Microsoft 365 - on the cutting edge of office suites

If your PC, be it personal or professional, wants to be always up to date on the latest developments in the office software space, there’s no better option than Microsoft 365. Its powerful suite of applications and services is hard to ignore, if you’re fine with it being primarily a subscription-based offering.

What’s included

While the precise array of apps will differ between professional and home editions, there is some overlap you’re getting with most versions.

First of all, you get the evergreen standards: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, for your text editing, spreadsheet, and presentation needs. They’ve always been top of the class in their respective space, and they continue to provide all the tools needed for most office applications.

However, the trio won’t be able to handle the more specialised requirements, such as database management (that’s what Access is for) or layout. You’ll need to get specialised apps for that, no matter how much you love Word and Excel. Otherwise, you’ll probably find every feature you need.

All versions also get Outlook and OneNote.

The former is a robust e-mail software with calendar and task planners built in. Outlook’s not particularly glamourous, but it’s extremely handy especially when you’ve got multiple accounts to monitor. If you’re using it in professional environment, it will quickly become indispensable, but even privately it can be a lifesaver.

The latter, on the other hand, is a mixed-media note-taking app, letting you put all your ideas and notes in space, whether they are text, images, drawings, or links. OneNote is just a little bit short of being a fully-featured digital whiteboard, which is available on Windows as the aptly named Microsoft Whiteboard, but it’s outside of this article’s scope.

There’s also a host of additional apps and services, such as access to Copilot, Microsoft’s AI assistant, or Microsoft Teams, which are available even for personal 365 plans in a slightly limited version.

Check the tables below to see which apps are available for which 365 plan.

Microsoft 365 for individuals

Microsoft 365 for business

Microsoft sells Business Basic, Standard, and Premium in variants with and without Teams in applicable markets. App availability can also differ by operating system and device.

Regular payments, recurrent updates

Unlike the frozen-in-time features of Office 2024 or the Office LTSC versions^*, Microsoft 365 is closer to a live service, always changing to incorporate the latest features, improvements, and options. The price for that is in recurrent spending, dependent on the variant you’re interested in.

There is, technically a free version, but it has some restrictions. For the full functionality and access, you’ll need to resort to one of the paid plans, such as the Business variants for commercial use. Check the table below to see a sample of both the official prices and their closest counterparts on G2A.COM.

There are plans with monthly and annual billing, as expected, so you can adjust how often you’ll be bothered for a renewed payment, but bothered you will be if you want to use the software longer than just the initial period. The cost isn’t prohibitive, especially for how fully-featured the product is, but you do have to take it into account during budget-planning.

Conclusion

365 is the fullest experience you can have with Microsoft’s suite. It has Office 2024 and LTSC squarely beat in terms of available apps and level of support for the foreseeable future.

It’s not going to be the best option for everybody. If you only need the basics, your organization values feature stability, or you don’t want to fit another subscription in your budget you might want to try the other licenses (or the free version of 365).

In other cases, 365 might well be the last office suite you’ll ever need.