Microsoft is launching three new Office 365 plans for small and midsized businesses on October 1, 2014. Microsoft is lowering the price of its most expensive smaller business offering — from $15 per seat per month to $12.50 — and raising the employee cap in some cases to 300 from 25. Microsoft has preserved a $5 per seat per month Office 365 option which includes its cloud products, but not desktop versions of Office proper.
The new plans are:
- Office 365 Business – The full Office applications – Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Publisher, with 1TB of OneDrive for Business cloud storage to access, edit and share your documents across your Windows PC, Mac, iPad, Windows tablet and smartphone.
- Office 365 Business Essentials – The core cloud services for running your business – business class email and calendaring, Office Online, online meetings, IM, video conferencing, cloud storage and file sharing and much more.
- Office 365 Business Premium – Get everything from both the Office 365 Business and Business Essentials plans.