Microsoft 365 E7 is now generally available, and at US$99 per user per month it’s the most expensive seat Microsoft has ever sold. The new tier bundles Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Agent 365 into a single suite alongside the Entra Suite and the advanced Defender, Intune and Purview tooling, as covered by CNBC. The launch landed on 1 May, after the bundle was first announced as the “Frontier Suite” in March.

For Australian businesses, the headline number works out to a touch under AU$150 per user per month before tax. That’s steep, but the maths gets more interesting when you realise Copilot alone runs at $30 per user, Agent 365 at $15, and E5 at around $57. Bought separately you’d clear $100 anyway — and you’d still be missing the agent identity and governance pieces that come with the new Entra controls. Microsoft is pitching this as roughly 15 per cent cheaper than buying the components individually.

Whether E7 is right for your business depends on one question: are you actually going to use the agents? Agent 365 treats AI agents as “digital employees” with their own identities, permissions and security guardrails. If you’re only after Copilot for staff productivity, the standalone Copilot add-on on top of Business Standard or E3 is still cheaper. E7 starts to make sense once you’re building autonomous agents that need access to Graph data, third-party systems, or AWS and Google Cloud resources via the new Agent 365 registry sync.

Our advice: don’t rush. Most SMBs are still working out where Copilot pays for itself. If you’re weighing a licensing change, we can help you map your current spend against the E3, E5 and E7 paths before you commit.