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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

#141

Post by gruez »

redserk wrote: post #128
gruez wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

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

Don't ask me, ask the person who posed the question of inflation in the first place. That said...

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

All but one of the reasons you listed are tied to inflation in some way. Inflation affects everything in the economy, so a company that doesn't raise prices in line with it is losing money. Even SaaS businesses with low marginal costs aren't exempt, because they still need to pay salaries for developers and support staff, both of which roughly track inflation. Therefore if business see price hikes that raise with inflation, they can assume that competitors will raise prices as well, and it's not going to be worth switching unless they're already on the fence for some other reason.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#142

Post by piker »

jraph wrote: post #123
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…

Yes, yes, everything should be free. Nobody should leave gainful employment to attempt to compete. Everyone should work using hamster and solar powered devices from their apple orchard communes. Understood.

> Please be actually better, we have too much trash proprietary software in this world.

What we're attempting :)

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#143

Post by graemep »

Aurornis wrote: post #40
_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

Business basic goes from $6 to $7. Business premium is unchanged from $22 to $22. Price increases are normal. (I’ve been on HN long enough to remember when “raise your prices” was treated as the best startup advice around in HN comments) These price increases aren’t excessive relative to inflation for other services in a business context. I don’t see this as a dangerous game. > The new "features" they're justifying t…

> Their average customer is probably demanding it and at risk of switching products if the AI integration is not as good as a competitor’s.

Which customers? Some enterprise customers want AI, others restrict its use. Other want integration with something other than Copilot.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#144

Post by jraph »

piker wrote: post #142
jraph wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, yes, everything should be free. Nobody should leave gainful employment to attempt to compete. Everyone should work using hamster and solar powered devices from their apple orchard communes. Understood. > Please be actually better, we have too much trash proprietary software in this world. What we're attempting :)

> Nobody should leave gainful employment to attempt to compete.

That's not what I'm saying. You can thrive with an open source business model. I'm working for such a company.

Falsewoods software founders still believe about free and open source software in 2026

1. That's it's 100% made unpaid, outside business despite the numerous clues that it's not

(note to whom might read this thread: I edited my previous comment to tame it and make it a bit more constructive, piker cited something that doesn't appear anymore in my comment but that I indeed wrote)

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#145

Post by piker »

jraph wrote: post #144
piker wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, yes, everything should be free. Nobody should leave gainful employment to attempt to compete. Everyone should work using hamster and solar powered devices from their apple orchard communes. Understood. > Please be actually better, we have too much trash proprietary software in this world. What we're attempting :)

> Nobody should leave gainful employment to attempt to compete. That's not what I'm saying. You can thrive with an open source business model. I'm working for such a company. Falsewoods software founders still believe about free and open source software in 2026 1. That's it's 100% made unpaid, outside business despite the numerous clues that it's not (note to whom might read this thread: I edited my previous comment…

That business model exists and appears here periodically complaining about how unfair Microsoft is. We don't care, we'll meet Microsoft where they are and just offer their customers a more specific solution.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#146

Post by hoistbypetard »

moepstar wrote: post #133
hoistbypetard wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For legacy spreadsheets, you're 100% correct. I'll need to keep a version of Excel around forever. If they price me out of 365 by making me pay for Copilot shit I don't use or want, a perpetual license to Office 2019 runs about $20 and will do that job for me. For new work that I might have otherwise done in Excel, there are good options. Collabora works. Libre Office works. Google sheets works. And Grist is quite go…

> a perpetual license to Office 2019 runs about $20 and will do that job for me. Isn’t that only perpetual as long as the activation servers are up?

Probably. I meant "perpetual" as opposed to "subscription" but I agree with your concern.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#148

Post by mdasen »

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…

At this point?

I remember when Microsoft Office truly felt like a monopoly. In the 90s, nothing could really read/write Microsoft formats reliably. People weren't using PDFs as much and teachers, jobs, etc. all expected you to be sending them .doc files.

Yes, Microsoft wrote the spec fox .docx, but submitted it as an ECMA standard and that meant that people could create alternatives that could read/write .docx quite well. Sure, Microsoft has a little bit of a leg up, but it's nothing like the monopoly they had on .doc.

Today, we expect programs to be able to read and write Microsoft Office formats. In the 90s, we truly didn't. Yes, there might be some advanced things that don't always work, but it's so different today.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#149

Post by expedition32 »

Aurornis wrote: post #76
bachmeier wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their average customer is probably demanding it and at risk of switching products if the AI integration is not as good as a competitor’s. There's no substance to this comment. It's pure speculation. If you actually want to look at evidence, look at the recent news that Microsoft has cut AI sales targets in half. > The Venn diagram of their customer base and Hacker News commenters doesn’t have much overlap. Ironic t…

> Ironic that you posted this as a comment on HN. It’s not ironic at all. Posting here was deliberate to highlight the bubble that happens here for consumer products. This comment section has a lot of people evaluating these price hikes as if they were targeted at HN individual users, not for a product targeted at a different audiences and corporate subscriptions. Hacker News commenters are frequently unaware that th…

I agree MS365 or whatever the official name is nowadays is just a tax write of for companies.

There are alternatives for consumers but enterprise isn't going to screw around with those.

Re: Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices

#150

Post by unethical_ban »

sneak wrote: post #52
bhouston wrote: post #29

Haven't opened Microsoft Office in I think 7 years. Haven't also used Apple's Office suite either - it is just Google Docs/presentations/sheets/drive for everything. I feel my life is better. They were massive installs and I prefer to have everything online all the time anyhow - just safer and more convenient.

Way more convenient for the FAA702 users, too. If you have absolutely nothing in your documents that you wouldn’t mind giving the FBI to read without a warrant or probable cause, it is possible you are wasting your one and only life. A good example would be anyone in the state-legal cannabis industry. This is still a federal crime (Schedule 1!), and giving cloud providers (and thus DHS without a warrant thanks to FAA…

That you would mind.

But yes your point is correct.

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