Is a Microsoft 365 subscription worth it? Hi, everyone.
Leo Notenboom here for Askleo.com. if you're not subscribed to my weekly Confident computing newsletter,
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with greater confidence. So, Microsoft 365,
formerly known as Office 365, is Microsoft's subscription service to
the Microsoft Office suite of software. Here's the question that I get,
periodically actually. What's this business
with renting software? It might be fine for businesses, but I can't afford to pay every
year for the foreseeable future. Is it that much better
that the payment is worthwhile? When this first came out,
honestly, I had the same reaction. I had a visceral negative reaction
to subscription software. I was raised, if you will, in this industry with the concept of you
buy software once and you use it. You get updates for a while, but if you want the next version,
you then buy it again. Subscriptions seemed like, I don't know, just a long term commitment that I
wasn't necessarily ready to make. However, as it turns out,
if you do the math on the Microsoft 365 subscription,
it's actually a pretty darn good deal. I heartily recommend you consider it. So to be clear,
no one is forcing you to change. If you want to buy a copy of Microsoft Office and pay for it once,
you can still do that. There's nothing preventing
you from doing that. Yeah, you'll certainly see all the marketing materials and all the other
stuff encouraging you to buy the subscription service, and that's
the nature of the beast, right? Honestly, I think it's a better product. But for those of you who want
to just do this once and get it over with and not have to do
it every year, that option remains. And honestly, it's the same product. It really is the same Microsoft Office that the subscription folks will be
getting for a little less money. Here's the thing. The one time payment,
which I don't know, it's changed. It's been several hundred
dollars in the past. I think it's 150 or 200. Obviously, those numbers are subject
to change and may very well change depending on where you
happen to be on the planet. But the bottom line is you'll pay a one time fee for the product
and you'll get the product. If you subscribe,
you will pay less per year. For example, the option for the Microsoft
365 Family subscription is currently, as I record this, about 100
bucks a year, 99 actually. It's less
to get one year of the subscription than it is to get Microsoft Office
as a one time payment. But wait, as they say, there's more. When you get an Office or a Microsoft 365
subscription, yes, you get all of Office, you get Word, you get Excel, you get
PowerPoint, you get the whole nine yards. You can't install it
on up to five computers. You cannot do that with the
single purchase option. It includes a terabyte
of One Drive storage, which again, I don't believe is part
of the one time purchase option. And you can share your subscription with
up to six people in your household, which means that you can
have it on up to five computers. They each can then have it
on up to five computers. They will have a different Microsoft account, so the five computers will be
associated with your Microsoft account. My example is a perfect one here. I've got multiple PCs. My wife is here. We all share the same Microsoft account for Microsoft Office, and I've got
it installed on multiple computers. I can still share my subscription
with up to six other people. Now, they say in your household, I have no idea how they define a household
or even whether they try to enforce it. But the bottom line is that when you think
about it, you can pay for it once and then have to pay for it again
if you ever want to upgrade. But you can still pay for it once
and then have to pay for it again if you want to install it on another computer or
pay for it again if you ever want to upgrade to a more recent
version when those come out. Or you can pay annually your $99, and be able to install it on up to five
computers, share it with up to six friends and your family,
and get a terabyte of One Drive space. It really does seem like
a pretty nifty deal to me. I know of people who get the Office
subscription, the Microsoft 365 subscription just
for the terabytes of One Drive space. The Office applications are like throwing in for free if you want
to look at it that way. And to be clear, it's the same product. If you buy it once or you sign up for
the subscription, it's the same program. It's still Word, it's still Excel. You're just missing out
on some of those other features. Now, is there risk?
Of course there's risk. There's always risk. Could they raise the price? Absolutely. It's been out for a while now. I forget exactly when,
but it's been at least, I'd say, half a dozen years since the Microsoft,
or actually originally the Office 365 subscription was introduced,
the price hasn't gone up. It's the same. It's been roughly $100 a year for this
Microsoft 365 family subscription. Could they raise it in the future? Of course they could. Other software that we subscribe to,
like my streaming services, most recently, yeah, they've all
announced price increases. It's the nature of the beast. It hasn't happened yet. Do you do does buying it once
insulate you from that? Yes and no. You're assuming that if you buy it once and use that forever,
you'll never have to pay again and you'll be basically insulated
for many price increases. The reality is that I almost guarantee you that in two years, three years, five
years, you're going to want another copy. You're going to want to upgrade
the copy of Office that you have. At that point, you're going
to have to pay for it again. That is going to cost and it's
going to cost you more. Like I said, right now it's like
in the 150, $200 range somewhere. It could be more in the future. It's on you. It's a decision that you can make. There's one other option that I will throw out here that costs you
absolutely nothing, and that is to use Office alternatives
like Libre Office or Apache Open Office. Both of those are completely free. Both of those include a suite of tools. No, they don't include things like
One Drive or anything like that, but they do offer basic applications,
the Office applications that you are comfortable with and familiar with
in their own user interface. Sometimes there are compatibility issues,
but given the price, free,
maybe those are things that you're willing to overlook or don't need to worry
about in order to save you that money. There is no subscription
when the product is free. But ultimately, if Microsoft Office is on your radar,
as soon as you start doing the math, as soon as you start taking a look
at everything that you're getting for the subscription price, in my opinion,
Microsoft 365 is a hell of a deal and I recommend you seriously,
seriously consider it. For comments, for updates, for links related to this
topic and more, visit askleo.com/3440. I'm Leo Notenboom and this is Askleo.com.
Thanks for watching.
