For the first time in a decade, Microsoft is raising the price of its Office 365 email and Microsoft 365 services. The price hikes will affect commercial and corporate customers of Microsoft’s software as a service (SaaS) products in the coming year, with no changes in education or consumer pricing.
The new Microsoft price will take effect on March 1st, 2022:
- Microsoft 365 Business Basic (prices range between $5 and $6 per user)
- Microsoft 365 Business Premium (starting at $20 and going up to $22)
- Office 365 E1 (prices range from $8 to $10)
- Office 365 E3 (prices range between $20 and $23)
- Office 365 E5 (starting at $35)
- Microsoft 365 E3 (starting at $32)
Microsoft originally released Office 365 in 40 different regions in 2011, and the business has been steadily upgrading it since then. In a blog post today, Microsoft 365 head Jared Spataro notes that these price adjustments are “the first substantial pricing modification since we launched Office 365 a decade ago.”
They also come at a time when Microsoft has announced a record year of revenue growth, owing to cloud services such as Office 365. Microsoft has around 300 million paid Office 365 seats, thus the pricing adjustments will very definitely increase Microsoft’s revenues and income next year.
While bigger firms have benefitted from bulk discounts and bargains over the last decade, small businesses will face the consequences of a price hike as the economy recovers from the epidemic. Microsoft Teams Calling, OneDrive, SharePoint, and To-Do are just a few of the more than 20 programmes that have been introduced to Office 365 since its introduction.
