Office 365 is a leading cloud-based collaboration suite with Office application and other productive services offered by Microsoft. It is based on SaaS architecture, it means the delivery of software in terms of subscription plans rather than purchasing the entire software. Microsoft 365 includes everything you know in Office 365. Microsoft 365 is designed to help people and businesses achieve more with innovative Office apps, intelligent cloud services, and world-class security. Does Microsoft 365 cost more? No, the subscription cost will not change. Tip: If you have a Microsoft 365 Family subscription, people you've shared the subscription with can also set up a personalized email address with your connected domain.After you've set up your domain, people you've shared with will see an option to add a personalized email address in the premium features section of Outlook settings.
Have you ever used Word? Or Excel? How about PowerPoint? If the answer is yes, you’re familiar with Microsoft Office.
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In recent years, Microsoft has been steadily growing their subscriber count for their cloud-based product, Office 365. In April 2020, Microsoft rebranded its Office 365 subscription plans as Microsoft 365, so now both their home and business offerings fall under the same branding.
You might be wondering what this means for you. What’s the difference between Microsoft 365 vs Office 365? Are there any new features? And can you still access Microsoft Office programs without a subscription?
In this article, we’ll dive into the differences and which plan would work best for you.
What is Microsoft 365?
Microsoft 365 is a cloud-based subscription service for home and business users, that includes Office applications, cloud storage, and other features dependent on your plan. Whether you’re an individual, a small or midsize business, large enterprise, school or not-for-profit, there’s a plan for you.
Microsoft 365 vs Office 365
Previously Microsoft 365 was a business product from Microsoft, which included Office applications. Microsoft 365 Business was the highest tier of their business plans, with Office 365 Business Essentials and Premium plans underneath.
From April 2020, Office 365 Home and Personal plans and Office 365 Business plans now all fall under the banner of Microsoft 365. Microsoft says the name change is designed in part to help business customers better understand which plan is best for them, promoting the rebranding as “new name, same great value, same price.”
If you already were an Office 365 subscriber for business or personal use, you don’t have to do anything, your subscription will have automatically rolled over to Microsoft 365. If you’re unfamiliar with the plans available, or want to know which option is best for you, keep reading as we break this down below.
What are the different plans and what’s included?
The usual Office apps that you know from Microsoft, such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, Access, and Publisher come with all Microsoft 365 plans for home and personal use. You’ll also get cloud-based features that let you collaborate on documents with others in real-time, plus extra online storage via OneDrive. The Microsoft 365 Family plan is handy for groups of up to six people, who can all share one subscription and access it on multiple devices with their own personal login details.
In comparison with Office 2019, which is sold as a one-time purchase, Microsoft 365 is a subscription, which means you’ll always have the latest features, fixes, and security updates at no extra cost. If you buy the one-off Office 2019 option, you’ll get all the Office apps to download onto one computer, but it doesn’t include any upgrades. This means that if you want to upgrade in the future, you’d need to pay another full license fee.
Microsoft 365 Business plans come with a selection of Office apps and extra features depending on your level of subscription, such as email with your own custom domain name, access to Microsoft Teams, and advanced security protection. Business plans can accommodate up to 300 users, and if you require more, you can opt for an Enterprise plan for an unlimited number of users.
Take a look at our comparison table below to compare the different plans available.
| Plan | Price | Features | Usage |
|---|---|---|---|
Personal | $59.99/year or $5.99/month | Office apps including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher and OneNote. 1 terabyte of cloud storage and security for all devices you use the subscription on. | 1 user, on multiple devices. |
Family | $79.99/year or $7.99/month | All of the Office apps the personal plan includes plus up to 6 terabytes of cloud storage (1 terabyte per person) and security for all devices you use the subscription on. | Up to 6 users, on multiple devices. |
Office Home & Student 2019 (non-subscription) | $119.99, one-time purchase | Classic versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint with no updates or additional features from 365 subscription plans. | 1 user, on 1 PC or Mac. |
Business Basic | $5 user/month (annual commitment) | Web and mobile versions of Office apps including Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Teams, Sharepoint and OneDrive. Also includes 1 TB of cloud storage, Microsoft Teams, email and calendar, and security and compliance features. | Up to 300 users. |
Business Standard | $12.50 user/month (annual commitment) | Everything in Basic, plus always up to date Desktop versions of Office apps. | Up to 300 users. |
Business Premium | $20.00 user/month (annual commitment) | Everything in Standard, plus advanced security and device management. | Up to 300 users. |
Apps for business | $8.25 user/month (annual commitment) | Office apps including Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Teams, Sharepoint and OneDrive, 1 TB of cloud storage, and no additional business features. | Up to 300 users. |
Enterprise (E5, E3, F3) | $10 to $57 user/month (annual commitment) | Office apps, Power apps, content creation apps, advanced analytics. | Unlimited users. |
What new features does Microsoft 365 have?
Microsoft 365 is much the same as the former Office 365, but there are a few cool new features that go beyond the workspace. Additional features are expected in the future, such as perhaps a password manager for Microsoft 365.
Money in Excel
Microsoft is expanding its features to help with “life”, as well as school and work. Think banking features such as “Money in Excel”, which allows you to connect your bank and credit card accounts directly from Excel, download transaction details, and import them into a budget or spreadsheet.
Microsoft Editor
Another feature is “Check Your Writing with Microsoft Editor”, which is Microsoft’s version of Grammarly. It helps you check and correct your grammar and style in more than 20 languages in Word and Outlook, or in your browser with an extension for Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge.
Teams for personal use
Microsoft Teams is a chatting function similar to Slack, which allows you to connect with colleagues through group chats, video calls, and shared calendars and to-do charts. Microsoft has added new features for personal use, such as Team groups, to use it with friends and family.
Family Safety
There are also additional security features, such as Microsoft Family Safety, which is an app for iPhone and Android that manages screen time across Windows 10, Xbox and Android and also includes location-sharing options such as notifications when your family arrives at or leaves work or school and where they are on a map.
Wrapping it up
If you already are a subscriber to Office 365, you’ll have the new Microsoft 365 and all its features without having to do anything. If you were on the fence about whether or not to get a subscription to Microsoft 365, hopefully, this article would have helped you to make a decision.
If you just want the Office apps without any of the additional features on one device, and you don’t mind paying for the license fee again should there be any upgrades, then purchasing Office 2019 one-off might be a good option.
But if you’re looking for something that provides more than just the Office apps and is accessible on different devices with future upgrades and features at no extra cost, a Microsoft 365 subscription is your best bet.
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Start free trialMicrosoft (formerly Office) 365 for Education looks like a great deal. It comes with Microsoft’s productivity suite with additional communication and collaboration applications. It’s also advertised as free. In this post we’ll be asking:
- Is it really free?
- What do you get?
- How does it compare with G Suite?
First things first. Is it really free?
Bottom line up front: Microsoft 365 Education is totally free.
There are three Microsoft 365 Education plans. The basic plan, A1, is entirely free for an unlimited number of individual users. The other plans do charge per user if you want to upgrade your educational organization to those plans to get the extra features. This is entirely optional, the fee education plan has a ton of great stuff.
What do you need to get access to Microsoft 365 Education?
All you need to get started with Microsoft 365 Education is a valid school email address. You can enter it right on the Office Education homepage.
What’s included in the plan?
Microsoft 365 brings all of Microsoft’s core productivity and collaboration tools to the cloud. Email, group chat, and group collaboration within projects across multiple applications are all supported.
With the exception of Publisher, these apps are device-agnostic and can be accessed from anywhere, with storage on the Cloud in OneDrive.
The basic, free version of Microsoft 365 Education brings together the core apps in their online-only forms, meaning there’s no desktop app. Users do get the desktop version of OneNote.
There’s no limit to the number of users, and the plan includes Class and Staff notebooks, Professional Learning Community (PLC) groups, compliance solutions with a unified eDiscovery center, rights management, data loss prevention, and encryption.
Microsoft calls this their ‘A1’ plan: entirely free for faculty and students, it includes:
Outlook
Outlook is Microsoft’s business and organizational email, the equivalent of Gmail. Outlook Web Access (OWA) is free to anyone, and like Gmail is to G Suite, it’s your ID for the rest of the Office ecosystem. For A1 plan users in Microsoft 365 Education, there’s a 50GB inbox limit. There’s unlimited email storage with In-Place archiving and legal hold.
If you already have a standard Outlook account you can connect it to OWA by enabling Outlook Anywhere in File>Account Settings>Exchange>More Settings>Connection.
Word
Microsoft’s flagship word processing and desktop publishing application. The Microsoft 365 version offers instant simultaneous collaboration. A1 plan users get the web version.
Excel
Collaborate, create spreadsheets, get visualizations and use AI to get additional insights. On the A1 plan, you get the web version only.
Powerpoint
Create, edit, and collaborate on presentations and slideshows with animations, cinematic motion, 3D models, and a library of graphics and templates. Web version only.
OneNote
A note-taking app that allows hand drawing and annotation using a stylus, collaboration, and organization. The A1 plan gives you access to the desktop app.
Teams
Teams is a collaboration hub for Microsoft 365 users, with meetings and group chat, admin functions, and third-party apps.
OneDrive
Microsoft’s cloud storage tool, OneDrive lets users set time limits on links, scan documents, whiteboard with their phones, and save the results as documents. There’s also data loss management and encryption. Microsoft 365 Education users get unlimited OneDrive storage.
Stream
Microsoft’s take on YouTube, Stream lets users make, share, and interact with videos across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
Flow
Flow lets users automate tasks quickly and easily across applications without writing any code.
Skype
We’ve all met Skype. It’s the most familiar video calling and conferencing tool out there. Office A1 users get Skype for Business which gives you additional features including call recording and up to 250 attendees on conference calls.
Sway
Sway lets you create visual, interactive stories, offering ready-made design packages and web and device integrations to make design and production easier and faster.
Forms
Forms lets you collect data, post self-marking quizzes, and quickly ask groups questions to gather responses. It integrates tightly with Excel to deliver data and insights.
Yammer
Yammer is Microsoft’s internal social network for organizations. It’s aimed at filling the same niche as something like Slack or doing the same job as a Facebook page but with better functionality and security.
Other Microsoft 365 Plans
So far we’ve talked about the A1 plan, Microsoft’s basic, free Microsoft 365 Education plan. There are two other plans come with more features but they aren’t free.
The A3 Plan
A3 comes with the desktop versions of all the core Microsoft productivity apps, available for up to five Macs and/or PCs per user and up to five mobile devices per user.
You also get the full desktop version of Outlook. Inboxes are capped at 100GB, and there’s unlimited personal OneDrive storage, video meetings with up to 10,000 people on Skype Meeting Broadcast and Microsoft 365 Cloud App Security to deliver risk assessment and insight into threat potential.
The additional tools include:
Access
Microsoft’s Access lets Microsoft 365 users create their own business applications.
Publisher
Publisher lets you build image-plus-text materials including ads, newsletters, and brochures. But it’s only available on PC.
Bookings
Users visit the Bookings page for a faculty member and book the service and time they need. That information is forwarded to the faculty member’s inbox and calendar.
What Does Office 365 E2 Include
A5 Plan
The A5 plan comes with enhanced versions of the tools and functionality on the A3 plan, plus a new tool, Microsoft BI. Users can control how support accesses their inbox with Customer Lockbox, and there’s enhanced visibility and control over your Microsoft 365 environment using personal and organizational analytics, post-breach cyberthreat investigation, and remediation.
Users can also create meetings with a dial-in number that attendees can join by telephone with Audio Conferencing.
Power BI
Power BI is a business analytics tool that delivers insights, data visualizations, and lets multiple users share and collaborate on reports.
Calling Plans
A5 plan users can also use Calling Plans that let you tie domestic and international telephony into your Microsoft Microsoft 365.
Should students use Microsoft 365 instead of G Suite?
This posts does a complete breakdown on G Suite for Education.
For students, Microsoft 365 has one clear advantage: individuals can sign up immediately.
Whether you’re a student or a teacher, if you want G Suite, the whole school has to sign up, and there’s a 14-day waiting period before you get access. Microsoft 365 doesn’t have any such restriction, you can sign up right now as long as you have a valid email address from an educational institution.
Let’s look at how the two offerings break down once you do sign up.
Productivity
Historically, G Suite made online versions of Microsoft’s ubiquitous business, school, and personal productivity apps, then Microsoft moved its apps online and matched Google’s collaboration features. Now, Microsoft 365 and G Suite are similar in many ways.
The major difference is what kind of user they’re best for. Microsoft apps are best for power users. G Suite apps are best for beginners. It’s worth noting that the more advanced functionality that once distinguished Excel, such as conditional formatting, is being rolled out gradually in Sheets. As that happens, though, Microsoft isn’t sitting still: they’re adding more functionality to their own tools.
Similarly, Microsoft Word has more advanced bibliography features and spelling and grammar checking — all things likely to be useful to students. But Docs is simpler and it’s easier to find the main tools.
Microsoft 365 Online applications (the ones you get with the free version, A1) don’t allow you to edit offline. You must be connected to the internet. G Suite’s apps are online by default; offline editing can be enabled by an admin.
There’s not much you can do with one that you can’t do with the other. Office will probably give you a more polished product, Google will probably deliver faster and have a shorter learning curve. But both are supported by extensive how-tos and huge support libraries and third-party videos.
Communication
G Suite has Google Hangouts, which allows anyone with a link to join a video call. Hangouts has a chat window inside it where you can share text and links and send files — much like Skype.
By comparison, Microsoft offers both Skype and Teams, which has better file-sharing and instant messaging and also incorporates project management features. Skype is familiar to most users, while Teams can be a base of operations in a way that you’d need to use several Google apps to equal. You also get Yammer, for which there is no G Suite equivalent. It’s possible that some users will find these communications apps overlap or are already using best-in-class competitors like Slack.
Office has the standard business email tool, Google has the standard webmail tool. Gmail is simpler, more intuitive, but has fewer native features. It’s easier to search for emails in Gmail, but Outlook’s integration with the rest of Microsoft 365 is tighter. Ultimately, neither ecosystem has a decisive edge here.
Storage
There’s no competition: every Microsoft 365 Education user gets unlimited personal cloud storage. So does every G Suite for Education user.
What Does Office 365 Include
Administration
Admins control the settings for all the G Suite accounts in their organization. Office’s permissions are a little more nebulous. G Suite requires that admins sign up their whole organization; Microsoft 365 lets you sign up by yourself.
Security and privacy
Microsoft 365 has impeccably secure data centers, and everything inside the Microsoft 365 ecosystem is encrypted at rest and in transit through SSL/TLS. Office Advanced Threat protection offers defense against spam, malware and other kinds of attack. File-and-volume encryption is achieved through IPsec and TLS, with 2FA as an additional bulwark.
G Suite also has impeccably secure data centers. While it uses solid security throughout, it’s less compliant than Office in some areas: Google Contacts and Groups aren’t HIPPA compliant, for instance.
Microsoft 365 has a slight edge here and is likely to retain it since Microsoft doesn’t have a business model based on advertising and hence on user data.
What Does Office 365 E1 Include
Pricing
G Suite has a free option, G Suite for Education, and an option that costs a few dollars a month. Microsoft has the same.
Here’s how the pricing between G Suite and Microsoft 365 educational plans compare.
G Suite education plans:
- G Suite for Education = Free
- G Suite Enterprise for Education = $4 per user per month
And the Microsoft 365 education plans:
What Does Office 365 Include Outlook
- A1 = Free
- A3 = $2.50 per month for students, $3.25 per month for faculty
- A5 = $6 per month for students, $8 per month for faculty
G Suite has a price advantage — one that adds up rapidly in larger educational institutions. On the other hand, Office delivers a more enterprise-friendly, cohesive package.