Hey everyone! I'm looking for some insight regarding the M365 A1 Plus licenses. There have been some conflicting updates—initially, we heard they were being discontinued, and we lost access in our tenant. But today, I logged in to find that the A1 licenses are back. Can anyone shed light on the situation?
3 Answers
From what I understand, the plan is to switch A1 Plus to regular A1 licenses. But just to be safe, I’m proactively converting accounts to either A1 or A3 myself to avoid any potential issues down the line.
I had a similar experience with a client whose tenant had an unlimited grant for A1 licenses. They created a bunch of accounts initially, but when notifications hit in August saying the grant would end, things got dicey. By October, their subscription showed as canceled yet the licenses were still active! We ended up having to scramble to manage those accounts, eventually converting many to Shared Mailboxes. So just a heads up—don’t rely on these licenses sticking around for long!
Actually, I think they vanish at the time of contract renewals. If that's the case, you'd need to transfer users to A1 or A3. The A1 Plus is just the A1 version that includes the desktop app, so if users don’t need the extras, go ahead and downgrade them. A3 can really drive up costs, but don’t forget that if you license all employees with A3, you can get student licenses for free at a 40:1 ratio!
That’s true! They were already phased out earlier in the year but then mysteriously came back without any clear expiration. Very odd!
I totally agree! We faced similar issues. We switched from A1 Plus to A1 earlier this year but encountered plenty of complications along the way, and had to bump up our A3 licenses. Seems like that was Microsoft's long-term plan.