Hi everyone, your favorite Mavideans are back with a new update to the Office 365 for Non-Profits process and a lower price-point.
It figures that right after we made the last update and got 15 customers set up and running and had just ironed out all the kinks in the system, Microsoft changed the process yet again.
On September 10th, 2013, Microsoft implemented a new website where you can create a trial and process everything you need to sign up for a non-profit account yourself. Take a look at the main portal for Non-Profits. If you want to skip some of the marketing fluff and just straight to signing yourself up, look at the various plans that available to non-profits (only 2 of 4 open right now, but they are the same 2 we have always had), and then click on the Free Trial button.
The good news? E1 is still free and the price for E3 is now only $4.50 per month. E1 includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online. E3 is all of that, plus Office Web-Apps and the full version of Office 2013 for up to 5 devices of that user. So if you break it down to hourly, that works out to about 3.5 cents per user per hour for email, calendar, contacts, file sharing and collaboration, instant messaging and audio/video conferencing, and the full version of Office 2013. That’s a steal for 3.5 cents per hour. (Never thought about it that way did you?)
The bad news is that Mavidea cannot help you through the process anymore. You have to sign up for the trial yourself and submit all your documentation yourself. It’s pretty easy to do from what we’ve been told (we’re not a non-profit so we haven’t see the entire process). Follow the link above and it will walk you through getting set up.
So now you may be wondering “Where does this leave Mavidea in the process?”
The answer is easy – we’re in almost the same spot. With all the clients we have helped, Mavidea has become really good at migrating organizations to Office 365. We’ve moved users with old Exchange 2003, users with Google Docs email, users with POP3 or IMAP – if you have it we’ve helped move it to Office 365. Our processes are robust and thorough.
The migration expertise can be put to use in your organization. Some of the nonprofits we have helped do not have a tech staff. We can help from start to finish. The last 200 seat nonprofit we helped had 2 internal IT staff, but they didn’t have expertise in Office 365 migrations, so we did it for them. It was quicker and faster all the way around. You can get a price quote for Mavidea performing your Office 365 migration here.
Does the E1 or E2 plan include the web design functionality?
Bruce,
I’m not sure if you mean is there design software included, or if you mean do you have the capability of hosting a site with one of the plans, so I’ll answer both.
In terms of designing a site, you could theoretically use Word or PowerPoint to take content and publish it as web pages, but neither of those programs is optimized for that purpose. Publish would be a little easier to use with it’s layout capability, but again, not optimized. Microsoft Expression Studio is their platform for web development. It is designed to compete against Adobe CS Suite.
Now, in terms of do you get a hosting environment with Office 365, the answer is “kinda, sorta”. Office 365 E1 and up includes SharePoint Online, and you can create a website there. However, it is limited to what SharePoint can do (which would take me a book to answer that question). So yes, you can build a website, but not a flexible “I’m going to do anything I can imagine” site. Here is a link for more info: http://tinyurl.com/sharepoint-website-info
Hope this helps!
Is there any website and/or documentation on MSoft site about non-profit pricing? I can’t find any. Is the non-profit price for Exchange Online only lower that the regular $4per user/month?
Thank you in advance for your answer. We are considering moving from On-site exchange server to exchange online.
Christian,
As far as I am aware, there is no documentation on the non-profit pricing that is available. It seems that very few of Microsoft’s Cloud Champion partners are even aware that the special pricing exists.
I can tell you that Mavidea is part of a select group that works with non-profit customers on Office 365. Mavidea get’s what are called Partner of Record “points” for helping our non-profit customers. These points help us keep our standing with Microsoft in the Cloud Champions club.
Give me a call and I’ll be happy to tell you things I am not allowed to post on our public blog.
Jamie