Microsoft 365 Copilot: is it worth the price for a small business?
What Copilot actually does
Microsoft 365 Copilot is not "ChatGPT in Word". What sets it apart is that it can access your Microsoft 365 data — emails, calendar, OneDrive and SharePoint documents, Teams conversations — within the rights of the signed-in user. It can therefore:
- summarise a long email thread or a Teams meeting;
- write a first draft of a document based on existing files;
- analyse an Excel table and suggest charts or formulas;
- build a PowerPoint presentation from a Word document;
- find "the last quote sent to such-and-such a customer".
How much does it cost?
Microsoft charges for Copilot per user per month, on top of the Microsoft 365 subscription. In 2026, a plan aimed at small and medium-sized businesses ("Copilot Business") sits alongside the enterprise plan; roughly speaking, expect between €20 and €30 excluding VAT per user per month depending on the plan and commitment. Prices change regularly: always check the current price before deciding.
For a team of ten, the annual stake is therefore several thousand euros. Hence the importance of licensing only the users who will genuinely benefit from it.
The prerequisite everyone forgets: your access rights
Copilot respects existing permissions… including the wrong ones. If an "HR" or "Salaries" folder has been shared with "Everyone" by mistake, a colleague can ask Copilot "what are the team's salaries?" and get an answer. Before any rollout, you need to:
- Audit sharing in SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams ("anyone with the link" links, groups that are too broad);
- Clean up old sites and orphaned folders;
- Apply sensitivity labels to sensitive documents if your licence allows it;
- Enable multi-factor authentication for every account — a hacked account with Copilot is an account that can search for anything.
Our view
Copilot pays off when three conditions are met: your business really works in Microsoft 365 (and not half on a local file server), users spend a lot of time in emails and documents, and the environment is clean from a security standpoint. Otherwise, a simpler and cheaper assistant — or even a local AI — is often a better first step. Compare the alternatives in our comparison of AI assistants.
Rolling out Copilot with peace of mind
ExsIT audits the access rights of your Microsoft 365 tenant, fixes risky sharing, sets up strong authentication, then supports a pilot with a few users before any wider rollout.