Module 6 of StartCloud's Copilot Essentials learning pathway, in five short units with a knowledge check: what the included Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat already gives you, what the paid Microsoft 365 Copilot licence adds through Microsoft Graph grounding and in-app Copilot, how to decide who in a small business genuinely needs a paid seat, and how enterprise data protection covers both when people sign in with a work account.
Copilot Chat or the Paid Licence: Who Needs Which
What you already have, for free
Here is a conversation we have most weeks. A business asks us to price Copilot for the whole team, and the first thing we tell them is that a good chunk of Copilot is already switched on and paid for. Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat comes with eligible Microsoft 365 subscriptions at no extra cost, including the Business Basic, Business Standard and Business Premium plans most Perth small businesses run on.
People just need to sign in with their work account rather than a personal one. That single detail is what separates a properly protected business tool from someone pasting a client contract into a random chatbot on their phone.
- AI chat grounded in the web, powered by current large language models
- File upload, so you can hand it a document and ask questions about it
- Image generation and Copilot Pages for saving and sharing what it produces
- Enterprise data protection when people sign in with their work account
- Admin controls, so IT can manage it rather than pretend it does not exist
Where people find it
The Microsoft 365 Copilot app in a browser, or the installed app on Windows.
Where Copilot Chat can work with the content someone already has open in front of them.
Signed in with a work account, with the shield showing that enterprise data protection applies.
Copilot Chat is grounded in the web, not in your business. It cannot go and read your mailbox, your Teams chats or your SharePoint on its own. Ask it "what did I miss this week?" and you will get a polite nothing. That gap is exactly what the paid licence fills, and it is the whole decision in one sentence.