Microsoft 365 Basic gets you 100GB of OneDrive, ad-free Outlook, but no desktop Office...

[AlphaX]

TL;DR: Microsoft 365 Basic is Redmond's latest addition to its Office subscription service (formerly Office 365), which provides users with many useful utilities and applications. For years, consumers were limited to only three tiers for the subscription: Free, Personal, and Family. Microsoft will launch a Basic plan on January 30 for $1.99 per month.

Since 2011, Microsoft 365 has provided a more affordable subscription-based service for Office apps, expanding to include many additional features over the years. Microsoft 365 Basic is a great middle-ground for users who need more features than the free tier, but don't want all that the Personal plan offers.

The Basic option is $1.99 a month, a $5 savings off Microsoft 365 Personal. Basic is essentially the same plan as the Free version but with 100GB of storage instead of 5GB.

In addition to the storage capacity bump, the new subscription will also provide the same apps and features Free customers enjoy, including web-based and mobile versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and OneDrive. Users also get an ad-free experience on Outlook web and mobile.

Basic plan subscribers miss out on extra features found in Personal such as the 1TB of cloud storage, desktop versions of Office apps and Outlook, and improved file encryption. However, the features included in the tier are definitely sufficient for budget-minded consumers. After all, a full terabyte of storage for Office documents is overkill for most.

Microsoft promised that Basic would not replace the free option, however Microsoft will be migrating subscribers of the 100GB OneDrive plan to Microsoft 365 Basic for no additional cost.

Microsoft 365's Basic plan may be worth considering for some users, especially compared to competitors such as Google Workspace, which starts at $6 a month. Adding the tier brings it closer to Apple's iCloud plans, which start at $0.99 for 50GB of storage or $2.99 for 200GB, and Google One that also charges $1.99 for 100GB of storage.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/97241-microsoft-announces-365-basic-new-199mo-subscription-plan.html

 

[Bullwinkle M]

Are you telling me.......
That I could save another $2 a month.......
By Ignoring this Microsoft Spam?

Oh.....I'm in baby!

 

[CowsGotMilk]

I would really love to use legal premium software, if companies would start selling plans with use hours. For example, 500 hours for 2$ instead of 1 month. I don't use Office type apps often, but when I do, I choose free alternatives.

 

[dangh]

It is better to use free office software instead of ms office 99pct of time. And if you realise that it is more expensive for ms to not allow you to install office on your desktop you will understand that this is simply scam to push you into scam saas world. They prefer to give cheaper subscription and pay to run package on their servers, than allow you to run it locally without incurring then additional costs ...

 

[toooooot]

Google drive is better. And if you need the office itself, one time purchase is much more preferable.

 

[Biostud]

I'm very happy with my Office 365 family plan.

 

[BobHome]

So 'Basically', for $2 you get Outlook without ads.

 

[Feng Lengshun]

Meh. It would have been somewhat worth it if they still allow Outlook web to receive mail from other POP3 server.

I used to use Outlook web to have a centralized way of accessing my work email on my Linux devices. Now I can't, and thank god I do have the old Win7 laptop my office gave me so those mails were also archived there. Outlook web is garbage, and I only use Outlook offline because that's what everyone uses in my country (and because everything else looks dated or can't deal with the .pst file we use to have offline archive of old mails).

It sucks that I have to use Outlook 365 (gotten via a key reseller which is literally 100x cheaper than official MS) via CrossOver to have my mail on my Linux devices without using remote desktop, but I honestly would rather do that than trust Outlook web ever again.

Also, I really don't need 100GB of OneDrive space. I used to pay for that because I want to keep my devices synced, but then I realized that I don't need everything to be always online, syncing more and larger files sucks anyways, and just switched to Syncthing (later Resilio) to just sync the files through my devices directly P2P and only upload the files people need to access when they need them.