office 365 or?

R

Ricoch3T

Weaksauce
Joined
Nov 29, 2005
Messages
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Any of yall use office 365 for yourself or small business? I was looking at pricing (I need office on a couple computers here at work) and can't decide if i would get the use out of a 365 account or not. Usually I spend the money and buy the licenses i need for the computers and end up using it for however long it will last.

Opinions?
 
Right now I'm actually in the middle of a Migration. I'm not a small business nor do I use it for myself, I'm a school district and we are pretty big in terms of business size.

I think I'd only go with O365 if you were going to use all the mobility and portibility stuff. Like would you need to allow users to install office on their own equipment? Would you use Onedrive and so on? If Not I'd probably just go for a regular license.

I am also not that familiar with pricing as my pricing is always a lot lower. Oh, you also still need to worry about backup and where is company information and how do I keep track of it.
 
I concur with bigstusexy above. Also, if you only need a couple of licenses, and you don't plan on moving everyone to O365 with the full exchange setup, I don't think it's really worth it.

If you are, however, planning on moving everyone and everything to O365, I'd do it then, but that doesn't seem like the case here.
 
I use O365 myself, and have it installed on 3 computers. The big question is how much of the Office suite will you use? If you just use Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, might be worth it to just have individual licenses. If you use Access and/or Publisher (which I do), to get those programs you would have to purchase the full Professional version of Office. To install that on 3 computers would cost around $1,000, or 10 years worth of O365 subscription!

Many people do not realize that O365 is just a licensing program, and not anything with the actual programs themselves. You get full, locally installed Office Professional, just on a subscription license basis. In addition, you get the One Drive storage with your subscription, so if you are wanting to use Cloud storage, that is an extra benefit. I think there may be some other online features with the O365 subscription, but I don't use them, so haven't really looked into what comes with the package.
 
I support it at work as one of our O365 SME's and generally I think it's a rip off for most people. :D
Unless you're needing multiple licenses/installations (where O365 Business Premium comes with the ability to install on 5 computers per single $12.50/mo license seat), you'd be better off buying the suite ala carte by product key. It easily adds up. Yearly that Biz Prem sub will cost $150 which is the equivalent of buying the product outright and actually owning it (or at least owning it once you quit paying for it). You are "renting" with O365, just like you are "renting" with Adobe CC. Again the only time you come out ahead is if you're paying the monthly $12.50 but using the provided Office 2016 apps on 2+ computers simultaneously.

O365 Business Essentials is nothing more than Google Docs with a fee attached. You do get the OneDrive storage and an Exchange mailbox, but it's still essentially Google Docs with a fee attached.
 
Thanks for the replies...

I've been leaning towards individual licsenses for a while now but ran across the business 365 lisence and started adding it up. I just didn't know if those of you that use 365 felt it was good for staying up to date with everything. Like I said I usually buy and use it for as long as possible (I just switched one machine from office 03 to open office within the last 6months).

Office setup is 4 of us, word and outlook would be the most used programs.
 
It sounds like you'd be using it only for the apps, so your basic comparison is 1 O365 Biz Premium sub @12.50/mo (or ProPlus at @12/mo), or 5 licenses of Office 2016 for $125-$150ish. Obviously the 1 O365 Biz Premium sub is cheaper going forward, but eventually you'll hit a point where it's equal to buying the apps outright.

Office 2016 just recently became the DL apps; it was Office 2013 until about 3 months ago.

For your use, I'd use the 1x O365 Biz Prem or ProPlus - just keep in mind when you cancel the subscription, the apps will eventually quit working. They rely on a valid O365 subscription and need to be re-activated every 90 days. I think ProPlus is being phased out (or was phased out) but I'm not sure. We still offer it, but I don't know if MS (directly) offers it anymore.

ProPlus is essentially the same as Biz Premium other than it doesn't have Site Mailboxes or Yabber but you won't be using either of those anyway. (App wise, it's identical.)
 
There's also an O365 business essentials plan that's pretty much a steal at $5. You get hosted exchange and streaming office apps. You wouldn't get a local Outlook, but if the version your'e using now is 2007 or higher it will work just fine. It also includes 1TB of onedrive per user.
 
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