Microsoft has officially announced commercial list price changes, effective July 1, 2026. For selected Microsoft 365 suites with Teams, the USD list prices increase: Business Basic from $6.00 to $7.00, Business Standard from $12.50 to $14.00, Microsoft 365 E3 from $36.00 to $39.00, and Microsoft 365 E5 from $57.00 to $60.00 per user per month. Actual prices may vary by country, currency, licensing program, reseller, and whether the suite includes Teams.
You can find all details about pricing updates on Microsoft's licensing news page.
According to Microsoft, the price increases are related to security and management capabilities rolling out in 2026. The pricing updates for Business plans come with 50 GB additional mailbox storage. The negative aspect is that extra storage capacity doesn't solve the problem of unmanaged growth.
Whether or not the new features are worth it, the per-user costs are going up. If your tenant is carrying storage bloat like inactive SharePoint sites, old Teams channels, and years of accumulated files, you're paying more for data and space that isn't necessary.
According to Microsoft, existing customers keep their current pricing until their next renewal after July 1, 2026. If your subscription comes up for renewal before then, you can renew or upgrade your current suite before July 1, 2026, and lock in today's price for the length of that term. From your next renewal after July 1, 2026, the new pricing applies. The exact steps depend on how you buy (for example, through a CSP partner or an Enterprise Agreement), so confirm the details with your reseller or Microsoft. This isn't a long-term fix, but it buys you time to put a permanent solution in place.
Before July 2026, it’s important to understand how much of your current SharePoint storage is genuinely active, and how much of it is project folders from 2021, archived sites that no one formally closed, or file versions that accumulated over migrations.
ShArc moves inactive data out of active SharePoint storage and into Azure Blob Storage. The files are accessible to users in SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive. User training isn’t required because nothing changes from the user’s perspective.
ShArc gives you visibility into your data and storage needs, and a way to reduce high storage costs without disrupting users or causing governance issues. You can read more about it on the ShArc Feature pages Simulation and Reporting.