Office 365 Pricing, Features, Reviews & Comparison of Alternatives

Pros
Microsoft is excellent in its support for office 365 and whenever I have needs to call on them, they have always responded and even for clients I cannot go to, the support from Microsoft sometimes mean that my input is not even needed to overcome their complaints. There is a staggering volume of effective updates for office 365. I recall having an issue with outlook on a client’s platform that resulted in a system crash whenever he tries to access it. He called me and complained and I was supposed to go fix it by the weekend. Incidentally, an update was released that same day and by the time he installed the new update, that issue was magically solved and thus saved me the stress of embarking on that trip. I will never forget that because it was an already hectic period for me. There is 1TB of secure OneDrive storage which comes with a business version of 365 which some of my clients appreciates because it saves the cost of getting additional cloud storage from other vendors. Accessibility is very key in my line of duty and the ability to access word, excel, power point, Skype and use outlook as found in office 365 domiciled on my pc and in the cloud anywhere I am, gives me the confidence to take on many tasks. The collaboration tools like SharePoint and Microsoft Teams is useful for teamwork and integration of processes amongst departments of large organizations. Another amazing thing about office 356 is that the developers are consistently improving on the application.

Cons
It is a very bloated suite and many clients don’t make use of up to 50% of the functions embedded in it. The suite is not completely available on some platforms. For instance, I once tried to deploy it on a client’s MAC only to find out that Microsoft publisher was not available. Maybe it is just me but I think the pricing for office 365 is incredulous when compared to similar suites. For slow internet, the online application for programs like Access and excel is going to test your patience especially for large tables and data.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Always provides the latest version of all Office applications, can be used on multiple computers (depending on package purchased), offers OneDrive storage included with the packages

Cons
Becomes expensive over time, local installs of the applications sometimes need to be reactivated due to bugs in the activation system, locks you in to a specific software ecosystem

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
I use Office 365 daily. I've used it to research, edit and publish two technical books and numerous articles on technical and popular topics. I appreciate the interoperability of the Office software features, particularly the ease with which I can change my work interface from writing to illustration to layout to spreadsheets and back again! I use the Cloud and find it extremely helpful. I find the Notes feature less useful that OneNotes is less useful than Notes (probably because I haven't really explored it much). Notes is nice because it is a simple way to strip hidden codes from copied text and prepare it for a new format. PowerPoint it great and lets me move multiple images into a single album easily, as well as to develop images, alter artwork, and integrate images and original artwork into publishable illustrations. I find the Excel spreadsheet an effective tool for illustrating via charts and graphs. I have been using the speech function of Word to review writing and also for recreational reading! Nice. It even lets me alter the voice.

Cons
OneNote is less useful than Note. I find SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Yammer, and Outlook software programs that I don't need. I particularly dislike Outlook and prefer to work via free email services, instead. I would appreciate the option to strip away features that I don't like or use.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Office 365 is the collection of all the well known Microsoft Collaboration and Productivity suite of tools that makes the business simpler and powerful without compromising the security. Starting from outlook email access to office tools like Word/Powerpoint it is easy to configure based on the user settings and allows to host the enterprise application through comp portal. Specifically, the support for mobility is amazing. It allows me to configure the office email setup without any additional work based on the rules set by the administrator.

Cons
One of the major drawback is, it will not allow work properly if you have more than one office 365 accounts. In my case, My client and my organization both are started to use the Office 365 as the primary hosting platform. And most of the cases, it will request me to delete any of the other accounts and I need to re-configure to check the other email. Switching between the accounts is not easy.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
SharePoint is a good function for a medium to large sized business. We use it to post documents that our staff use consistently so they can find everything in one place. The documents can get kind of buried in the file structure but it's ideally the same as Windows Explorer once you get used to it. It's nice that you can personalize the sites with background photos and text. Another great feature is the downloadable apps that you get with an E3 account. You can download the apps on a number of computers so you can use it anywhere. Additionally you can download the apps on your phone or tablet.

Cons
OneDrive has given me some trouble when I've got the folder linked with my computer. If you upload things to the OneDrive via internet browser, it's great. Once I added it to my desktop and opened the file window to be used in addition to the web browser, it got questionable. I would open files from the file explorer window and edit them and they wouldn't upload to OneDrive when saved. It's something you really have to keep an eye on. Maybe it was my network card or internet connection. But when you have more than one person editing the same files at different times, you never know if you're getting the most up to date version of that file. I've lost a lot of data because of this. Also when you create Groups and try to use that group for an email, you have to be sure to expand the group or it won't be sent as an email. It will send as a group message and most of the people I work with don't know how to view that.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 6/10