The new Office 365 subscriptions for consumers and small businesses

 On July 16, we unveiled the new Office, a cloud service that works beautifully with touch, stylus, mouse or keyboard on new Windows devices - from PCs to tablets.  With this release, we're modernizing Office, and an important part of that is the introduction of new subscriptions.  Subscriptions open a host of possibilities, and subscribing to Office 365 will be the best choice for many - especially families, people with multiple devices and small businesses.   

With a single subscription, you can use Office across a wide variety of devices - everything from PCs and tablets to Macs.  You can easily save to and access your documents from the cloud and personalize your experience with Office.  We will update Office more frequently to support new scenarios, and subscribers will always be current with the latest innovations.  Subscriptions also open new possibilities like integrating web services into Office in ways never before possible; in this release, we've added Skype calling minutes and SkyDrive storage, and in the future, we'll do more. 

In this post, you'll find details on how to get the new Office 365 subscriptions for consumers and small businesses when available.

Office 365 Home Premium

A single subscription to Office 365 Home Premium covers the entire household.  While you use a laptop, your daughter can use the PC in the den, and your son can use a tablet.  You can each sign-in with your individual Microsoft accounts using your settings and accessing your documents, but you still need just one subscription to get:

• All the Office applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access, and Publisher.*
• Ability to use Office on up to 5 PCs or Macs shared among all users in the home. Subscribers also have flexibility to change their 5 devices at any time, and full featured Office applications are available for temporary use on any PC.
• Nearly 3 times the amount of SkyDrive storage with an additional 20GB over the 7GB you get for free.
• 60 minutes of Skype^TM world calling per month to keep in touch with family anywhere.**
• Premium licenses that are always up-to-date with latest new features and services released regularly. With the new Office, new capabilities will be added multiple times per year.

Office 365 Home Premium, a single subscription for up to 5 users, will be available in both physical and online stores across 227 markets worldwide for $8.33 per month ($99.99 billed annually).  A free 30 day trial will also be available online.

Office 365 Small Business Premium

In addition to Office 365 Small Business, the new Office 365 Small Business Premium is designed for organizations with 1-10 employees, and each user gets the following benefits:

• All the Office applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access, and Publisher plus Lync.*
• Ability to use Office on up to 5 PCs or Macs for a single user. Users also have flexibility to change their 5 devices at any time, and full featured Office applications are available for temporary use on any PC.
• A 25 GB Outlook mailbox, shared calendar, contact manager, scheduling and task-list tools, and 10 GB professional-grade cloud storage for the organization plus 500 MB per user.
• Ability to host online meetings with audio and video using one-click screen sharing and HD video conferencing (HD video camera required)
• Set up, build, and maintain a public-facing website with no additional hosting fees.
• Premium licenses that are always up-to-date with latest new features and services released regularly. With the new Office, new capabilities will be added multiple times per year.
• No IT expertise needed. Simple setup to get started quickly and customize the service with ease.

Office 365 Small Business Premium will be available in both physical and online stores, including small business resellers, across 86 markets worldwide for $12.50 per user per month ($149.99 billed annually).  A free 30 day trial will also be available online.

 Other offerings

People who need Office on only one device can buy traditional Office suites.  These offerings do allow you to save to SkyDrive by default and make it easy to connect to the cloud, but they are not available for multiple devices and do not include the latest updates or additional SkyDrive and Skype services. Prices start at $139.99 for Office Home and Student 2013 which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Office Home and Business 2013 includes all the applications in Home and Student plus Outlook.  Office Professional 2013 includes the applications in Home and Business plus Access and Publisher.   In addition, Office Home & Student 2013 RT comes on all Windows RT devices and includes fully featured editions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote optimized for ARM devices. 

 Buy Office 2010 and get one year free of Office 365 Home Premium

Starting October 19, people who purchase Office 2010 or Office for Mac 2011 will qualify to download, for free, one year of Office 365 Home Premium or the equivalent Office 2013 offering, when available.  Small business customers in applicable markets will also be eligible for a three-month trial of Office 365 Small Business Premium.

 Subscription features and details are available here.  In the coming months, we'll share information about Office 365 Enterprise and other business offerings.  Until then, please try the customer preview yourself.

 * OneNote, Access and Publisher available for PC only.

** Skype account required. Excludes special, premium and non-geographic numbers. Calls to mobiles are for select countries only.  Skype available only in select countries.