Since Windows 10 support ended last October, businesses that were not ready had a lifeline: Extended Security Updates. Pay per device, keep getting critical patches. Reasonable enough as a bridge.
The catch is the pricing curve. Year one costs 61 dollars per device. Year two roughly doubles to 122. Year three doubles again to about 244. Microsoft designed it this way on purpose: it is a countdown, not a subscription.
Run the numbers on your own fleet
Say you have fifteen Windows 10 machines. Three years of ESU costs about 6,400 dollars, and at the end of it you own the same aging computers, now three years older, still needing replacement. That same money buys five to eight solid new business machines that come with Windows 11, faster hardware, and warranties.
The smarter sequence
- Sort your fleet. Machines that can upgrade to Windows 11 for free go first, this quarter if possible.
- Schedule replacements for the rest. Spreading purchases over several months is easier on cash flow than one emergency batch in October.
- Use ESU only for true stragglers. The machine running that one legacy application might genuinely need year one of ESU. That is what it is for. Fifteen machines on ESU is not a plan, it is a postponed decision with interest.
Want the math done for your actual fleet? Book a free consultation and we will inventory what you have and lay out the cheapest sane path.