MS-900 Practice Question: A non-profit organization with 300 users needs to…

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

• ✗

  Assign Microsoft 365 Business Premium to all 300 users

  Why it's wrong here

  Assigning Microsoft 365 Business Premium to all 300 users licenses Intune for every user, yet only 50 need device management. At approximately $22/user/month for Business Premium versus about $6/user/month for Business Basic plus an $8/user/month Intune Plan 1 add-on for only 50 users, this approach costs roughly $3,400 more per month. It also forces all 300 users to receive premium security and compliance features they may not require, making it an inefficient over-licensing choice.

• ✓

  Purchase Microsoft Intune Plan 1 add-on licenses for the 50 users who need device management

  Why this is correct

  Intune Plan 1 is available as a standalone per-user add-on that can be layered onto Microsoft 365 Business Basic, and licenses can be selectively assigned in the Microsoft 365 admin center to only the 50 users responsible for device management. Because the add-on is independent of the base subscription tier, you pay a low per-user price (about $8/user/month) for just those users, while the other 250 users remain on plain Business Basic. This delivers the required MDM/MAM capability at the absolute lowest licensing cost and avoids paying for extra suite features.

• ✗

  Create a separate Microsoft 365 Business Basic tenant for the 50 users and include Intune

  Why it's wrong here

  Standing up a separate Microsoft 365 tenant for these 50 users provides no per-user license pricing advantage—they still must be licensed for Intune, either as an add-on or via a suite. It also forces you to maintain a second directory, separate Exchange Online mailboxes, separate domains, and tenant-to-tenant collaboration governance, which is significantly more complex and expensive to administer. The total cost of ownership is higher than simply adding Intune Plan 1 to your existing Business Basic tenant, and it creates a siloed identity boundary for no technical benefit.

• ✗

  Purchase Microsoft 365 E3 licenses for the 50 users

  Why it's wrong here

  Microsoft 365 E3 is an enterprise suite that includes Intune, but it is priced at roughly $36/user/month or more, which is about four times the cost of Business Basic plus an Intune Plan 1 add-on for those 50 users. E3 also brings many enterprise-only features such as advanced eDiscovery, information protection, and advanced audit that are irrelevant to a device-management requirement. Buying E3 for a subset of users means paying the full suite price for every one of them even though you only need one component, making it a far more expensive way to achieve the same MDM outcome.