Software King of the World Microsoft has decided that thanks to the pandemic enough people are hooked on its Office 365 product so it is time to hack the price up.
Like any good pusher, Vole had released Office 365 free access to software for certain periods and a chance to delay payments and then had a record number of sign-ups due to Covid.
Microsoft has given its channel and customers plenty of notice of price changes, with increases coming into effect from 1 March 2022.
In a blog post, Jared Spataro, corporate vice-president for Microsoft 365, explained the rationale for the increases and pointed out that the vendor had resisted making a move for quite a while.
“We are announcing changes to our commercial pricing for Microsoft 365 – the first substantive pricing update since we launched Office 365 a decade ago”, he said. “This updated pricing reflects the increased value we have delivered to our customers over the past 10 years.”
From March next year, certain commercial products will have price increases, including Microsoft 365 Business Basic (from $5 to $6 per user), Microsoft 365 Business Premium (from $20 to $22), Office 365 E1 (from $8 to $10), Office 365 E3 (from $20 to $23), Office 365 E5 (from $35 to $38), and Microsoft 365 E3 (from $32 to $36).
The rises will be applied globally, but education and consumer customers will not be subject to the changes.
