Microsoft Office 365
Office 365 is best described as a subscription based plan that includes access to Office applications plus other productivity services such as Exchange Mail and file-sharing that are enabled over the Internet (cloud services). Office 365 includes various plans for use at home and for business.
Office 365 Home priced at £79.99 per year allows home users to fully install the latest version of Microsoft Office apps on an unlimited number of devices across Apple, Windows and Android platforms.
The primary Office 365 subscriber can also share their subscription benefits with up to five other people in their household who in turn can install Office 365 apps on an unlimited number of devices.
The Office 365 Home desktop apps include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access while the Mac version is similar minus Publisher and Access which are not available on the Mac platform. If you wanted to obtain the Office apps on multiple computers/devices through a one off purchase (also known as a retail product or perpetual license), you would be looking at a small fortune in comparison as each Mac/PC would have to be licensed separately. Bear in mind, 5 or 10 years down the line, unlike the subscription format, you would not be eligible for the latest version of Office. Included in Office 365 Home is OneDrive cloud with a whopping 1 TB of storage per user. This is ideal for storing, editing and sharing documents, photos, and videos from anywhere, on all your devices. Also included is 60 monthly Skype minutes per user. The Skype allowance can be used to call mobile phones and landlines from any device where you have Skype installed, whether it’s your mobile phone, tablet or Smart TV.
Microsoft offer a Office 365 “Personal” subscription at a reduced price of £59.99 per year which is similar to the “Home” version with the major difference being it only covers the primary subscriber without the family sharing benefits.
Office 365 Business is broken down into 3 products: Business Essentials (£3.10 user/month), Business (£7.00 user/month) and Business Premium (£7.80 user/month). The “Business Essentials” and “Business Premium” plans both include Exchange email which is a business class email service with a huge 50 GB mailbox per user. Microsoft Outlook users will love Exchange email for its synchronised mail, handy web access and contacts/calendar management to name just a few features. Business users planning on using Exchange mail will need to re-configure their domain names and DNS to run through the Office 365 mailservers. The initial setup can be a little challenging and requires careful planning to minimise disruption to any existing email service but is well worth the effort!
The “Business Essentials” plan does not include Office Apps and is effectively an email only service with business versions of OneDrive & Skype. The pricier “Business” and “Business Premium” plans include Office Apps but don’t get caught out by the “Business” plan which doesn’t include Exchange email.
Office 365 Home, Personal & Business are compatible with Windows 7 or later on the PC platform and the newest and previous two versions of macOS on the Mac platform.
Contact ITPeople for more advice on Office 365 subscriptions.
