Microsoft has made its preference clear: The company believes that “ the cloud will power the work of the future” and would love it if everyone purchased Microsoft 365. Why choose to buy it one way and not the other? The answer can be confusing, especially since each suite of tools includes most of the same applications, give or take.

In this story, we’ll use “Microsoft 365” as shorthand for all “365” subscriptions unless we’re referring to a specific plan. At the enterprise level, both Office 365 and Microsoft 365 plans are available. When this version was introduced in 2011, Microsoft called it Office 365, later renaming it Microsoft 365 for personal and small business subscriptions. Then there’s the subscription version that lives in the cloud and for which you pay a monthly or annual fee. There’s the “perpetual” version of Office that’s available as a one-time purchase the most current version is Office 2021.

This suite of productivity tools is used by people working in 106 languages in nearly every country in the world, and it’s available in versions for personal, small business, enterprise, and educational use.īut there is more than one way to buy Office - or, rather, to buy the license to use it.

Microsoft Office is how billions of people around the world go to work and school, whether they do it from home, an office, a classroom, or a combination of any of those.

Microsoft excel 2016 open license