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MS-900 Practice Question: A small business with 10 employees needs the…
A small business with 10 employees needs the desktop versions of Microsoft 365 apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) and 1 TB of cloud storage per user. They do not need business email because they use a separate provider. Which Microsoft 365 plan should they purchase?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often assume Business Standard is the minimum for desktop apps, forgetting that Microsoft 365 Apps for Business is a separate, lower-cost plan that excludes Exchange Online and is specifically designed for organizations that do not need Microsoft-hosted email.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Microsoft 365 Apps for Business
Microsoft 365 Apps for Business is the correct plan because it provides the desktop versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint along with 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage per user, but does not include Exchange Online (business email). This matches the requirement exactly, as the customer uses a separate email provider and only needs the Office apps and storage.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Microsoft 365 Business Basic
Why it's wrong here
Microsoft 365 Business Basic is incorrect because it provides web-only versions of Office applications (browser-based Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) along with business email via Exchange Online, but it does not include the desktop Office apps that the company specifically requires. Even though this plan is the cheapest, the lack of desktop licensing means users cannot install Word, Excel, or PowerPoint locally, so it fails the core requirement despite the lower cost.
- ✗
Microsoft 365 Business Standard
Why it's wrong here
Microsoft 365 Business Standard does include the full desktop Office apps and business email, but the email component (Exchange Online) is unnecessary for this scenario, and the plan's per-user price is higher than Microsoft 365 Apps for Business. It also bundles additional services such as Microsoft Teams and SharePoint that are not required for simply installing desktop Office, making it an inefficient and more expensive choice compared to the correct option.
- ✓
Microsoft 365 Apps for Business
Why this is correct
Microsoft 365 Apps for Business is the correct choice because it delivers the full desktop versions of Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and others) that can be installed on up to five devices per user, along with 1 TB of OneDrive storage, yet it deliberately excludes Exchange Online email and other collaboration workloads. For a small business that only needs desktop Office, this plan meets the requirement at the lowest cost among the options that provide desktop apps.
- ✗
Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Why it's wrong here
Microsoft 365 Business Premium is wrong for this scenario because it includes everything in Business Standard plus advanced security and management features such as Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Intune for device management, and information protection policies. These extras, together with the bundled email service, drive up the per-user price substantially, and since the company only needs desktop versions of Office, this plan adds significant cost without providing any additional benefit for the stated requirement.
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Cloud Service Types for MS-900
Key term
Cloud storage
Cloud storage is a service that lets you save data on remote servers accessed over the internet instead of on your computer's hard drive.
Key term
Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 is a subscription-based cloud service from Microsoft that combines productivity tools like Office apps with security, device management, and online storage.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This MS-900 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Microsoft certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the MS-900 exam.