Microsoft Office 365 Home Update: More Users And More Sign-ins
by Brett Howse on September 3, 2018 9:15 PM EST- Posted in
- Software
- Microsoft
- Office
- Office 365
For those that are subscribed to Office 365 Home, Microsoft has announced that they are updating the contract to allow more users to access the subscription, and they’re updating the installation limits as well.
When Office 365 Home was first announced, it was $99/year and gave access to Office applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more, plus additional OneDrive storage for each user. Although the amount of OneDrive space has changed, it’s currently 1 TB of OneDrive per person on the subscription. So in theory, you could have up to 5 TB of file stored in the cloud as well as the Office applications for up to five people.
Office was limited to 10 device installs total, and you could manage which devices were activated through the Office.com portal, but this is changing as well. Five of the devices could be PCs and the rest could be tablets or phones.
| Office 365 Home Users | |||||
| Office 365 Personal | Office 365 Home (Previous) | Office 365 Home (New) | |||
| Office 365 Users | 1 | 5 | 6 | ||
| Office Apps | Word Excel PowerPoint OneNote Outlook Publisher Access |
||||
| Office Installs | 1 PC/Mac, 1 tablet, and 1 phone | 5 PCs/Macs, 5 tablets and 5 phones | Unlimited devices, 5 signed in to Office per user | ||
| OneDrive | 1 TB x 1 user | 1 TB x 5 users | 1 TB x 6 users | ||
| Skype minutes | 60 x 1 user | 60 x 5 users | 60 x 6 users | ||
| Microsoft Support (Phone/Chat) | Included | ||||
| Price (USD) | $69.99/year $6.99/month |
$99.99/year $9.99/month |
$99.99/year $9.99/month |
||
With the new terms, Office 365 Home is now going to cover six people instead of five, and the 1 TB of OneDrive of course extends to that sixth person, increasing the total cloud storage to 6 TB. The device limit has changed as well, with no limits to the number of devices Office is installed on, but each person will only be able to be signed into Office on five devices at a time. This is a big jump though from 10 total for all 5 people.
These new changes come with no additional cost. Office 365 Home still costs $99/year, or $9.99 per month.
Source: Microsoft
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Chaitanya - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
People do seem to forget to add the long terms cost of Software as service and just look at upfront cost and compare it to initial cost of owning perpetual license. Sure there are some benefit to software as service but costs do outweigh those for most home users. One of the reasons why people hate Adobe is for going exclusively as rental model and killing option to buy standalone license.Spunjji - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
A lot of that hate is misplaced, though - especially in the case of Adobe. I had to buy a new version of Lightroom every 2-3 years in order to get RAW updates; the subscription came out as a similar cost year-on-year and gave me Photoshop too.I tried switching to alternative packages and nothing quite worked out. YMMV!
FreckledTrout - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
True. We are talking $1,000 over 10 years. Vast majority of people wouldn't need to upgrade Office but once every 5-10 years depending on new computers/OS'es over that time. I'm surprised they haven't made an excel/word only version of these plans for like $2 a month.Also, this is something I may consider if they built a really nice integrated backup into Windows 10 that could use this OneDrive storage. A proper client side encrypted full/incremental type backup.
jabber - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
1TB of Google Drive space costs £80 a year in the UK so with world standard Office thrown in it sounds a pretty good deal.Yuriman - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
I don't think Microsoft wants those casual home users who just get on their computers (or phones) for watching cat videos on YouTube. Office is quickly becoming "premium only". Your kid will go to college and get a license through their school. You'll get one through your business. Really, how many people have serious "OFFICE" needs at home, whose costs won't be covered by the office they work at?shabby - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
No one does.kaidenshi - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
Your perpetual license didn't come with 1TB of cloud storage though. That's the true value in this package: Competitive pricing for a ton of remote, always backed up storage, with essentially a free Office suite thrown in, along with phone support.That being said, I don't use OneDrive or Office at home, so I'm not a target customer either way. But I can recognize the value of the total package.
Spunjji - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
How many licences did you get? Last time I bought Office was 2007, which got me licenced perpetually for 2 systems. It cost £120. The subscription gives you more applications (dubiously useful), regular updates (less-so), a decent whack of cloud storage (handy for backups) and enough licences to cover a decently sized household. For me that's quite a good offer.Gadgety - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
100 USD, having only worked in Microsoft Office for 20+ years, I started using LibreOffice a couple of years ago. It's close enough in functionality to avoid an eternal subscription to Microsoft.milkywayer - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
I've been hoping for a lower priced single user option from MS for a while. Glad to see it. Might use it in the future.