📜 Microsoft Licensing Simplifier¶
Status: ✅ Complete (SEO expansion shipped April 20) Priority: 📌 Important (Tier 1) Category: 🎬 Content / 💼 Official Created: 2026-04-10 Completed: 2026-04-11 (V1), 2026-04-20 (SEO expansion) Live at: aguidetocloud.com/licensing/ Part of: Free Tools Section
What Was Built¶
The most comprehensive plain-English Microsoft licensing tool on the internet — 59 plans, 14 categories, 50 detail pages, 5 interactive tabs.
Features¶
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| 📊 Compare Plans | 14 categories with unique accent colours, expandable sections, search, quick compare presets (E3 vs E5 etc.), side-by-side comparison table, shareable URLs |
| 💰 Build Your Stack | Cost calculator — pick plans + user counts → monthly/annual totals, July 2026 price impact warning, copy summary to clipboard |
| 🧩 Add-ons Advisor | Select base plan → shows available add-ons with prices + upgrade suggestions |
| 🧠 Which M365 Plan? | 7-question weighted quiz → top 3 plan recommendations |
| 📰 What Changed? | Licensing changelog timeline (manually curated) |
| 50 Detail Pages | Each with Mermaid diagrams, comparison tables, numbered FAQs, related blog posts, Product + FAQPage JSON-LD schema |
Strategy¶
Complements M365 Maps (Aaron Dinnage) — we provide plain English + pricing + quiz + calculator, M365 Maps provides visual feature maps. Deep-links to both M365 Maps AND official Microsoft pages on every plan.
Tech Stack¶
| Component | Tech |
|---|---|
| Data | Hugo TOML files (data/licensing/plans.toml, features.toml, quiz.toml, changelog.toml) |
| Main page | layouts/licensing/list.html — 5-tab layout, all JS-rendered from injected data |
| Detail pages | layouts/licensing/single.html — rich markdown content + auto-matched blog posts |
| CSS | static/css/licensing.css — Rose #F43F5E accent, .lic-* namespace |
| JS | static/js/licensing.js — ~21KB, all interactive logic |
| Hosting | Azure SWA (auto-deploy via GitHub Actions) |
| Cost | $0 |
Numbers¶
- 59 plans with pricing
- 14 categories with unique accent colours
- 50 individual detail pages (8 rich SEO pages, 42 standard)
- 37 feature definitions (including E7-era: Agent 365, Entra Suite features)
- 7 quiz questions
- 5 changelog entries
- ~21KB JS, ~16KB CSS
- Product + FAQPage JSON-LD on every detail page
What Was Learned¶
- Hugo
safeJSis required when injecting JSON data viajsonifyinto<script>tags — without it, values get HTML-escaped - Hugo
--minifystrips quotes from HTML attributes — test selectors accordingly - Categories with unique accent colours via CSS
--cat-accentvariable (set in JS from TOML data) work beautifully - The
p > strong:only-childCSS selector perfectly targets FAQ questions (bold-only paragraphs) without affecting inline bold in answers - Related blog posts auto-matching by plan name (
where site.RegularPages "Section" "blog"+in lower .Title) is simple but effective - M365 Maps skipped pricing because of regional complexity and legal risk as a Microsoft employee — this is our differentiator
Maintenance¶
- Monthly: Review pricing changes, update changelog
- July 2026: Major pricing update — update all affected plans and 5-currency fields
- Quarterly: Research new plans, retire deprecated ones
- Future V2: Automated "Licensing Watch" pipeline (weekly cron → detect pricing page changes → GitHub Issue)
SEO Expansion (April 20, 2026)¶
Expanded 8 plan detail pages to "rich" depth (150-280 lines each) for organic search capture:
- M365 E7 (279 lines) — first-mover for May 1 GA launch. Bundle math, migration path, "not included" section
- Biz Basic (155 lines) — feature tables, enterprise comparison
- Biz Premium (195 lines) — cyber insurance checklist, upgrade diagram
- O365 E1 (165 lines) — "No M365 E1" SEO targeting
- Frontline F1/F3 (190 lines) — 5 common scenarios, frontline-specific features
- Copilot Pro (160 lines, NEW) — consumer vs enterprise Copilot disambiguation
- E3/E5 enriched — added E7 upgrade FAQs, Sentinel FAQ, cross-links
Also added 4 features to features.toml (agent-365, entra-private-access, entra-internet-access, entra-verified-id) and updated E7 status from preview→ga in plans.toml.
Key lesson: FAQ front matter MUST exactly match body FAQ for Google structured data compliance. QA caught E3/E5 mismatches before deploy.