What's Changing on 1 July: Vendor Price Rises Explained

Every year about this time, the technology industry does its annual reshuffle. Contracts roll over, wholesale costs reset, and the big vendors announce what next year will cost. 2026 is busier than most.

Microsoft is putting up the price of Microsoft 365 — its biggest move on the core business and enterprise plans in years. NBN Co is making its yearly wholesale adjustment. Cloud storage is going up. None of these are RWTS decisions — they're the cost of the things we buy on your behalf, passed through by the companies that make them. But you'll see them on your bill, so you deserve a plain-English explanation of what's moving and why.

Here's the short version: most of it lands from 1 July 2026, the increases are real but mostly modest, and for a lot of you the change won't show up until your renewal date later in the year. Let's walk through it.

Microsoft 365 — the big one

This is the change most of our customers will notice. From 1 July 2026, Microsoft is raising the list price of its commercial Microsoft 365 plans. Microsoft tweaks its pricing fairly regularly — add-ons, billing options, enterprise terms — but it's been a few years since it touched the headline price of the core business and enterprise suites this broadly.

The rises aren't uniform. They run from around 5% at the top end to roughly a third at the bottom end, and a couple of popular plans don't move at all. A few examples to give you the shape of it:

• Business Basic — up about 16%.
• Business Standard — up about 12%.
• Business Premium — no change. Frozen.
• Enterprise plans (E3 and E5) — up roughly 5–13% depending on the tier.
• Frontline plans (F1 and F3) — the steepest, up 25–33%.

One quirk worth knowing: the cheaper, high-volume plans are going up hardest, while the premium plans barely move. Microsoft is quietly narrowing the gap between Standard and Premium — so if you've been weighing up the jump to Business Premium, the maths just got more interesting. Happy to run those numbers with you.

A note on dollars and cents. The figures above are the global percentages Microsoft has published in US dollars. Microsoft sets Australian pricing separately, and at the time of writing it hasn't released the confirmed AUD numbers. We'll update our price book the moment it does. Until then, treat any local figure as a close estimate rather than gospel.

Why is Microsoft doing this?

Microsoft's argument is that you're getting more for the money. Over the past few years it's folded a pile of capability into the base plans — extra mailbox storage, stronger email threat protection, better device management, and the Copilot AI features now baked into most plans rather than sold as an add-on. The price, it says, is catching up to the product.

Whether that value lands for your business depends on whether you use those features. That's a conversation worth having, and it's exactly the kind of thing we'll raise at your next review.

When will you actually pay more?

Here's the part that trips people up. The new price applies at your next renewal on or after 1 July — not on 1 July itself. If your Microsoft 365 term renews in, say, October, your pricing holds until then and the increase shows up at that renewal. Nothing changes on your bill the day the announcement takes effect.

There's no action for you to take. We manage your renewals, we'll apply the correct pricing when each one comes around, and we'll flag anything unusual before it hits your invoice.

NBN — a small, predictable rise

Each year NBN Co adjusts the wholesale prices it charges providers like us, broadly in line with inflation. This year the adjustment is modest — a few dollars a month at most on the popular speed tiers, with the very fastest plans moving the most.

We've made a deliberate choice here. We're holding our prices on the higher-speed NBN plans — we'd rather absorb the wholesale rise than pass it on at the top end. On our lower-speed plans, prices will rise by around 5% from 1 August 2026. That's a month later than most of the other changes on this page, and it's the only NBN movement you'll see from us.

If you're on a lower-speed plan and the faster tiers now look better value, it might be worth a quick chat — the free speed boosts NBN rolled out last year mean some plans are carrying a lot more headroom than they used to.

Cloud storage and backup

The cloud storage that sits behind some of our backup and data-protection services is going up too, from 1 July 2026 — in the order of 14% per terabyte. The providers point to the rising cost of the hardware, power and data-centre space behind the scenes, with AI demand pushing all three.

For most customers this is a small line item, and where it affects your service we'll show you the specifics rather than leaving you to guess. If you're storing a lot of data, it's a good prompt to check you're only paying for what you actually need — something we're glad to review.

Security tooling

The cyber security tools behind our managed security services are also rising — Huntress, the platform we use for threat detection and response, is going up around 15% from the vendor. Some of you buy this as a named line item; for others it sits inside a broader managed security service. Either way, where this flows through to your pricing we'll set it out clearly, and we won't move anything without telling you first.

If you're not sure what security cover you're currently paying for, that's worth a quick review — we'd rather you understood exactly what you're getting.

A few others, for completeness

Outside the 1 July cluster, a handful of behind-the-scenes vendor costs have already shifted earlier in 2026 — backup software licensing and web-hosting platform fees among them. These are mostly single-digit percentage moves, already factored into our pricing where relevant, and nothing you need to act on. We mention them only so the picture's complete.

What this means for you

Pulling it together:

• Microsoft 365 rises from 1 July, but only at your renewal — we handle the timing.
• NBN higher-speed plans hold; lower-speed plans rise about 5% from 1 August.
• Cloud storage behind some backup services rises about 14% per terabyte from 1 July.
• Security tooling (including Huntress) rises around 15% from the vendor; we'll set out clearly where it touches your pricing.
• A few smaller vendor costs have already moved and are baked in.

We don't enjoy passing on price rises any more than you enjoy receiving them. What we can promise is that we'll always tell you what's changing, explain why, and make sure you're only paying for what genuinely serves your business. When the confirmed Australian figures land, we'll update everything and let you know.

Got a question about how any of this affects your specific setup? That's what we're here for.

Talk to us — 1300 798 718.

Prices and percentages reflect vendor announcements current at the time of writing (June 2026). Microsoft's confirmed Australian dollar pricing had not been published when this was written; figures shown are based on the global percentage changes and may differ once local pricing is released. We'll update this post as confirmed numbers become available.