If Microsoft 365 has become your most irritating monthly bill, the problem is usually the pricing model rather than the product. Microsoft charges per user, so every new starter adds cost for as long as they work for you. As at August 2026, Microsoft 365 Business Basic is £5.40 per user per month ex VAT on an annual subscription — £54 a month for a team of ten — and UK prices went up by roughly 17% on that plan at renewals from 1 July 2026. UKBox charges a flat rate per business: £4.99 +VAT a month covers ten mailboxes. Here is the honest comparison, including what you give up by leaving.
All figures below are ex VAT and taken from Microsoft's own UK pricing pages, checked 31 August 2026:
Two things matter more than the headline numbers. First, prices move: Microsoft applied increases of roughly 16–17% to Business Basic and around 12% to Business Standard at each customer's first renewal after 1 July 2026. Business Basic sat at about £4.60 per user before that. Second, and more importantly, the cost is tied to headcount. Hire five people and your email bill rises whether or not those five people generate any more email.
UKBox prices email per business, not per person. The plan you choose is set by how many mailboxes and how much storage you need, and the price does not change when you hire.
| Team size | Microsoft 365 Business Basic (annual, ex VAT) | UKBox flat plan (+VAT) | Difference per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 people | £27.00/mo | Starter Email — £4.99/mo | £22.01 |
| 10 people | £54.00/mo | Starter Email — £4.99/mo | £49.01 |
| 20 people | £108.00/mo | Secure Email — £8.99/mo | £99.01 |
| 25 people | £135.00/mo | Email Pro — £19.99/mo | £115.01 |
| 50 people | £270.00/mo | Email Scale — £34.99/mo | £235.01 |
Prices as at August 2026. Starter Email includes 10 mailboxes, Secure Email 20, Email Pro 50, and Email Scale unlimited; storage allowances are listed against each plan on our email hosting page. There is also a Done-For-You plan at £14.99 +VAT with unlimited mailboxes, a free business domain and every mailbox, phone and computer set up for you. Annual billing gives you two months free, there is no setup fee and no contract, and the price is held for three years in writing.
A common mistake when sizing a plan is counting email addresses rather than people. Aliases and forwarders are unlimited on every UKBox plan, so one mailbox can receive mail for info@, sales@ and accounts@ without costing anything extra. You only need a mailbox for each person who needs their own login. Plenty of six-person firms with thirty addresses fit comfortably on the £4.99 plan.
We would rather lose the sale than handle the complaint, so here is the plain version.
No Teams, no SharePoint, no OneDrive, no desktop Office applications and no Copilot. If your business genuinely runs on Teams or on shared SharePoint libraries, stay with Microsoft 365 — the licence is doing real work and moving would cost you more than it saves. Flat-rate email hosting suits businesses that use email, calendars and contacts, and not much else from the Microsoft stack. If you want the Office apps but not the Microsoft mailbox, Microsoft sells an apps-only licence, and your email can still move to us.
This is the real trade-off, so here it is plainly: Microsoft moved its Business mailboxes from 50 GB to 100 GB per user during 2026. Per head, Microsoft gives you more room than a flat-rate plan at a fraction of the price does, and no amount of framing changes that.
What is worth understanding is that our storage works differently rather than simply being smaller. Each plan gives every mailbox an allowance, and all the mailboxes on an account also draw on one shared account total — so a heavy user is not cut off the moment they pass their own allowance, they draw on the pool. If you would rather ring-fence it, you can set a fixed quota per mailbox in cPanel. And you can add storage in 10 GB blocks at £2 +VAT a month, up to 20 blocks, which still lands far below per-user pricing even after buying a lot of extra space.
Current allowances are listed against each plan on the email hosting page. Check them against what your team actually uses today rather than what you were sold: if your people are genuinely sitting on tens of gigabytes of mail each, price the top-up blocks honestly before you move.
UKBox Ltd was incorporated in 2023 (company number 15154892). Next to Microsoft that is a rounding error, and anyone comparing us should weigh it. What sits on the other side of the scale: our own UK data centre space in London, Coventry and Maidenhead rather than resold cloud; accounts filed at Companies House and prepared by chartered accountants; around 5,000 websites hosted; and no contract, no minimum term and standard IMAP, so if we let you down you can leave with your domain and your mail intact. Our 99.9% uptime figure is a target and a track record, not a credit-backed SLA — if you need contractual service credits, ask us and we will talk about it rather than pretend.
For email, calendars and contacts, yes. For Teams, SharePoint and the desktop Office apps, no — nothing at £4.99 a month replaces those. Most businesses that switch to us were paying for a full suite and using the mailbox.
Yes. Office licensing and mail hosting are separate decisions. Keep the apps you need, point your domain's mail at UKBox, and stop paying a per-user price for the mailbox.
Both, in effect. Every mailbox has its own allowance, and all the mailboxes on an account also draw on a shared account total, so nobody is locked out the moment they pass their individual allowance. You can set fixed per-mailbox quotas in cPanel if you would rather divide it strictly, and you can add 10 GB blocks at £2 +VAT a month, up to 20 blocks.
Nothing. The price is held for three years in writing, and existing customers' prices do not change when we launch new plans. Annual billing costs ten months for twelve.
Migration is free and we do it for you. Your old mailbox stays live and untouched until you have checked the new one, so the fallback is simply not switching. There is no contract, so if it does not suit you, you leave.
Multiply your headcount by £5.40 and compare it with a flat £4.99, £8.99, £19.99 or £34.99. If the gap looks worth a morning's work, the five email plans and the full comparison table are here, and the three-year cost calculator will do the arithmetic against Microsoft and Google for your exact team size. Before you commit to us or anyone else, it is also worth reading the twelve questions to ask any UK email provider — including the ones we find uncomfortable.
Sources for the Microsoft figures quoted above: Microsoft 365 Business Basic UK pricing and Exchange Online plans and pricing, both checked 31 August 2026.
— The UKBox team
