Microsoft announced Microsoft Office 2024 for consumers and Office LTSC 2024 for organizations this week. These will be the latest perpetual Office releases. In other words: customers buy these versions once without any recurring costs.
While that sounds like a good deal, perpetual Office versions are supported for only five years by Microsoft. While they may be used after support ends, it comes with risks as security issues are not fixed anymore by Microsoft.
Another factor plays a role. Whereas Microsoft 365 Office apps get constant feature updates, this is not the case for Office 2024 and any other perpetual version of Office. There is no technical reason for this limitation. Microsoft does so to cut costs and push its subscription-based business.
What we know about Office 2024
Microsoft does not reveal much about Microsoft Office 2024 or Microsoft Office LTSC 2024 at this point.
The consumer version will be sold for the same price as Office 2021, the last perpetual version of Office that Microsoft released.
The main edition of Office, Office Home & Student 2024, will therefore retail for $149.99. Microsoft Office Home & Business 2024 will retail for $249.99.
Microsoft 365 Personal is available for $69.99 per year. The business editions of Microsoft 365 start at $6 per month and user, but the cheapest version does not include desktop versions of Office programs. The Microsoft 365 Business Standard plan is available for $12.50 per month and user.
Here is the price overview:
| Office 2024 Home & Student | Office 2024 Home & Business | Microsoft 365 Home | Microsoft 365 Business | |
| 1-month | $149.99 | $249.99 | $69.99 | $12.50 |
| 1-year | $149.99 | $249.99 | $69.99 | $150 |
| 5-years | $149.99 | $249.99 | $349.95 | $750 |
If you just look at the price, it is cheaper to buy a perpetual version of Office.
The main downside to buying one is that it won’t get any new features after release. Some features are also Microsoft 365 exclusive, especially for business users as Microsoft notes:
While Office LTSC 2024 offers many significant improvements over the previous Office LTSC release, as an on-premises product it will not offer the cloud-based capabilities of Microsoft 365 Apps, like real-time collaboration; AI-driven automation in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint; or cloud-backed security and compliance capabilities that give added confidence in a hybrid world
Microsoft plans to increase the price of Office LTSC editions by 10% according to the announcement. Furthermore, Microsoft Publisher will not be included anymore in the bundle, as it is being retired.
Closing Words
It is good that Microsoft is giving customers the choice between the subscription-based Microsoft 365 and the perpetual version Office 2024. It is not as good that Microsoft is limiting functionality and blocking any new features from landing in Office 2024 editions after release.
Price-wise, perpetual licenses are still cheaper, if you compare the retail prices. Discounts may change this one way or the other.
There is also LibreOffice, which is free and works well in many cases, but not in all.
Now You: do you use Office?
I think when I upgrade my current Office version (a perfectly good, 2010 H&B – shhh, don’t tell anyone :-)) I would again buy into the perpetual licence version. Yes, I know that I won’t get new features but I do feel a bit concerned that if I moved to MS 365, Microsoft could forcefully remove my Outlook app in 2029 and leave me stuck with some new Outlook app that I may not necessarily want and not be able to revert to a ‘classic’ Outlook.
I’ll probably just put my head back in the sand for the present…
No doubt your articles will keep us all informed with further details as they leak out. Thank you. I appreciate your continued posts, Martin.
Happy St Patrick’s Day. 🙂
PS. As far as Libre Office, it is alright, but I wouldn’t consider it at as a replacement for MS Office unless it came up with a good, integrated email client.
It is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. In fact, I’d argue that some users buy perpetual because Microsoft does not push new features via upgrades into these Office editions.