Office 365 was the subscription service for Microsoft Office that was offered to those who would rather pay monthly or annually to ensure always having access to the newest version and features of the MS Office suite.
As an employee of a qualifying enterprise, you may remember being able to make a one-time purchase for MS Office to use at home. The full Pro-Premium version of the suite used to be sold for just $15 under this program.
Those days of purchasing it so cheaply are long gone, but Microsoft does offer a 30% discount to the subscription price for those who have been eligible to use the home discount in the past.
The family license plan covers 6 users and costs $6.18 per month (including tax) if you opt for paying annually. If you choose to subscribe, your credit card on file will automatically be billed annually unless you choose to stop using the suite. The cost is lower if you’re the only one that will be using the suite.
This license includes the Windows, Mac, and mobile versions of the Office suite (no Mac version of Publisher or Access) and includes 1TB (1024GB) of their online cloud storage called OneDrive per user.
To get started, visit the Microsoft Home Use Program website: http://hup.microsoft.com/
You’ll be prompted to enter your work email address to see if you qualify for the discount program. You may also be asked to enter an email address connected to a Microsoft account. If you don’t have one, you’ll likely be prompted to set one up. If you have a HotMail email address or an Outlook email address, you would most likely use that address for the MIcrosoft account.
After this, you’ll be prompted to check the e-mail account that is connected to your MIcrosoft account for a link that will let you purchase the subscription.
Initially, when I clicked this link, the prices that came up didn’t look correct. It said the family subscription was $99.99 which seemed a little high to me. When I checked the regular Microsoft 365 subscription page, it showed the same price! The other page clearly said 30% off, along with the price of $99.99, so I thought that maybe the discount would show up after entering billing information. I proceeded to add the family subscription to my cart and then went to checkout. That’s when I realized that it still wasn’t showing the discount.
I then removed the subscription from my cart, and hit the back button to reload the page showing the prices. The 30% discount price now magically appeared, and I was able to get the discount price.
Whether we like it or not, paying a subscription for software is the new norm, and although we are paying more than in the past for Office, the 30% discount is better than paying full price.