Own your email system: what a business saves against Microsoft 365 and Outlook

Rent Outlook and Microsoft 365 and you pay a fixed sum for every employee, every month, forever. Own your email system instead and that recurring bill disappears, because you are no longer renting a mailbox in someone else's data centre. Our email system runs as a studio on the MICKAI sovereign operating system, on hardware you own, so the per user per month line comes off your books entirely and your mail stays inside your own walls.

That is the whole trade. Below we build the number from Microsoft's own published prices, conservatively, and then explain what you gain beyond the money.

The recurring bill, built from published prices

Microsoft publishes its business plan prices per user per month, billed annually. The exact figure depends on the plan and the region, and Microsoft revises it, so the honest way to compare is to take the published price for the plan you actually use and run it through a simple sum rather than quote a single headline number.

The method is this. Take your user count. Multiply by Microsoft's published price per user per month for your plan. Multiply by twelve. That is your annual rent for email and the surrounding productivity suite.

Worked example, a firm of fifty people. Suppose the published price of the mid tier business plan is in the region of ten pounds per user per month. That is a deliberately conservative figure at the lower end of the published range, and firms on Business Premium pay meaningfully more.

• 50 users times the published monthly price = the monthly bill.
• At ten pounds per user, that is five hundred pounds a month.
• Times twelve months = six thousand pounds a year.

Move to a hundred users and the same sum gives twelve thousand pounds a year. Put the firm on a higher tier at, say, eighteen pounds per user, and a hundred people costs in the region of twenty one thousand six hundred pounds a year. These are not our prices. They are Microsoft's published list prices run through arithmetic anyone can repeat.

The important property of that number is that it recurs. You pay it this year, next year and the year after. Five years of a fifty seat firm at the conservative ten pound figure is thirty thousand pounds handed over for email you never come to own. Nothing accrues to you at the end of it. Stop paying and the mailboxes stop.

What owning it changes

Our email system is not a cheaper subscription. It is a studio on an operating system you install on your own hardware. There is no per user per month rent because there is no landlord. You buy the machines once, you run the software on them, and the recurring line that Microsoft charges is simply gone from the ledger.

That reframes the comparison. The rented model is an operating cost that never ends. The owned model is an asset you hold. The money that used to leave the business every month for mailboxes stays in the business.

We say this from respect for the incumbents. Private and tenant isolated deployment, where the vendor promises not to look at your data, is the baseline the serious vendors already offer. We start above that baseline. Our value is that the data is not in the vendor's estate at all, that operation is air-gapped by default, that you run the software rather than integrate a service, and that we build for the regulated small and mid-sized firm the heavyweight vendors tend to leave behind.

Control and jurisdiction

Email is where a company keeps its most sensitive record. Contracts, negotiations, personnel matters, legal advice and client confidences all sit in the mailbox. When that mailbox is rented, it lives on infrastructure you do not control, often under a jurisdiction that is not your own, subject to the provider's policies, outages and lawful access regimes.

Own the server and that changes at the root.

• The data is on your hardware. It sits on machines you bought, on premises you occupy, inside your own jurisdiction. No third party holds a copy by default.
• The vendor cannot see it. We do not have a window into your mail. There is nothing to grant access to, because there is no access.
• Air-gapped by default. The system is built to run without reaching out to anyone. Mail does not have to traverse an external cloud to be delivered inside your own organisation.
• Every action is recorded. The Open Audit Record captures what happened at the level of individual actions, so you can show a regulator or an auditor precisely what took place, on evidence you hold yourself.

For a regulated firm this is the difference between trusting a supplier's assurances and being able to prove control from your own records.

One operating system, not another app to bolt on

The reason this is practical now, and was not always, is that our email system is not a standalone mail server a specialist has to nurse. It is one studio among many on a single sovereign operating system. The same assistant that helps across the rest of the platform helps here. Routing, archiving, search, retention and administration live in the same place as your other tools and draw on the same company data.

The platform spans 87 studios on that one operating system, from email and meetings to CRM and team management. Clients onboard onto an initial focused set and expand from there. Because it is one system, your email is not an island of data cut off from everything else. Your mail, your customer records and your internal collaboration share the company's own information, under the company's own control.

The pattern repeats across the suite. Wherever you rent a seat today, from meetings to CRM, there is a studio that runs on hardware you own instead, and a recurring bill that comes off the books. Email is the clearest place to start because the sum is so easy to check.

The decision, stated plainly

You can keep renting mailboxes and pay Microsoft's published per user price every month for as long as your company exists, with nothing owned at the end. Or you can put email on hardware you own, inside the MICKAI operating system, delete the recurring line, and keep the most sensitive record your company holds under your own control and jurisdiction.

Run the arithmetic on your own headcount and your own plan. The saving is whatever Microsoft's published price is, times your people, times twelve, every year, for good.

FAQ

How much does Microsoft 365 cost per user per month? Microsoft publishes list prices per user per month for its business plans, billed annually. Take the current published price for your plan and region, multiply by your headcount and by twelve, and that is the annual bill that recurs for as long as you rent.

Does owning your email server mean running your own hardware? Yes. Our email system runs as a studio on the MICKAI sovereign operating system on hardware the company owns and keeps on its own premises. There is no per user monthly rent because you are not renting anything.

Is self-hosted email harder to run than Outlook? It is a studio on one operating system with one assistant across all of it, so routing, archiving and administration are handled in the same place as the rest of your tools rather than by a separate specialist team.

Where does the data live? On your hardware, inside your jurisdiction, under your control. The vendor cannot see it, operation is air-gapped by default, and every action is written to the Open Audit Record.

Do you publish a price for the MICKAI operating system? No. We do not publish pricing. This article compares an incumbent's published list prices against the fact that the recurring per user bill disappears when email runs on hardware you own.

Is this only email, or the whole stack? The platform spans 87 studios on one sovereign operating system. Email is a natural place to begin, and clients onboard onto an initial focused set that shares one assistant and their own data across all of it.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Microsoft 365 cost per user per month?

Microsoft publishes list prices per user per month for its business plans. Business Basic and Business Standard sit at the lower end and Business Premium higher. Prices are billed annually and recur every month for as long as you rent the service. Check Microsoft's current published price for your region and plan, then multiply by your headcount and by twelve to see the yearly bill.

Does owning your email server mean running your own hardware?

Yes. Our email system runs as a studio on the MICKAI sovereign operating system, installed on hardware the company owns and keeps on its own premises. There is no per user monthly rent because you are not renting anything.

Is self-hosted email harder to run than Outlook?

The old objection was that mail servers need a specialist. Our email system is a studio on one operating system with one assistant across all of it, so routine administration, routing and archiving are handled in the same place as the rest of your tools rather than by a separate team.

Where does the data live?

On your hardware, inside your jurisdiction, under your control. The vendor cannot see it. Air-gapped operation is the default, and every action is written to the Open Audit Record.

Do you publish a price for the MICKAI operating system?

No. We do not publish pricing. This article compares the published list prices of a rented incumbent against the fact that the recurring per user bill disappears when email runs on hardware you own. Pricing for MICKAI is handled in a direct briefing.

Is this only email, or the whole stack?

The platform spans 87 studios on one sovereign operating system, from email and meetings to CRM and team management. Clients onboard onto an initial focused set and share one assistant and their own data across all of it.