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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Gadgety - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
Alternatives in LibreOffice and Google's Drive. Both require a somewhat modified work flow, but considering the savings of almost $100 a year, they are more attractive propositions than Office 365.bigboxes - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
Still can't get me to pay that much for it. It's a different age. They can try all they want. They'd be lucky to get a one time payment of $69.99, let alone for a year. This isn't the year 2000.Drazick - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
I like to see this offer as that - 5 of us are paying 2$ / Month per 1TB of Online Storage and we get Office for free!For 2$ / Month on Google Drive / iCloud / Dropbox you get a lot less storage.
vivekvs1992 - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
Yes exactly... If i want to try one cloud service I'd rather get free office along with it.. Plus its about 8$ here for me per month.. Excellent to do my work in a flow between my laptop, ipad and then quickly download it to my phone and send to my professor through whatsappSpunjji - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
This. For some people it's a great deal, for everyone else they can just buy perpetual licences / use FOSS.Marlin1975 - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
Unless you are using some specific piece of microsoft's software most are better served by using Libre Office. Free to download and works great for what most people use office for.https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/
PeachNCream - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
Yup, pretty much this stuff. I don't see a reason for MS Office to exist at this point beyond the fact that LibreOffice is rather obscure in the US so not enough people know they can get a good office suite at no cost.trparky - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
I've seen LibreOffice completely mangle a Word document that I had, it had special formatting that even Office 2013 had trouble with.baka_toroi - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
Careful, trparky. You're smashing Marlin1975's idyllic world!trparky - Tuesday, September 4, 2018 - link
The $99 a year for Office 365 is a steal considering that you get 1 TB of OneDrive storage for six users. Other cloud storage providers charge more for that kind of storage. Getting the Office part of it is just the cherry on top of the OneDrive sundae.