Microsoft 365 subscriptions and plans

“plan” typically refers to a specific set of features and services included in a subscription.

“subscription” generally refers to the act of acquiring access to a particular Microsoft 365 plan. It involves paying a recurring fee to Microsoft in exchange for the right to use the selected plan’s features and services for a specified period of time. The subscription is typically associated with a user or an organization and usually includes multiple licenses to cover multiple users.

Build your cloud-computing foundation on a Microsoft 365 subscription and a Microsoft Entra tenant

When an organization subscribes to a Microsoft 365 plan, it can create user accounts, assign licenses to those accounts, and manage the subscription settings. When an organization purchases a subscription to a Microsoft 365 plan, such as Microsoft 365 E3 or E5, Microsoft creates a Microsoft Entra tenant that supports those Microsoft 365 services. This Microsoft Entra tenant is the underlying foundation that enables user authentication, authorization, and other identity-related functionalities for the Microsoft 365 services such as Office applications, Exchange Online, SharePoint, Teams, and more. This single tenant environment allows for seamless integration and management of Microsoft 365 and Azure services within an organization.

Microsoft 365 plans that don’t create a Microsoft Entra tenant

Some Microsoft 365 plans don’t create a Microsoft Entra tenant. These plans provide limited Microsoft Entra functionality and don’t include the full Microsoft Entra tenant creation.

• Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) E5. The EMS E5
• Microsoft 365 Business Basic.
• Microsoft 365 Business Standard
• Microsoft 365 Apps
• Office 365 F3.
• Microsoft 365 F1

Organizations with multiple Microsoft Entra tenants

An organization can have multiple Microsoft Entra tenants, where Microsoft sets up each tenant with a separate Microsoft Entra or Microsoft 365 subscription. Each Microsoft Entra or Microsoft 365 subscription is associated with its own dedicated Microsoft Entra tenant.

Tenant information

During the sign-up process for a Microsoft 365 plan, Microsoft asks the organization to provide some basic information, such as its business name, country/region, and domain name. Microsoft then uses this information when it creates the new Microsoft Entra tenant for the organization. Microsoft bases the tenant URL that it creates on the domain name provided by the organization during sign-up. It typically looks something like this: https://contoso.onmicrosoft.com.

With a Microsoft 365 subscription, you can add up to 900 domains to a single tenant. An organization can use each domain to create email addresses for the users in those domains.