Microsoft 365 Prices Rising For Businesses and Governments in July 2026 (reuters.com)
- Reference: 0180347985
- News link: https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/12/09/1953225/microsoft-365-prices-rising-for-businesses-and-governments-in-july-2026
- Source link: https://www.reuters.com/business/microsoft-lift-productivity-suite-prices-businesses-governments-2025-12-04/
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/microsoft-lift-productivity-suite-prices-businesses-governments-2025-12-04/
"AI" is not good enough yet (Score:2)
1100 new features!!... I'd rather eliminate AI from the productivity suite rather than pay for it. It seems to be creeping in anyways even through we have never paid for additional copilot features. Maybe someone who actually uses it knows, but I assume you start using it then it tells you need to upgrade to do the thing you actually wanted it to do?
Not enough to make a difference (Score:2)
No one is going to balk at $7 a month when the Excel monkey using the product costs five times as much as that per hour. Th A just shows how badly all of the AI efforts at Microsoft must be failing though. The money has to come from somewhere at the end of the day. I'm surprised they aren't squeezing harder. Even though there are alternatives to Office, many of which are good, the amount of time lost to switching or retraining easily exceeds years worth of subscription fees.
Re: (Score:2)
It's the boiling frog approach to revenue. Start at an attractive rate and increase it by 'no big deal' until eventually it would be a big deal.
See also, microtransactions.
Companies have learned that customers barely pay attention to the absolute costs, and just note the incrementals they incur in the moment.
Let's see... (Score:2)
Multiply that by two million...
LibreOffice (Score:3)
LibreOffice will be raising it's licensing costs by even steeper percents. Individual users will go from $0 up 10% to $0. Enterprises will go from $0 up a whopping 30% to $0.
If you have access to a MSFT store account... (Score:3)
As in an alumnus or current employee, you can buy forward for years and have your sub running for at least 5 years in advance. I would advise this. Just keep buying family 365 subs and putting the codes into your existing account. I mean yes, think of transitioning, but you can put it off quite a while this way.
Yes, I realize this is for business, but they'll be coming for Family soon too.
Re: (Score:3)
Windows 365 Subs were just raised at the beginning of the year, from $99 MSRP for a family plan, up to $139. It's still possible to buy the $99 plan but you have to very carefully navigate to find the option that doesn't include Copilot AI bullshit.
Re: (Score:2)
It was still something around $20 a year if you have either an employee, alumni or a store pass from either of the above.
I get 10 of them a year and hand them out to interested people.
Re: (Score:2)
In 2020 when they moved to virtual events they gave out digital store access for attending some of the first conferences. I bought up enough years of 365 to last me through 2030. Also bought a bunch of Windows Pro licenses since they were insanely cheap.
Re: (Score:3)
Just rip the bandage off and move the family to LibreOffice. My mom has been using it for over a decade now and it's honestly one of the things that requires the least amount of tech support. I don't think LibreOffice has any bullshit AI crap to worry about either. Most people don't need MS Office for what they're doing.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not about the office, it's about the Onedrive. There are alternatives, but none that are so easy to work with.
I used to manually sftp my stuff from machine to machine before we had it. The alternatives aren't competitive on price.
Re: (Score:3)
Ok, I'll be that guy, and probably be down voted as flame bait, but why worry about the cost? If you want to save money then Libre Office is free and for most users does everything that 365 does. For those niche user that have a specific need to use 365 what is to say that feature will exist next year? Buy 5 years worth only to find the feature that forced you to use 365 is removed or replaced a sub standard AI version next year?
Disclaimer: I haven't used Microsoft Office since around 2014 and I'm bia
Re: (Score:2)
As I said below, the killer app isn't the office applications, it's the Onedrive. Online backup, transfer of your files from machine to machine without thinking very much about it. You end up with a ton of crap stored in there and cleaning it out is not something my mother can do. The office apps are pretty worthless in comparison, you're right, I use Libre for everything myself.
Re: (Score:2)
Wouldn't just moving all that stuff to an external hard drive and teaching her to use it be easier and cheaper?
Then you bring the secondary backup to sync it with whenever you come to visit.