Microsoft 365 and Office 365: new pricing for business and Enterprise customers

Microsoft announced plans to change the pricing of the company’s subscription-based services Microsoft 365 and Office 365 this week.

The pricing changes will go into effect on March 1, 2022 for business and Enterprise customers. Home and education product pricing won’t change “at this time” according to Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365.

The pricing of the following products will change on March 1, 2022 (all plans per user)

• Microsoft 365 Business Basic (from $5 to $6)
• 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)

Pricing will be increased globally “with local market adjustments for certain regions”, according to Sparato.

Microsoft notes that the pricing increase is the first since the introduction of Office 365, released in October 2010. Microsoft 365 launched on July 10, 2017 and most Office 365 products were rebranded at the time to take into account new non-Office products such as Microsoft Teams, Power Apps, OneDrive, Yammer or Whiteboard, that were added to select subscription plans.

The pricing increase “reflects the increased value” added to the subscription plans since the launch of Office 365 and Microsoft 365.

Sparato’s post on Microsoft’s Microsoft 365 website highlights some of the new features and additions before the new pricing is revealed.

Highlights mentioned include the following:

• Integration off Microsoft Teams as “the only integrated solution” to “meet, chat, call, collaborate, and automate business processes”.
• New category of collaborative apps in Teams.
• Real-time and asynchronous collaboration in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint desktop apps.
• New attack surface reduction to better defend against ransomware and other threats.
• Data Loss Prevention for emails and documents.
• Built-in mobile device management.
• AI-powered features and tools across Microsoft 365.
• Audio conferencing capabilities improvements.

Pricing increases by up to 20%, depending on the subscription plan.

Closing Words

Will business and Enterprise customers accept the price increase, or go looking for other products? It seems likely that the majority will keep most if not all subscriptions in place.

Home users won’t see announcements about price increases in the near future according to the announcement, but the “at this time” phrase suggests that a pricing increase will be announced for the Home products eventually as well.

Now You: are you subscribed to any of the mentioned products?

Summary

Article Name

Microsoft 365 and Office 365: new pricing for business and Enterprise customers

Description

Microsoft announced plans to change the pricing of the company’s subscription-based services Microsoft 365 and Office 365 this week.

Author

Martin Brinkmann

Publisher

Ghacks Technology News

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