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bergesonm

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Office 365 Mid size Business

Probably will find there is no good answer to this question, But Ill look for ideas or comments anyway.

I have a customer that wants office 365, they use 20 RDS connections for employees. They ordered 20 Office 365 licenses. After a bit of research, I found out that they need a volume license for Office 365, AND also must purchase a single Office Pro Plus Volume license in order to install on the RDS server (the Office 365 downloadable installer is a retail edition that will not install on RDS server). Now I get a call from customer and they need a company email, a shipping email and a contact email.

Turns out, to do this you must purchase full licenses and CANNOT add email address licenses only. Its either spend a few thousand a year to upgrade to E3 plan, or $600 to add 4 email addresses.

Do not buy Office Mid Size Volume license and if deploying to a RDS server, do your home work.

Now, anyone else run into this issue? Any ideas?
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Lionel MM
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Something does not sound right here. You may want to contact MS or your MS rep who solf you Office365. From my own experience Office365 is a subscription service and depending on which plan you buy will either include Office online and/or licenses to install the software on your systems. Which Office365 plan are you/they on?
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Jim Dettman (EE MVE)
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Yes you can add email addresses as distribution lists, so for example shippping@company.com can be forwarded to an existing Office365 email address or addresses.
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bergesonm

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Thanks, That was my next step, Talk to customer about dist. lists. Still doesn't solve the issue that has a customer who needs 4 separate email addresses, ones that are not utilized by other named email users. I was already on the horn with MS as we are a partner.  Their solution was to switch to a E3 Plan, which would be almost another 2k a year for 20 users. (15 a month versus $23 a month). The e3 plan allows mixing full office 365 subscriptions and just exchange plans on a user by user basis.

I thought I found somewhere a possibility of creating a separate account and linking domain. Microsoft says no, but in my experience, they are not always correct and sometimes people find work arounds, thus my question.

Thanks
Why are you using the E plans for this small business? You can get the desktop versions of office with the small biz plan for only $12.50 per user per month.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/business/compare-all-office-365-for-business-plans-FX104051403.aspx
There is a 25 User max on that small Biz Premium plan. We sold the next small-mid size plan. Because they have 20 uesrs and are growing, I didn't want to get up against the 25 user limit on the small biz premium. Its NOT an E plan. E plan is more money
I was told e plan E4 is what I would need to mix subscriptions. But as some of you may know, You get different answers out of different contacts at Microsoft. Biggest issue of all is If they didn't Use RDS, this is all a moot point as I would not of needed Volume License.

Warning, Office 365 in a Terminal server/RDS environment has some Caveats. (like having to basically waste $500 bucks on a Vol license Office to install on RDS server.
So.... so far, distribution lists and (my idea was alias emails, but how I will work that not sure. Gonna meet with customer later today.
On any of the plans that include Office you can have some users use only email (exchange); they don't care if some use email only and others use email and office. If they are only now at 20 then they can be saving money until they get to 25 or more--some of the small biz plans you can upgrade, others not. If the issue is a concern about spending money [Its either spend a few thousand a year to upgrade to E3 plan, or $600 to add 4 email addresses.] then you would want to save the client money wherever you can, no?