Microsoft Cuts Windows 365 Business Prices by 20% — Good News for Australian SMBs

Microsoft is dropping the price of its Windows 365 Business plans by 20%, effective 1 May 2026. All three tiers are getting cheaper: Basic comes down to US$31/month, Standard to US$41/month, and Premium to US$66/month. The cuts apply to new subscriptions immediately and to existing customers at their next renewal, as reported by The Register.

For Australian small and medium businesses, this shifts the economics of Cloud PCs in an interesting direction. With physical hardware costs climbing — driven by global memory shortages and tariff uncertainty — the total cost of ownership for a cloud desktop is now genuinely competitive with a traditional laptop refresh cycle. If you’ve got staff on older machines or you’re running a bring-your-own-device setup, this is worth a closer look.

Microsoft is also introducing an “on-demand start” feature alongside the price drop. Cloud PCs will stay powered on for one hour after a user signs out or disconnects, then automatically hibernate. Reconnecting after that hour takes slightly longer as the machine wakes up, but performance is the same once you’re in. It’s a sensible trade-off that keeps costs down without hurting the day-to-day experience.

If you’ve been on the fence about Cloud PCs — whether for remote workers, shift-based teams, or scaling up without buying hardware — now’s a good time to run the numbers. The new pricing kicks in on 1 May for new subscriptions and flows through to renewals shortly after. Talk to the team at All IT Services about Microsoft 365 and cloud solutions to see whether Windows 365 makes sense for your setup.