On March 1, 2022, Microsoft will be increasing prices globally of most of its commercial Office 365 and Microsoft 365 subscriptions. Pricing for consumer, education and the highest-end Microsoft 365 E5 SKU will not increase at that time, officials said today, August 19.
Microsoft officials are calling the coming price increase “the first “substantive pricing update since we launched Office 365 a decade ago.” (There have been some smaller price increases to the suites over the past 10 years.)
The increases will range from $12 per user per year more for Microsoft 365 Business Basic, to $48 per user per year more for Microsoft 365 E3. In some cases, Microsoft is increasing prices to match those of the competition (read, Google), officials said. In other cases, it is adjusting prices to reflect the considerable value added to the Office 365/Microsoft 365 suites over the past several years, they added.
Officials said since the introduction of Microsoft 365 four years ago, the company has added 24 apps to its Office 365/Microsoft 365 suites, including Teams, Power Apps, Power BI, Power Automate, Stream, Planner, Visio, OneDrive, Yammer and Whiteboard. Some of these apps are included for no additional cost; others, like the Power Platform family of products, require separate licenses and subscription fees. Officials also said that Microsoft has added more than 1,400 new features to its Office 365 subscriptions over the past decade.
Here are the new prices, effective March 1, 2022:
Microsoft 365 Business Basic going from $5 to $6 per user per month
Microsoft 365 Business Premium going from $20 to $22 per user per month
Office 365 E1 going from $8 to $10 per user per month
Office 365 E3 going from $20 to $23 per user per month
Office 365 E5 going from $35 to $38 per user per month
Microsoft 365 E3 going from $32 to $36 per user per month
There’s no change happening in March for Microsoft 365 E5, which currently goes for $57 per user per month. Jared Spataro, Microsoft Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365 said Microsoft believes the changes in prices may make the Microsoft 365 E5 SKU “even more attractive” to customers. Microsoft recently disclosed that only eight percent of the 300 million commercial Office 365 users are currently on Office 365 E5. Microsoft also is not changing the pricing for its F (firstline worker) SKUs because they’re still new in market, Spataro said.
In addition to announcing the coming price increases, Microsoft officials also said today they are planning to add unlimited dial-in capabilities for Teams meetings across its paid enterprise, business, frontline worker and government suites over the coming months. This allows people to dial-in and join a Teams meeting from almost any device. This will enable users to get a dial-in number and use Teams like a conferencing bridge without having to download the app and join a meeting over the Internet.
