Microsoft increasing price for Office 365 and Microsoft 365 next year

[nanoguy]

In brief: Microsoft will be raising prices for business and enterprise customers of Office 365 and Microsoft 365 next year, which could translate into billions of additional revenue for the Redmond giant. Considering the value the company has added to its productivity suite over the years, a price increase shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

Microsoft's Office 365 and Microsoft 365 suites have been major revenue drivers for the company, and they'll likely remain that way for the foreseeable future. The former service has amassed more than 300 million users in ten years, and the latter boasts over 50 million subscribers.

The two services have seen numerous improvements over the years, from the addition of automation tools and AI-based features, to improved security and compliance, and growing the family of Office productivity apps -- including a cohesive communication and collaboration tool in the form of Microsoft Teams. The recent shift to working and studying from home pushed the company to release more than 300 new capabilities for Teams, which now has over 250 million monthly users.

With Microsoft 365 in particular, the company wanted to emphasize just how far its cloud-based services have evolved, where pricing has been the only constant due to how Microsoft makes discounts for renewals and bulk purchases. That's about to change, however, with the company announcing updated pricing that will take effect on March 1, 2022, as follows:

• Microsoft 365 Business Basic (from $5 to $6 per user per month)
• Microsoft 365 Business Premium (from $20 to $22)
• Office 365 E1 (from $8 to $10)
• Office 365 E3 (from $20 to $23)
• Office 365 E5 (from $35 to $38)
• Microsoft 365 E3 (from $32 to $36)

The price increase isn't that high for big organizations, but small and medium-sized businesses will likely feel it when it hits, as they often don't manage to get the same discounts as larger organizations. Consumers and education customers won't see any price changes, and the company won't adjust the cost of Microsoft 365 F1 ($2.25 per user per month), Microsoft 365 F3 ($8), and Microsoft 365 E5 ($57).

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https://www.techspot.com/news/90897-microsoft-increasing-price-office-365-microsoft-365-next.html

 

[QuantumPhysics]

I remember when using MS Office was "FREE".

You paid for it, you got it to use indefinitely.

My only hedge against them rising prices is my steady investment into MS stock over the last 15 years- which does pay dividends.

 

[DZillaXx]

I remember when using MS Office was "FREE".

You paid for it, you got it to use indefinitely.

My only hedge against them rising prices is my steady investment into MS stock over the last 15 years- which does pay dividends.

You can still buy a perpetual office license iirc.

But honestly 365 offers so much for a business its a no brainer....

Its easy to see why that business only keeps growing, and the only other competition like google's workspace is a far second best. But easier for non IT to manage.

To really take advantage of 365 you really need someone to set it up for the business. Otherwise they are missing out on big features. Setting up Sharepoint alone is a little more complex than it needs to be.

 

[Uncle Al]

Switched to LibreOffice years ago and never looked back. They have kept pace with MS Office, including many of the features at a price that everyone can appreciate .... FREE!

 

[Bl00dyMinded]

Switched to LibreOffice years ago and never looked back. They have kept pace with MS Office, including many of the features at a price that everyone can appreciate .... FREE!

I agree. Even the standalone Office License isn't worth it anymore. LibreOffice is great, and our Healthcare Organization is thinking about it since the cost of Office 365 for over 30k employees is expensive!

 

[Plutoisaplanet]

You can still buy a perpetual office license iirc.

But honestly 365 offers so much for a business its a no brainer....

Its easy to see why that business only keeps growing, and the only other competition like google's workspace is a far second best. But easier for non IT to manage.

To really take advantage of 365 you really need someone to set it up for the business. Otherwise they are missing out on big features. Setting up Sharepoint alone is a little more complex than it needs to be.

This hit the nail on the head. Cloud hosted email, AD provisioning, multi-factor authentication, Cloud storage for every user, and data retention/audit policies are some of the important features our business is relying on (not to mention Office and Teams).

I bet SharePoint would also become increasingly used if Microsoft took care of some of the obvious problems with it. You pointed out setting it up needs specialized attention, but also ease of use, look and feel, and UI all need work for end users to accept it.

 

[kapital98]

Switched to LibreOffice years ago and never looked back. They have kept pace with MS Office, including many of the features at a price that everyone can appreciate .... FREE!

I use LibreOffice as well (and before that, other open source office suites).

Still, as someone who uses Word and Excel in an office, there is still a significant difference between the two.

If I'm submitting a legal document, or even a quick letter to a client, the fonts installed with Windows are simply better. Libre Office is a perfectly fine program but the fonts look "dated". It's like looking at a typed document from 1990 v. 2005.

While this shouldn't be a big deal: Those little visual impressions make a difference (just like certain typefaces within an individual software program just 'pop' while others are mundane).

Even with that, I wouldn't go back to Office. But, if starting any front-end business, I'd still recommend people use Word. Excel is even a starker difference.

 

[Dimitriid]

A while back I decided that a tiny payment per month was better than trying to find a way around having office on my personal machine for whenever I need to open excel files or word documents and honestly don't want to deal with reformatting crap on libre office, WNC, etc.

As to why I've stayed with it it's simple: once you start using that 1 tb of space that comes with one drive it becomes pretty nifty. I still plan on eventually creating my own instance of next cloud to also self host VPN and Cloud storage and backups whenever I decide I actually want to get around to do all that but for right now, it's fast & easy to transfer stuff between work and personal pc, phone and work pc, phone and personal, tablet to phone, etc. You get the idea.

 

[DZillaXx]

I agree. Even the standalone Office License isn't worth it anymore. LibreOffice is great, and our Healthcare Organization is thinking about it since the cost of Office 365 for over 30k employees is expensive!

LibreOffice's print settings are beyond trash though. We do a lot of scaling options that just were not there last time I tried to use LibreOffice, or alteast were hidden.

Though 365 is much more than just Office. You can switch to Basic and make everyone use the online version on Excel, etc. And still get Sharepoint/onedrive and Email.

 

[DZillaXx]

This hit the nail on the head. Cloud hosted email, AD provisioning, multi-factor authentication, Cloud storage for every user, and data retention/audit policies are some of the important features our business is relying on (not to mention Office and Teams).

I bet SharePoint would also become increasingly used if Microsoft took care of some of the obvious problems with it. You pointed out setting it up needs specialized attention, but also ease of use, look and feel, and UI all need work for end users to accept it.

Sharepoint is really no different than something like dropbox on users machines once installed and setup. Just another folder in file explorer. The Web UI is not as well thought out and sometimes even confusing for users. Normally the only things one really needs to use the web ui for is sharing files or reverting a older version of a file. The Phone app seems to be just as good as dropbox.

For advanced users the fact that setting it up there are different types of sites you can make, old and new and that admin consoles for both are different. To setup permissions correctly is not an easy to learn method. From a Admin perspective it is a sh*tshow.

But I've moved our company to a full 365 setup. We were using Dropbox business before simply because of the learning curve SharePoint needed prior to me taking over. Moved all users using a computer to Premium so they have access to Azure AD. Azure AD login for all company computers is a great way to secure data and keep control of user password requirements. 2FA is a great tool, and self service recovery is a nice option. All user folders are moved to their personal onedrive account using folder redirection, so user data is kept synced to the cloud. With Azure AD you'd need a local machine with AD Connect for Print Server, User Write-Back is not currently an option and something I can't wait for them to bring back. Depending how you use your Azure AD, a user account just for printer use may be best option. Always up to date Email server... Nothing but good things for 365.

When google's workspace is the same cost, I have no idea why people use that over 365. Other than ease of use. For a Business it is easily a cheap monthly cost that pays for itself.

 

[BabyFaceLee]

Like many individuals that pay for Microsoft 365 it's largely because I've used it for work. I use Excel and Access in particular for home management and wouldn't be without it.

 

[mctommy]

Office365 for medium to large size business all day every day. You can also get some further discounting if you have a decent chunk of Azure spend. The one limitation of onedrive is the ability to share externally securely so some people use dropbox for that specific purpose.

 

[Biostud]

I pay for Microsoft 365, but mostly because I use Onedrive for photo storage.

 

[TorturedChaos]

Switched to LibreOffice years ago and never looked back. They have kept pace with MS Office, including many of the features at a price that everyone can appreciate .... FREE!

We have Office 365 so I can open Office files and print them for customers.
We prefer PDF files, but don't always get what you want. LibreOffice often jumbles complex Word files. Well so does Word, but LibreOffice does it worse.
When I need a spread sheet software I go for Calc before Excel tho, unless I need to add time. Can't seem to make Calc behave for that.

I would happily only run LibreOffice, but I need to intereact with too many Word and Excel files that don't open correct in their LibreOffice counterpart.

Interestingly, PowerPoint or LibreOffice Impress or Google Doc's version, does a pretty good job of building large posters. Impress handles printing them or exporting to a PDF much better than PowerPoint does, once you get up to 24x36 and larger sizes.

 

[yukka]

So won’t affect consumers (I buy the family plan and it’s easily worth the £45 for 15 months that I pick up on Amazon’s prime day for six accounts each with all apps and their own 1TB of OneDrive storage) and it won’t affect education. Excellent.

 

[Lounds]

I'm just glad education prices are staying where they are. I don't want to use Google Admin for my job.

 

[ZedRM]

LibreOffice's print settings are beyond trash though.

No they are not. Total disinformation. Printing in LibreOffice and OpenOffice alike is effortless and perfect.

We do a lot of scaling options that just were not there last time I tried to use LibreOffice, or at least were hidden.

Those problems were solved many years ago.

 

[trparky]

The only reason I keep paying for Microsoft Office on a yearly basis is because of OneDrive. Most offsite data backup services pretty much suck, except for OneDrive. It's cheap considering that you get six users worth of coverage and with each user you get 1 TB of storage. I really consider the Office component the cherry atop the OneDrive sundae.

 

[yukka]

The only reason I keep paying for Microsoft Office on a yearly basis is because of OneDrive. Most offsite data backup services pretty much suck, except for OneDrive. It's cheap considering that you get six users worth of coverage and with each user you get 1 TB of storage. I really consider the Office component the cherry atop the OneDrive sundae.

Exactly. Last time I checked, Dropbox was the price for a single 1TB as the Family pack of 6 accounts in OneDrive/Office

 

[cliffordcooley]

When I need a spread sheet software I go for Calc before Excel tho, unless I need to add time. Can't seem to make Calc behave for that.

Can you give an example? Everything I just tried seems to work.

 

[TorturedChaos]

Can you give an example? Everything I just tried seems to work.

When I sum elapsed time in a column for payroll Excel works most of the time, Calc doesn't work most of the time. Calc always tries to convert it to a time of day.