Exchange Online Plan 1 with no loss of data?

Thanks,

William Hilsum

Hello William,

Currently, there is no solution available to migrate/transfer plan between small business subscription and enterprise subscription automatically. If you choose to preserve the old data, a manually migration is required.

Please refer the Office 365 FAQ for details.

Hello,

I have looked at the FAQ, however, both of these are enteprise subscriptions, neither are listed as small business.

Hi William,

I quote the FAQ which relate to the Plan switching as following:

Q: Can I switch between Office 365 plan families (Plans P or E)?

A: We encourage you to buy the plan family (Plans P or E) you want to move forward with in the future. If, after purchase, you decide you want a plan from a different family, you will have to cancel your subscription and then buy a different plan (e.g., cancel your subscription to Plan P and then buy Plan E). Please be aware that your data may not be preserved, and you will have to provide sign up information again.

If you want to switch between Plans P and Plans E, purchasing a new plan and manually data migration is needed if you want to preserve the old data.

And if you read my question again, I am not talking about Plan P at all! I am talking about Plan E3 and the plan of Exchange Online Plan 1 which are all enterprise products!

Hi William,

Sorry for the confusion here, the Small Business plan P1 is easily confused with the Exchange Online Plan 1.  To answer your question though, the E3 trial is easily changed to Exchange Online Plan 1 through Admin page of the Online Portal.  Just go to Purchase under Subscriptions and you can see the plan there.  It will then be available to assign to your users under licenses.  No data gets lost, their permissions to the other services just change.  As long as this is the method you use to purchase the Exchange Online plan, you can migrate your mail whenever it's convenient to you (during the trial or after purchasing the licenses), and no data will be lost.  If you were to purchase the Exchange Online Plan 1 elsewhere, like through the main page at office365.com, you would be prompted to sign up for a new account and any data from the trial would not transition over.

Hope that helps,
David Wong
Office 365 Technical Support

Hi David,

We are a BPOS reseller and are now skilling up for Office 365.  We are in the same position as William.  We have a new customer who we signed up recently for an E3 Plan beta which was automatically converted to an E3 Plan 30-day trial when Office 365 went out of beta on 28 June.  However, the customer only needs the basic Exchange element of 365 for the forseeable future, and so our MS sales consultant has suggested that they sign up for Exchange Online (Plan 1) at the end of the E3 trial.  Your posting makes clear that conversion will be a straightforward business (I thought that this would be the case since the E3 trial admin portal offers purchase of licences for plans which include Exchange Online (Plan 1).  (Significantly, I think, this list doesn't include P Plan purchase options - as is implied by previous posts in this thread).  So your reply gives me assurances that, in moving to Exchange Online (Plan 1) my customer will not lose any Exchange environmental or mailbox data that has been generated under the their E3 trial,  There is, however, a further technical point on which I'd be grateful for your assurance - this relates to adding customer domains to Exchange Online.  Our customer requires that added domains are firstly only partially-delegated, and secondly are made non-authoratative (because they require the use of a shared namespace).  These options were both available under BPOS Exchange Online, and, by testing and seeking technical advice from Microsoft, I find that they are also both available in Office 365 Plan E3 (and, I expect, also in Plans E1, E2, and E4) - although a domain can only be made non-authoratative by the use of remote PowerShell commands (not a big deal in practice when you know how).  My question is whether the two options are available in Exchange Online (Plan 1).  In view of what has been already said here, I expect the answer to be yes, but I need to be reassured both are essential to this customer.

With thanks,

Graham.

The last sentence of my post timed at 05:15 pm today should have read:  "In view of what has been already said here, I expect the answer to be yes, but I need to be reassured since both options are essential to this customer."

Graham.

Hi Graham,

Yes, the Standalone plans contain all the capabilities of their Enterprise plan counterparts.  Really, the Enterprise plans are just bundles of the Standalone plans.  Plan E1 and E2 use Exchange Online Plan 1, and E3 and E4 use Exchange Online Plan 2.  Partial redelegation and the same PowerShell cmdlets (including Set-AcceptedDomain) are available.

Hope that helps,
David Wong
Office 365 Technical Support

Hi again David,

Thanks for your re-assurance.  This means that we can now start our new customer off with their E3 Plan trial, and they can then purchase Exchange Online (Plan 1) licences at the end of the trial.  Also, your concise description of how the enterprise plans relate to the standalone plans is a useful way of understanding the various plans.  While I'm on, so to speak, here are a couple more observations.

You said above that "the Small Business plan P1 is easily confused with the Exchange Online Plan 1" - this is something that I've found to be the case.  Yesterday, in order to try to resolve the issues that you have since resolved for me via this forum, I called Microsoft Office 365 technical support (I dialed a UK number but was transferred to someone in the USA).  A fairly long and confused conversation with the lady at the other end ensued, and, finally, I kind of gave up (she didn't seem to understand me, and I couldn't understand her).  This is why I searched for this forum (finding it was somewhat a matter of serendipity!).  Since reading your posts I've realised that the reason for the confusion over the phone was that the lady was referring to "Exchange Online (Plan 1)" as "P1", and I knew that P1 doesn't have the domain configuration capabilities that we need.

As you know, the "plans" scenario with Office 365 is much more complex than it was with BPOS - with BPOS you could just choose Exchange Online, or SharePoint, or both.  From what you say it looks as if Plan E1 is essentially the same as BPOS, and the price is also similar.  The complexity of the Office 365 plans of course results from the addition of new products, but the range of plans provides flexibility in that customers are enabled to chose just what features they need.

Thanks again,

Graham.

To make matters worse, if you were a beta tester of Office 365 (which is really a service from customers FOR Microsoft) you are unable to transfer your vanity domain from beta to production. And I have to respectfully disagree that a manual migration will work. Our firm has 32 hours of time lost to tech support as MS chases its tail.

Without exception, every *individual* we have dealt with at MSFT has been a pleasant, professional and personable. But the Office 365 business unit is a complete, unmitigated hot mess. To all you lurkers out there, Caveat Emptor!