Getting started with Microsoft Copilot – but which one?

Microsoft Copilot — Which One Are You Actually Using? A Plain English Guide for Norfolk Businesses

I hear the same thing from business owners every week. “We’ve got Copilot — I think.”

They’ve clicked something, seen a chat box appear, typed a question. But ask them whether they’re using the consumer version, the enterprise-protected version, or the paid M365 version — and you’ll get a blank look. Which is fair, because Microsoft has done an absolutely spectacular job of making this as confusing as possible.

So let me break it down from the beginning. There are three distinct levels, and understanding which one you’re on changes everything about what you can — and can’t — safely use it for at work.

Level 1 — Copilot (Free Consumer)

Microsoft Copilot is the free consumer version, available at copilot.microsoft.com. It’s designed to help with personal tasks and draws on information from the internet.

Think of it like having a very capable general-purpose AI assistant — it can draft text, answer questions, summarise articles, generate images. Genuinely useful for personal productivity.

The critical thing to understand as a business owner: this version has no enterprise data protection. The free Copilot is not fully compliant with enterprise security and regulatory requirements such as GDPR or ISO the way the paid version is. Your prompts — the questions you type in — could potentially be used to improve Microsoft’s AI models. For personal use, that’s fine. For anything involving client data, sensitive business information, or staff details? You need to be on a higher tier.

Level 2 — Copilot Chat with Enterprise Data Protection (Free with M365)

Here’s the one most people don’t know they already have.

Copilot Chat is included at no extra charge with any Microsoft 365 subscription. It’s accessible via browser, as a downloadable app, and inside Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and Edge.

The key difference from the consumer version is the green shield. All chats carry a green-shield icon indicating enterprise-grade protection and data governance — look for it every time you open Copilot at work.

What does Enterprise Data Protection actually mean in practice? Copilot respects your identity model and permissions, inherits your sensitivity labels, applies your retention policies, supports audit of interactions, and follows your administrative settings. Crucially, your data isn’t used to train Microsoft’s AI models.

So if you accidentally type something about a client project, it isn’t going anywhere near Microsoft’s training data. That’s a meaningful reassurance for any business handling customer or staff information.

Copilot Chat is web-grounded — it answers based on internet information and whatever files you manually provide. It can pull in content from any Office document you have open, and includes easy file upload, on-the-fly image generation, and collaborative brainstorming tools.

The honest limitation: it can’t see inside your organisation. It doesn’t know what happened in yesterday’s meeting, what’s in your SharePoint, or what’s sitting in your email inbox — unless you manually paste that information in yourself.

For many small businesses, this level is a perfectly good starting point. It’s free, it’s protected, and most teams aren’t using even a fraction of what it can do here.

Level 3 — Microsoft 365 Copilot (Paid Add-On)

This is where it becomes a fundamentally different product.

The paid tier gives Copilot access to your organisation’s entire data environment — SharePoint files, Teams chats, emails, and calendar data — to provide genuinely contextual responses.

You can ask things like: “Summarise everything discussed about the XYZ project in the last two weeks” — and it will pull from your emails, Teams messages, and shared documents to give you a real answer. That’s not a party trick. For busy teams, that’s hours back in the week.

In Word it drafts and edits documents. In Excel it analyses data and creates charts. In PowerPoint it builds presentations from outlines. In Outlook it drafts emails and summarises long threads. In Teams it recaps meetings and highlights action items from calls you didn’t even attend.

And here’s where timing matters.

The current UK list price for M365 Copilot is around £24.70 per user per month on an annual commitment, ex-VAT — roughly £296 per user per year — on top of your existing M365 subscription.

Microsoft has confirmed price rises across the majority of Microsoft 365 plans from 1 July 2026, with increases ranging from 8% to 33% depending on your licence tier. One of the most significant cost adjustments since Microsoft moved to subscription-based licensing.

The critical detail many businesses are missing: the new pricing only kicks in at your first renewal after 1 July. But if you bring your renewal forward and complete it before 30 June, you lock in today’s pricing for the entire agreement term — typically 12 months, and up to 36 months for larger organisations.

We are, as I write this, three weeks away from that deadline.

So which level do you need?

M365 Copilot pricing is ex-VAT, list price, annual commitment. Confirm current rates with your Microsoft partner or IT provider as pricing is subject to change post July 2026.

My practical advice: if you’re using the free consumer version for anything work-related, check right now whether you already have Copilot Chat with Enterprise Data Protection included in your M365 subscription. Most businesses do, and it’s a meaningful upgrade for zero extra cost.

If your team lives in Teams, Outlook, and SharePoint — and you’re spending time on meeting notes, email management, or document drafting — the paid M365 Copilot tier is worth a serious conversation before the end of June.

I’m happy to sit down with any Norfolk Chamber member and work through which level actually fits your business. No sales pitch — just a straight conversation from someone who’s been working with Microsoft technology for the better part of 30 years.

Kevin Sait — Sait.Edu | Trusted AI Provider for Schools and Business
kevinsait.substack.com | saitedu.net