Office 2013 Pricing Announced, Microsoft Pushes Subscriptions

If you often use your Mac or PC for productivity tools, you probably already know that the market is pretty limited. If you’re on a Mac, you’re stuck with two main options: iWork and Microsoft Office. The most popular of the duopoly tends to be Microsoft Office as it is currently the industry standard when it comes to productivity file types as well as features. So, if you continue to use Office for Mac (or Windows), you may be paying a bit more (or possibly less) this time around as Microsoft has just announced their new pricing plans for Office 2013.

Microsoft has announced that they will be selling Office 2013 as both a subscription service as well as selling boxed copies; however, we can tell that Microsoft is pushing the subscription. Yearly pricing for Office 2013 starts at $99 per year for five Macs or PCs in a home setting or can go up to $139 per year per user in a small business setting. If you decide to go with the small business plan, each user can activate up to five computers on his or her account.

So, what does each plan include? Surprisingly, quite a bit. The subscription based version of Office 2013, which goes under the name “Office 365 Home Premium,” not only comes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher and Access, but users also get 60 minutes of Skype credit per month as well as 20GB of SkyDrive service. Other notable features include the ability to stream Office 2013 apps to both Windows 7 and 8 computers.

Small business users, on the other hand, get all of the apps above as well as Lync and InfoPath. And while they won’t receive 20GB of SkyDrive or Skype credit, they will be getting their hands on a new HD video-conferencing app that is in the works as well as a shared calendar and a 25GB email inbox.

As always, Office 2013 will be available in a traditional boxed copy. If you’d like to pay for Office in full, expect to drop $139 for Home and Office, $219 for Home and Office or $399 for Office 2013 Professional. Home and Office includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote while Home and Office adds Outlook. If you decide to take the Professional route, you’ll have access to Publisher and Access.

The nice folks at the Verge made a list that shows the different features of both the Office 365 subscription plans as well as the standard off-the-shelf packages. We’ve embedded it below for your viewing pleasure.

Source: The Verge

Andrew is a geek, Apple enthusiast, blogger and coffee lover from Chicago.