Creating a Trial Account

Microsoft used to offer a developer account which allowed multiple licenses for testing and development. This is no longer offered so for this lab, I have created a new trial subscription which will be used for testing projects being worked on. For the activities an M365 Business Premium subscription should suffice. After visiting Microsoft 365 Business Premium | Microsoft 365 and starting a trial an account is ready to go. Note this account will require domain.onmicrosoft.com to sign in the first time as well as MFA to be configured.

Understanding Microsoft 365 licenses is not a simple task but the Microsoft 365 Business Premium license includes the following components:

Office 365 E3 (O365 E3) - Office Applications, DLP, Exchange Online, Graph Connector, Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, etc.
Enterprise Mobility & Security E3 (EMS E3) - Intune Plan 1 + Entra ID Plan 1
Windows Professional

A very useful site I often use to decipher M365 subscription is Microsoft 365 Business Premium | M365 Maps which covers all of the components included in these pieces. For more detailed comparisons they offer the matrix that compares all of the features across the most common subscriptions Feature Matrix | M365 Maps.

Revision #3
Created 16 April 2025 23:43:08 by Matthew B.
Updated 17 April 2025 00:01:43 by Matthew B.