Microsoft Universal Print - worth it?

Dashrender

I'm digging into M365 a lot more these days and I ran across this. Microsoft Universal Print.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/universal-print

It's a service that works with select printers (more being added all the time by their vendors) that uses Azure AD as your print queue.

Includes 5 prints per license holder, MS tally's license holders and applies prints to the whole tenant. i.e. 10 users = 50 included prints per month - even if from only one person.

Pros:
no local print queues needed
deploy printer through intune/endpoint manager
print from anywhere
Logs all prints

Cons:
requires M365 Business Premium or higher account or stand alone license PLUS AAD P1.
Costs 5 cents per print.

Dashrender

I went looking for a solution like this for a client of mine. I started out pretty happy about this - cool, I'll be able to deploy printers via Intune - this client has zero legacy Windows infrastructure.

Then I saw the printing. The base license only includes 5 prints per person per month- WHAT? What good is that?

You can purchase add-on print packs in 500 ($25 or $0.05/print) or 10,000 ($300 or $0.03/print) lots.

We do around 30K pages a month - but I don't know how many print jobs that is. It's probably no more than 15K jobs (most prints I see around here are 2+ pages). For me that would 1 x 10K ($300) + 6 x 500 ($25) = $450/m on top of our current printing expense...

So the question is - is it worth it?

I think - No.

dafyre

@dashrender said in Microsoft Universal Print - worth it?:

I went looking for a solution like this for a client of mine. I started out pretty happy about this - cool, I'll be able to deploy printers via Intune - this client has zero legacy Windows infrastructure.

Then I saw the printing. The base license only includes 5 prints per person per month- WHAT? What good is that?

You can purchase add-on print packs in 500 ($25 or $0.05/print) or 10,000 ($300 or $0.03/print) lots.

We do around 30K pages a month - but I don't know how many print jobs that is. It's probably no more than 15K jobs (most prints I see around here are 2+ pages). For me that would 1 x 10K ($300) + 6 x 500 ($25) = $450/m on top of our current printing expense...

So the question is - is it worth it?

I think - No.

I agree. Seems like what that cost is more for a pay for convenience sake.

Dashrender

@dafyre said in Microsoft Universal Print - worth it?:

I agree. Seems like what that cost is more for a pay for convenience sake.

There is value here for sure - but not this much. to only include 5 prints per user per month - I mean, really - why bother giving any prints at all?

Dashrender

My next question is - what does it cost from other vendors who offer something similar?
I'm guessing it's nearly the same cost, which is why MS is charging this much.

This reminds of me of the cost of Zix "secure email." $5/user/month - that's more than an exchange only email account in O365. Ridiculous!
And now MS has included the Zix style "secure email" in M365 (I'm not sure if it requires Business Premium or E3 or better though)...

dbeato

@dashrender If you want a portal for OME then yes it is a higher subscription.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/ome?view=o365-worldwide

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/ome-version-comparison?view=o365-worldwide

scottalanmiller

It's expensive. If you print a lot, it's crazy. If you hardly print anything, maybe the convenience is worth it. But if you print a lot, maybe it's rethinking printing itself that would make sense.