E3 trial creates a tenant without an Azure subscription

Question

I just signed up for an E3 1-month trial that I intend to convert to a paid subscription.

The new tenant that was created for the trial does not contain an Azure subscription, but it looks to contain a "billing subscription".

I wasn't aware of the difference, can someone shed some light on this?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi

A tenant can exist and be used without having any Azure subscription, because Office 365 also uses a tenant, Entra ID (formally known as Azure AD) handles all the identities (user accounts and so on) and you have one Entra ID per tenant. This means if you login to portal.office.com or portal.azure.com with the same account, you are still in the same tenant/Entra ID.

If i want to use "Azure" (Web apps, Virtual machines, Firewalls, infrastructure, SQL and so on) i need an Azure subscription for them to reside in.

An Azure subscription is both a management container for your Azure resources but also a billing "agreement" to which there are more then one type :), you can have multiple Azure subscription in the same tenant (most modern larger setups do) and you can mix different types of agreements in the same tenant.

You can have Azure subscriptions from a Cloud solutions provider (or CSP), they will then provide you with subscriptions and are the ones that have an agreement with Microsoft and will send you an invoice for your resources (this should include some kind of support from your CSP though).

You can have an agreement with Microsoft (Microsoft Customer Agreement or Enterprise Agreement)

You will get an complete invoice for these to options but it will be directly with Microsoft

Pay as you go

Credit card based subscription.

The subscription your looking at in the picture looks like a subscription for SaaS licenses E3 and with auto renew so you always have these on that invoice.

If you want to read some more in-depth about subscription you can check out this link.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/subscriptions-licenses-accounts-and-tenants-for-microsoft-cloud-offerings?view=o365-worldwide

Hope this is helpful and remember shared knowledge is the best knowledge 😊

Best Regards,

Timmy Malmgren