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Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

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Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#121

Post by traceroute66 »

_lvbh wrote: post #7

This feels like a dangerous game they're playing. Yes, there is some lock in, but competitors exist and are better than ever. The new "features" they're justifying this with (Copilot) isn't even something that most people want

> This feels like a dangerous game they're playing. Yes, there is some lock in, but competitors exist and are better than ever.

Except there are not really any competitors if you look at the whole package.

A Microsoft 365 Business Standard subscription, for example, gets you bundled Teams and Exchange.

The fact you get the big-four (Word, Excel, Outlook and Powerpoint) thrown in is really just icing on the cake.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#122

Post by goku12 »

lewisjoe wrote: post #91

At this point Microsoft office suite is practically a monopoly. Governments around the world rely on it. Every big enterprise and every business needs it. The spec for office documents was authored by Microsoft( and approved by Microsoft!). The spec is basically the docx datastructure published publicly as a standard - which makes building competing office suites even harder. Given the situation there isn't much cust…

> Note: Indian Government recently adopted Zoho office suite to insulate themselves from Microsoft.

India's central government didn't adopt Zoho just to insulate against Microsoft. It was done when Trump imposed a 50% tariff on imports from India. It was targeted against US IT companies in general, though the most mentioned one was Google. Zoho is an Indian company.

I had switched to Zoho about 6 months before them and it has provided a rather decent experience so far. The biggest attractions for me though, are that it's very economical and it has transactions in local currency using local payment systems. They also have a good selection of apps.

Honestly, this was a wasted opportunity for GoI. Indian domestic IT market is an untapped gold mine that they didn't promote much until recently. But better late than never, I guess.

Another relevant point here is that India is one of the countries that voted against Microsoft OOXML document format in favor of ODF at ISO. There are several central and state level government agencies that adopted ODF officially.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#123

Post by jraph »

piker wrote: post #102

Microsoft raising prices on Office?! Must be for all those new useful features brought to your desktop over the last decade. Definitely not monopolistic rent-seeking. No siree. If you or someone you love is a legal user and interested in checking out an in-development word processor built for lawyers, please consider Tritium. It's free to download: https://tritium.legal/download or check out the web version: https://…

Yeah, sure, why not repeat the multi-decade old mistakes and decide to go from being dependent and locked in on one piece of proprietary software to being dependent and locked in on another piece of proprietary software.

2026 is definitely a great time for still not considering free software since lessons have not been learned yet.

You are trashing a competitor despite having the exact same fundamental flaws.

Please be actually better, please don't lock your users in. It's still time to make the right decision.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#124

Post by ocdtrekkie »

traceroute66 wrote: post #121
_lvbh wrote: post #7

This feels like a dangerous game they're playing. Yes, there is some lock in, but competitors exist and are better than ever. The new "features" they're justifying this with (Copilot) isn't even something that most people want

> This feels like a dangerous game they're playing. Yes, there is some lock in, but competitors exist and are better than ever. Except there are not really any competitors if you look at the whole package. A Microsoft 365 Business Standard subscription, for example, gets you bundled Teams and Exchange. The fact you get the big-four (Word, Excel, Outlook and Powerpoint) thrown in is really just icing on the cake.

Teams has annoyingly some lock in value for 365. Nobody should prefer Exchange Online over Exchange though, Microsoft is too unreliable of a service provider.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#125

Post by spogbiper »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #110
TheJoeMan wrote: post #64

They also are actively decreasing the value by sunsetting Publisher in October 2026 [0]. Hilariously, the suggested replacement is PowerPoint, despite it being unable to natively open .pub files. The solution for that? Run a powershell script to convert all your publisher files to (uneditable) PDF. There are many memes about inserting photos into Word, and the content flying around and breaking. My pet theory is that…

I used Publisher (2.0! and then 95) quite a bit in the mid to late 1990s. I haven't used it since then because Word now has all the features that were previously exclusive to Publisher, so its purpose has evaporated. It's certainly true that Word has bugs and frustrations but I'd be surprised if Publisher didn't too. It's very odd that they propose PowerPoint as the Publisher replacement. How do you create a fold out…

> How do you create a fold out leaflet in PowerPoint!?

There appear to be templates for this in Powerpoint

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#126

Post by JohnFen »

notepad0x90 wrote: post #86
_lvbh wrote: post #7

This feels like a dangerous game they're playing. Yes, there is some lock in, but competitors exist and are better than ever. The new "features" they're justifying this with (Copilot) isn't even something that most people want

I wish I could agree with this, but the ecosystem lock-in is too great. They might lose business for sure but it may not put a dent in their revenue at all. If you replace office, you'll have to replace sharepoint, onedrive, etc.. and it isn't just the tools but the policies and critical features that go along with those. For most orgs, this is literally their lifeblood, not just some tool they can yank out. For smal…

> If you replace office, you'll have to replace sharepoint, onedrive, etc.

At least in my workplace, people do their best to avoid using sharepoint and onedrive anyway.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#128

Post by redserk »

gruez wrote: post #92
jjgreen wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business basic goes from $6 to $7 So a 16% hike when current US inflation is 3-4%?

>So a 16% hike when current US inflation is 3-4%? When was the last price hike? Looking at historical inflation and working backwards, you only need to start at around late 2021 to get 16% cumulative inflation. In other words if they didn't raise their prices for 4 years, they'd be at par with inflation. edit: another commenter mentioned the last price hike was around 4 years ago, so it's indeed in line with inflatio…

Since when does any organization factor in inflation for renewals from vendors?!

All the purchase renewal decisions I've been part of have been:

1) Will they budge on renewal rates?

2) Does an alternative vendor exist?

3) Is the increase reasonable compared to the cost of switching to an alternative?

4) Do we anticipate future price increases, and if so, how can we prepare ourselves to consider a switch in the future?

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#129

Post by speff »

noosphr wrote: post #66
bix6 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know anyone who does serious financial work in anything besides Excel?

Do you know anyone who does serious financial work in Excel? I know plenty of people who think they do. I know a few that cost the world economy about a trillion dollars: https://inthesetimes.com/article/the-excel-spreadsheet-error...

Going by what my accounting buddy says - everyone in accounting in the US.
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