Microsoft 365 Prices Rising For Businesses and Governments in July 2026

Microsoft has announced that it will raise prices on its Microsoft 365 productivity suites for businesses and government clients starting in July 2026, marking the first commercial price increase since 2022. Small business and frontline worker plans face the steepest hikes: Business Basic jumps 16.7% to $7 per user per month, while frontline worker subscriptions surge up to 33%. Enterprise plans see more modest bumps, ranging from 5.3% for E5 to 8.3% for E3. Microsoft attributed the increases to more than 1,100 new features added to the suite, including AI-driven tools and security enhancements. Copilot remains a separate $30-per-month add-on.

If you have access to a MSFT store account...

[HBI]

As in an alumnus or current employee, you can buy forward for years and have your sub running for at least 5 years in advance. I would advise this. Just keep buying family 365 subs and putting the codes into your existing account. I mean yes, think of transitioning, but you can put it off quite a while this way.

Yes, I realize this is for business, but they'll be coming for Family soon too.

Re:If you have access to a MSFT store account...

[slaker]

Windows 365 Subs were just raised at the beginning of the year, from $99 MSRP for a family plan, up to $139. It's still possible to buy the $99 plan but you have to very carefully navigate to find the option that doesn't include Copilot AI bullshit.

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[HBI]

It was still something around $20 a year if you have either an employee, alumni or a store pass from either of the above.

I get 10 of them a year and hand them out to interested people.

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[EvilSS]

In 2020 when they moved to virtual events they gave out digital store access for attending some of the first conferences. I bought up enough years of 365 to last me through 2030. Also bought a bunch of Windows Pro licenses since they were insanely cheap.

Re:If you have access to a MSFT store account...

[alvinrod]

Just rip the bandage off and move the family to LibreOffice. My mom has been using it for over a decade now and it's honestly one of the things that requires the least amount of tech support. I don't think LibreOffice has any bullshit AI crap to worry about either. Most people don't need MS Office for what they're doing.

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[HBI]

It's not about the office, it's about the Onedrive. There are alternatives, but none that are so easy to work with.

I used to manually sftp my stuff from machine to machine before we had it. The alternatives aren't competitive on price.

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[CaptQuark]

It's not about the office, it's about the Onedrive. There are alternatives, but none that are so easy to work with.

If you are using Onedrive on the road then I might see that use case. If you are primarily sharing files on your own network, a $200 NAS would probably pay for itself in under two years. Small pain to set up, easy to use going forward.

Ugreen 2 bay NAS $188
4Tb Western Digital Hard Drive $75
(populate the second bay for added RAID security)

Not the perfect solution for everyone, but it's an option rather than paying O365/Onedrive year after year after year.

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[bn-7bc]

And if the office burns down? Remember to add a cloud backup solution so you can have some drand provide evryone with laptops so they can wfh untill you get the uffice back up and running (if you decide you actually need the office at all)

Re:If you have access to a MSFT store account...

[ukoda]

Ok, I'll be that guy, and probably be down voted as flame bait, but why worry about the cost? If you want to save money then Libre Office is free and for most users does everything that 365 does. For those niche user that have a specific need to use 365 what is to say that feature will exist next year? Buy 5 years worth only to find the feature that forced you to use 365 is removed or replaced a sub standard AI version next year?

Disclaimer: I haven't used Microsoft Office since around 2014 and I'm biased against Microsoft.

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[HBI]

As I said below, the killer app isn't the office applications, it's the Onedrive. Online backup, transfer of your files from machine to machine without thinking very much about it. You end up with a ton of crap stored in there and cleaning it out is not something my mother can do. The office apps are pretty worthless in comparison, you're right, I use Libre for everything myself.

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[Shane A Leslie]

Wouldn't just moving all that stuff to an external hard drive and teaching her to use it be easier and cheaper?
Then you bring the secondary backup to sync it with whenever you come to visit.

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[bn-7bc]

Because you might not be the target audience, you seam comfortable wit running your own nas. One drive is I suspect more geared to folks that don't want to worry about the tech stuff (just pay the bill an you're "safe"), the "we sell nits and bots, we don't do IT " croud.

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[mjwx]

Ok, I'll be that guy, and probably be down voted as flame bait, but why worry about the cost? If you want to save money then Libre Office is free and for most users does everything that 365 does. For those niche user that have a specific need to use 365 what is to say that feature will exist next year? Buy 5 years worth only to find the feature that forced you to use 365 is removed or replaced a sub standard AI version next year?

Disclaimer: I haven't used Microsoft Office since around 2014 and I'm biased against Microsoft.

Libre office is fine for personal use, it's improved in leaps and bounds in the last 10 odd years. I'd recommend it to anyone regardless of skill or experience to get them off the MSFT merry-go-round.

The problem isn't for the home users, they've always been on the "bend over and take it" track when it comes to MS, it's just that now they've got some real viable options which will end up hurting MS but I digress... the issue is business users. For business users the problem isn't the software for the end

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[bn-7bc]

so dump exchamge in favor of OSS groupware/email solutions, thwere are even oss SaaS offerings if you don't have the skill set in house, I'm not certain but I think they ae generally cheaper then hosted exchange, and certainnlu cheper than running exchange and windows server on prem if you're a small shop

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[dbialac]

I've taken a different approach. I'm almost completely free of Office 365. As of recently, mail is gone. The last step is finding a FOSS application that can work with Word and Excel documents (read and write). Sadly, WPS Office wants my email, Collabora wants to default to odf/odt and there's currently no way to change that on Andriod. Few people use the odf/odt formatted files. AndrOffice is still unstable and yet wants my money to unlock alternative drives, and doesn't even seem to offer Proton Drive int

"AI" is not good enough yet

[SmaryJerry]

1100 new features!!... I'd rather eliminate AI from the productivity suite rather than pay for it. It seems to be creeping in anyways even through we have never paid for additional copilot features. Maybe someone who actually uses it knows, but I assume you start using it then it tells you need to upgrade to do the thing you actually wanted it to do?

Not enough to make a difference

[alvinrod]

No one is going to balk at $7 a month when the Excel monkey using the product costs five times as much as that per hour. Th A just shows how badly all of the AI efforts at Microsoft must be failing though. The money has to come from somewhere at the end of the day. I'm surprised they aren't squeezing harder. Even though there are alternatives to Office, many of which are good, the amount of time lost to switching or retraining easily exceeds years worth of subscription fees.

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[Junta]

It's the boiling frog approach to revenue. Start at an attractive rate and increase it by 'no big deal' until eventually it would be a big deal.

See also, microtransactions.

Companies have learned that customers barely pay attention to the absolute costs, and just note the incrementals they incur in the moment.

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[bn-7bc]

The poiling frog is a myth, frogs (unless drugged or otherwise compromised) will jump out of the put no matter how slowly you raise the temp (well at least try to, if the pot has sides that are to hight for them this will ofc fail, but that has more to do with physics than survival instincts. We need to find a better example

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[bn-7bc]

And the CEO + pard collects their bonuses on a quarterly bases, so as lonng as the stock prize doen't collapse before trheir option loclins expire they don't care

Let's see...

[Chris Mattern]

Multiply that by two million...

LibreOffice

[Wokan]

LibreOffice will be raising it's licensing costs by even steeper percents. Individual users will go from $0 up 10% to $0. Enterprises will go from $0 up a whopping 30% to $0.

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[bn-7bc]

Yea percentage rises from 0 are kind of fucked

I got OneDrive and got Office 365 thrown in free

[Tony Isaac]

I needed a backup solution, and I was tired of slinging DVD-ROMs. So I switched to OneDrive and never looked back. I can back up my whole hard drives (1 TB each x 5), for the whole family. Everything is always backed up in an off-site locations, including version history. And Office 365 comes with the deal. I'm happy with that arrangement.

I probably wouldn't buy an Office subscription, but the price for OneDrive is competitive with other backup-only solutions like CrashPlan.