Does Office 365 Cost Money

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  1. Does Office 365 Cost Money Per
  2. Does Office 365 Cost Money

Office 365 Cloud Installation. Price and subscription model. Microsoft Office 365 Home Premium is now being sold in the subscription model, and it costs $99 per year for an entire household to. Why is there a yearly fee for Office 365? All I am struggling to understand why I need to continue to subscribe to paying for my monthly use of Office 365. What benefits do I derive over and above what I currently have? Seamlessly connect your financial accounts to Excel to view and manage all your finances in one place. Understand how you're spending your money and receive personalized insights about your monthly spending so that you can achieve your financial goals. Meet Microsoft 365. Premium Office apps, 1TB of cloud storage, advanced security and more, all in one convenient subscription. Learn more and shop Microsoft 365 ›.

Microsoft Office, a suite of products developed by Microsoft, includes Microsoft Word, Excel, Access, Publisher Outlook and PowerPoint.

Microsoft Office has been at the forefront of dominance in the office suite market until recently when it started facing strong competition from the likes of Google apps for business, OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice.

Apart from being available in the traditional desktop-based form, they also offer different versions of Microsoft office through the cloud (office 365) and via different mobile devices like the Windows Phone.


'Microsoft Office 365 lansering' (CC BY 2.0) by Microsoft Sweden

How much does Microsoft Office cost?

As of 2017, Microsoft offers Office 365 Home, which in order to use online, you will have to pay an annual subscription, ranging from $100 to $400+ a year, depending on the package and if it's either for personal use or business. To make things easier, we created a table below breaking up the costs.

Software PackagePrice
Office 365 Home$99.99/year
Office 365 Professional$69.99/year
Office Home 2016$149.99 one-time fee
Office 365 Businessstarts at $8.25/user
Office 365 Business Premiumstarts at $12.50/user
Office 365 Business Essentialsstarts at $5/user
Office Home & Business 2016 for PC$229.99 one-time fee
Office Professional 2016 for PC$399.99 one-time fee

If you want to bypass the annual subscription fees, then Microsoft does offer Office Home and Student 2016 for $149.99, but you may be able to find it cheaper via third-party retailers or even on eBay for a lot less. Office Home & Business 2016 retails for $229.999, while Office Professional 2016 retails for $399.99. These are the prices for both PC and Mac.

At Best Buy, for example, the prices are the same for the subscription cards, but in some cases, they may hold a sale to bring the costs down. Other retailers to check out includes Sam's Club, Costco and Walmart.

Microsoft Office, designed for the iPad, is free for reading only, but if you want to use the full functionality, you will need an Office 365 subscription.

In the end, when purchasing Microsoft Office, you have three options: either paying the annual subscription, one-time fee or using the slim downed version online via Office.com for free.

An outdated version — Microsoft Office 2013 — can be purchased brand new for about $55.


Microsoft Office overview

Annual personal subscriptions come with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher (PC only), Access (PC only), 1TB OneDrive cloud storage per user, Microsoft support, and 60 minutes per month Skype calls per user. These subscriptions will include up-to-date applications for up to five users. The one-time fee, however, will only include one install only. There will be no upgrades, support or the additional premium add-ons.

As for the business subscriptions, all packages will come with 1TB of OneDrive storage and Desktop versions of Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, plus Access and Publisher for PC only, with the exception of the Business Essentials package. The Premium package only includes business-class email with 50GB of storage and HD video conferencing. The one-time download only includes Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for one user only.

What are the extra costs?

Adding online storage via OneDrive can be an additional cost if you don't buy the annual subscription.

Adding additional users to the online business software can cost $5 to $15 per user depending on which software version you buy.

While optional, some new users prefer a guide to help learn the software. MS Office for Dummies, for example, can retail for $15 to $25.

How can I save money?

Consider downloading a free trial to see if it's worth the investment.

Consider free alternatives that are just as good, such as OpenOffice.org, Google Docs or Libre Office if you don't want to spend the money.

If you are a student or teacher, be sure to take advantage of the student or teacher version to save money.

If you do not want the newer 2013 version, consider using the 2010 version, which can be half the cost. This includes most of the same features in the newer versions.

The one-time fee is often the best deal if you don't want the premium support, multiple users and/or online storage.

eBay has a handful of older versions and software downloads for a fraction of the costs of buying new.

Office.com provides a limited, online-version only of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and other tools for 100 percent free. All you will need is a Microsoft account, which is free to create.

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Average Reported Cost: $74

Less Expensive $1 $1.5K $3K $5K $6.5K More Expensive $8k
Money

How much did you spend?

  1. Evelyn Parziale (Crossville, Tennessee) paid $74 and said:

    $74.35

    Was it worth it? Yes

Microsoft Office is the staple software of modern home computing. Got a PC? Then you need to buy Microsoft Office to get Word, Excel and PowerPoint, right?

That used to be the case.

Nowadays, millions of people have ditched Office for the free Google suite of Docs, Sheets and Slides and embraced cloud computing. But for some, the comfort and familiarity of Microsoft's productivity software is too much to give up and besides, Microsoft offers cloud storage too.

It used to be simple: buy a computer, then buy a CD-ROM loaded with Office. An easy, one-off payment and the software was yours forever (or until your PC gave up). If you want to, you can still do it this way via a one-time download (RIP CD-ROMs).

But Office 365 is the way Microsoft wants you to buy into Office – as a monthly or annual subscription payment that embraces the convenience of cloud storage and services across your multiple devices.

Here, we take a look at what Office 365 gives you and if it's worth investing in over buying Office outright.

What devices does Microsoft Office 365 work on?

Office 365 is compatible with any modern PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android phone or Android tablet (check exact requirements here).

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How much is Microsoft Office 365 in Australia?

Does Office 365 Cost Money Per

There are two tiers of the Office 365 subscription: Home or Personal. There's not much of a price difference between the two but go for Personal if you only need Office for yourself. For a little more, Home lets you share the benefits with up to six people so is ideal for families.

The annual costs saves you money compared to paying monthly, but the monthly subscription is more flexible as you can cancel at any time.

Microsoft Office 365 Home costs AU$129 per year, or AU$13 per month.

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Microsoft Office 365 Personal costs AU$99 per year, or AU$10 per month.

You can try Office for one month as a free trial but it requires your payment details, and will charge you for an annual subscription at the end of the trial unless you cancel.

What does Microsoft Office 365 include?

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Both Home and Personal include the full suite of Office apps and services. The only difference is that Home gives access to six people, while Personal is just for one.

Microsoft Office 365 Home includes:

  • Office for up to 6 people across all their devices

  • Apps for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android

  • Word

  • Excel

  • PowerPoint

  • Outlook

  • Publisher (PC only)

  • Access (PC only)

  • OneDrive with 1TB storage for 6 people

  • Skype

  • OneNote

  • Technical support

Microsoft Office 365 Personal includes:

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  • Office for one 1 person across all their devices

  • Apps for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android

  • Word

  • Excel

  • PowerPoint

  • Outlook

  • Publisher (PC only)

  • Access (PC only)

  • OneDrive with 1TB storage for 1 person

  • Skype

  • OneNote

  • Technical support

Either one is a great deal as it offers every Office service and unlimited sign-ins across devices, so you can use Office on your computer, tablet and phone and any other device you might have (for example more than one computer or on your personal and work phone).

You just download the apps you want from the app store on your PC, Mac, phone or tablet and then sign in with your Microsoft account details.

As well as access to everything and a generous 1TB of cloud storage, Office 365 is great because it will automatically update all of the software to the latest version. So when Microsoft improves Word, you'll get the update over the internet.

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That perk goes for every service on Office 365.

It's worth noting that if you stop paying for Office 365, you can no longer access any of the services. You have to keep paying to keep access to the apps and your existing files. Betterzip 4 0 1.

Office 365 suggests you save those files in the cloud using OneDrive, but it is possible to save files directly to your devices instead if you prefer, which is an easier way of having access to your saved files if you plan to only pay for Office for a short amount of time.

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Can you buy Microsoft Office outright?

If you don't like the idea of a monthly subscription and would prefer to pay once for Office and have it forever like the good old days then you can still do that with Microsoft Office Home & Student 2019 (current version at the time of writing). What version is high sierra.

Office 365 does not have a year in its branding it as it is constantly updated. Buying Office Home & Student 2019 as a one-off purchase means you will forever have that edition of Office, and you won't receive software updates to add new features or upgrade to the next year's version. It does however receive security updates.

Office Home & Student costs AU$199 as a one-off payment and includes:

  • 1 person for only 1 PC or 1 Mac

  • Word

  • Excel

  • PowerPoint

  • OneNote

Unfortunately, that's it - buying Office outright does not get you popular apps like Outlook for email or OneNote. It also doesn't get you OneDrive cloud storage, and you can't use the apps on your phone or tablet - you must download Office to one PC or Mac and forever use it there.

Does Office 365 Cost Money

It is quite restrictive, and we only recommend Office Home & Student's one-off payment if you want the basic Word, Excel and PowerPoint set up on one computer and if you save files locally to the computer or a hard drive.

Otherwise, Microsoft is clearly pushing a superior version of Office with Office 365. While it might take a while to get your head round an annual payment for software, the advantages are clear to see. Think of it as the Netflix of home computing.

You get the latest version of every app regularly updated, generous cloud storage, an email client, sign-in across all your devices for up to six people and technical support. That's a pretty good deal.

If you're comfortable with cloud storage and need Office on more than your computer then Office 365 is worth the spend - it's more the getting used to paying a subscription for something that used to be a one off purchase that is the barrier rather than the value of the software itself.

This article was originally published on the 19th of December 2019.

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