Microsoft Copilot Pro AI is Expensive.

Microsoft recently launched Copilot Pro, the fastest and most advanced version of Copilot on the market, but with a catch. It costs $20 per month per user. This premium subscription plan brings the perks of Copilot Pro AI with it, but are they worth the cost of admission?

Microsoft Copilot is an artificial intelligence assistant feature that has been added to all Microsoft 365 applications and services, along with extensions in Bing and Edge. Copilot utilizes a large language model to assist companies in the creation of different assets, emails, presentations, and more. Copilot is intended to upend the way you manage your tasks. Instead of creating calendar reminders for meetings or deadlines, Copilot can do that for you. It’s also capable of finding priority files in your database, writing an email in a similar tone to your own, recording and playing back a meeting you may have missed, or creating a string of code to help you get started on a project. Microsoft intends for Copilot to be the AI assistant that cuts down on the monotony and busy work that you encounter daily.

If standard Copilot offers so much functionality, how much better could the Pro version be? Copilot Pro functionality includes:

• An all-in-one AI service that transcends devices. No matter what you’re using, Copilot will be interconnected across all of your devices, meaning that notes from your phone can be accessed and pulled by Copilot to create an email on your computer. From the web to your PC to the apps you use, Copilot will now be integrated into every aspect of your work environment.
• Access to Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote on PC, Mac, and iPad for Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers.
• Priority access to the latest models of Copilot, including OpenAI’s GPT4 Turbo. Copilot Pro will give you access to GPT-4 Turbo during peak hours for faster performance and, in the near future, the ability to toggle between modes to better customize your experience.
• Enhanced AI image creation through Image Creator from Designer (which used to be Bing Image Creator), ensuring a faster, more streamlined experience. Not only is the image quality better, but you can set it to landscape image format as well.
• Building your own Copilot GPT. Based on what you search, how you search for it, and various other factors, you can create a customized Copilot tailored to a specific topic. Where a standard GPT would scan the web for any resource pertaining to the topic, which tends to skew the results, these customized GPTs would enable you to hone the search further to create more pointed answers and pull from deeper, more relevant resources.

These features meld into a service that many businesses would consider a worthy investment. Innovation through convenience and AI advancement offers opportunities for growth to many companies, but there is a price point attached.

As stated previously, Copilot Pro is a paid version of the standard Copilot that offers all of the above features for a premium cost of $20 per month per person. While this doesn’t sound too bad at face value, the cost for larger corporations is going to be a sudden expense addition that may cause financial worry.

Some companies may see Copilot Pro as a way to streamline their backend processes and do away with some of the bloat or monotony that are part of some positions. However, you have to weigh the cost against the convenience. While you could save thousands of dollars monthly to stick with the standard version of Copilot that is universally available, your line of work may require something like a customized Copilot GPT to improve productivity or augment certain sections of the company. You may even want to go Pro for the convenience of interconnection between devices. Whatever the case, there is a lot of money on the line.

This doesn’t even account for the increased price of Microsoft support, which has a track record of going up as new services are introduced to the Microsoft stack. Microsoft support costs have also been rising over the past few years by an average of 20-25%, sometimes entirely on a whim, though Microsoft would call it an inflation prevention. With Copilot as their new flagship service, which is also being touted with a premium option, support prices will rise again this year. This comes alongside a new bracket of support tickets focused around Copilot, which may be small in volume at first, but will likely rise as Copilot Pro is adopted more and more across the world.

So, not only will you be paying the $20 per person per month, but your support price will be rising too. However, if the convenience is worth the investment, then Copilot Pro may be the option for you.

If your employees are stuck wading through mountains of spreadsheets, emails, and PowerPoint presentations every day, then Copilot is a must. If they also require specialized tools like Copilot GPT to help guide their research and flexibility around interconnected services, then Copilot Pro is a sound investment. However, this may require you to reevaluate your monthly IT spend. Turning to a third-party Microsoft support specialist like US Cloud will help turn the tides of your monthly spend. Our services are proven to provide 30-50% savings on your support spend in the first year alone and have 15-minute guaranteed response times for ticket submissions of any severity.

Our personalized support and cost savings help you adopt important initiatives like Copilot, while our domestic engineers provide in-depth knowledge on any type of support ticket to cross our client portal. Microsoft may be leading the world in AI innovation for the workplace, but US Cloud is at the forefront of Microsoft support expertise.