Microsoft 365 & Cloud
Straight answers on the Microsoft 365 decisions that are hard to reverse — which plan, where files belong, who owns your data — then the hands-on work to match.
The choices Microsoft doesn’t make for you
Microsoft publishes the feature list, and it is long. Nobody needs it retyped. What a business actually needs help with is a short set of decisions — which plan, where files live, how accounts are handled, who is responsible for keeping your data. Each is cheap to get right at the start and awkward to unpick two years later, once thousands of documents and everyone’s habits depend on the wrong answer.
This page is the map. The hands-on work lives on the pages it points to.
Plan tiers: the two lines that actually divide them
The Business plans read like a price ladder, so people choose by price and meet the real differences later. Those differences are not about price.
The first is the desktop apps. Business Basic is web-first: business email on your own domain, Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive, but the Office apps run in a browser. Business Standard adds the installed versions. If anyone on your team has said the online Excel “won’t do the thing”, Basic is a floor short.
The second line is device management. Business Premium adds the layer that enforces security rather than merely offering it — policies applied to laptops and phones, tighter control over sign-ins, and the ability to remove company data from a device you no longer control. Basic and Standard are not insecure; they include multi-factor authentication and mail filtering. The distinction is between protections being available and protections being enforced, which matters if you hold client records or staff use their own laptops.
Two things people rarely realise. You can mix tiers across one team, which is usually the honest answer when three people touch sensitive data and twelve don’t. And moving someone between plans is a licence change — it doesn’t touch their mailbox or files, so starting modestly is low-risk rather than a commitment. Our guide to the Microsoft 365 Business plans compared takes each tier in turn.
Where files live — the decision that goes wrong most often
If a Microsoft 365 tenant is a mess, this is nearly always why.
OneDrive is a personal work drive. It is created for an account and belongs to it — right for drafts, notes and whatever one person is working on before anyone else needs it. Wrong for the contract everyone refers to, because when that person leaves, the file leaves with the account.
SharePoint is where shared work belongs. A site is owned by the organisation, so permissions are set by department, project or client rather than handed out one link at a time, and files survive staff changes without anyone having to think about it.
Teams is the front door, not a third filing cabinet. The files behind a team’s channels sit in SharePoint anyway — so a document dropped into a channel and the “same” document sent as an attachment are already two files, drifting apart. Once people see Teams as a conversation layer over their libraries, duplicates stop appearing.
Getting the structure right up front is most of the value in a properly designed SharePoint and intranet setup. If you want the longer comparison, we wrote one on where files should actually live.
Mailboxes, lists and groups
The info@ address is a small decision that causes disproportionate trouble. It could be three things, and they behave differently:
- A shared mailbox — one address several people open alongside their own, with one history everyone can see and replies that file into the shared Sent Items instead of vanishing into one account. It usually needs no licence of its own, though conditions apply — confirm for your tenant.
- A distribution list — copies delivered to each member’s own inbox. Fine for announcements. Useless when two people need to see whether a customer has already been answered.
- A Microsoft 365 group — a mailbox, calendar and SharePoint site bundled together, optionally Teams-enabled. More than a plain enquiries address needs.
We untangled precisely this for a South London charity running four service addresses from one person’s account — the write-up is here.
Microsoft keeps the service running. The history is yours.
This is the most widely misunderstood part of the platform, and it is stated plainly in Microsoft’s own shared-responsibility model. Microsoft is responsible for the infrastructure and for keeping your tenant available. You are responsible for your data. The replication that keeps the service up copies whatever state your content is in — including the wrong one.
Deleted items do pass through recycle bins and recoverable-items areas, and retention policies can hold them longer. But those windows are finite, set by policy, living inside the same tenant, and an administrator can change them. None of it is an independent copy you can restore from after a deletion nobody noticed for months. Check what your tenant’s policy says today rather than a half-remembered figure — and if the answer matters, independent Microsoft 365 backup closes the gap.
Identity is the perimeter now
There is no office wall around a cloud platform. The only thing between a stranger and your mail is an account. That makes multi-factor authentication the highest-value control you can switch on, and offboarding a security task rather than an admin one.
Two details catch people out. Changing a password does not necessarily end a session already signed in — revoking active sessions is a separate step. And deleting a leaver’s account starts a countdown on their mailbox and OneDrive rather than preserving them, so the order of operations matters. Block sign-in, revoke sessions, move what the business needs somewhere shared, then remove the licence. Written down once, it is a short job and nothing is lost. Improvised, it is how a departing salesperson’s pipeline vanishes. The wider picture sits on our cyber security page.
Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace
Both are good, and neither is a mistake. Workspace suits teams who live in Gmail and collaborate in browser documents, and its admin console is simpler to hold in your head. Microsoft 365 suits teams doing heavy spreadsheet work, exchanging Office files with clients who will notice formatting damage, or managing Windows laptops centrally.
What usually decides it is not the licence. It is the cost of moving years of mail and retraining people who are fluent in what they already have. If Workspace is working for you, we will say so — and we set up and support Google Workspace either way. The longer comparison is here.
The tenant that was set up in a hurry
Most of the tenants we take over were never finished. They look like this: multi-factor authentication on for some people and excepted for others with no note of why, a global admin account nobody can identify, sharing links handed out one at a time until nobody can say who has access to what, company files sitting in a personal OneDrive, licences still paid for on behalf of people who left, and no answer to how far back a deleted file can be recovered.
Tidying that up is a sequence, not a rebuild. We audit what exists, agree where files should live, correct permissions before moving anything, set a real security baseline and retire what nobody uses. Where mail or servers have to move, the work is planned to keep downtime and risk down — copying and verifying before anything is switched off, running old and new side by side, and scheduling cutovers out of hours.
From here: Microsoft 365 setup and support is the engagement itself, email setup and migration covers mailboxes, domains and deliverability, and cloud migration is the route off an ageing office server. Tell us where you are now and we will point you at the right one.
Frequently asked questions
We're weighing up Business Basic, Standard and Premium. What should the decision turn on?
Two things, and price is neither of them. First, do your people need Office installed on their machines, or will the browser versions genuinely do? That is the Basic-to-Standard question. Second, do you need to manage and enforce security on the devices themselves, rather than just have security features available? That is the Standard-to-Premium question. You can also mix tiers across a team, which is usually the honest answer.
Should our shared files live in OneDrive, SharePoint or Teams?
Personal work goes in OneDrive, because it belongs to one account. Anything the business depends on goes in SharePoint, because a site belongs to the organisation rather than a person. Teams is the front door, not a separate store — the files behind a team's channels sit in SharePoint anyway. Treating Teams as its own filing cabinet is what produces three versions of the same document.
What is the difference between a shared mailbox, a distribution list and a Microsoft 365 group?
A shared mailbox is one address several people open from their own account, keeping a single history everyone can see. A distribution list just forwards copies to individual inboxes, so there is no shared record of what was answered. A Microsoft 365 group bundles a mailbox, a calendar and a SharePoint site together, and can be Teams-enabled. Most "info@" problems come from choosing the wrong one of the three.
What actually happens to someone's email and files when they leave?
More than most people expect. Deleting the account starts a clock on that person's mailbox and OneDrive rather than preserving them, so the usual approach is to block sign-in first, revoke active sessions, move anything the business needs into a shared location, and only then remove the licence. Handled in the wrong order, a leaver's work goes with them. We write the sequence down so it is repeatable.
We already run on Gmail. Is there a real reason to move to Microsoft 365?
Only if something specific pushes you. Heavy Excel work, documents that must survive round-trips with clients using Office, or a need to manage Windows laptops centrally are real reasons. Habit is not. The licence is rarely the deciding cost — migrating years of mail and retraining a team is. If Workspace is working, we will say so rather than sell you a move.
We inherited a tenant from a previous provider. Where should we start?
With an audit, not a rebuild. We check who holds admin rights, whether multi-factor authentication is genuinely enforced, what external sharing links are open, where files have ended up, which licences are being paid for and unused, and what happens to deleted items under your current policy. Almost every inherited tenant has something switched on that nobody chose, and something off that everyone assumed was on.
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Areas we cover
Microsoft 365 & Cloud across South London, Croydon and Surrey — on-site where you need it, remote everywhere.
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