Microsoft 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
The Business App world can be confusing. I get it. There is a great deal of speciality in the BA world and it's hard to know what products to even trial nevertheless purchase or commit to long-term. I don't know why everybody doesn't start with Office 365. It's so all-encompassing and helpful you'll even want to use it during a Leap Year when there are 366 days in a year! Word, Excel and PowerPoint are the sine qua non of office document production. We've all used them and we all like them. Now you don't have to be a rich big-shot to own Office so the products are fully accessible and cheap. If you haven't worked with Microsoft Sway yet, you're missing the boat in conveying your concepts and ideas to a larger market. Sway is like PowerPoint on steroids. Sway was created to convey concepts quickly, easily and clearly. The biggest difference is that Sway was designed to express concepts digitally, onscreen, rather than to an audience. Sway has all the templates and creative assistance you can ever need. Give it a try. Trust me. It's a great example of where Microsoft is headed in my opinion. I use OneNote as a brainstorming and organizational drain for all of my business ideas and projects. Its ease of use is legendary. Your contacts, email, storage and now video conferencing and calling with Skype is really all you need. Do us all a favor. Start with Office 365. It's your one stop shop for productivity. You'll look smarter than you really are.

Cons
It bugs me how Skype runs at startup right away. I'm not a computer pro. It took me a few weeks to figure out how to stop it. I use it all the time. I just don't want it popping up right away.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Accessibility is the biggest asset of Office 365 for the user. The ability to use a computer as a platform to reach the cloud allows for interchangeability and access from anywhere. Having less desktop applications has allowed me to cycle through our corporate computers seamlessly as no data is actually stored in my hard drive (3 computers 3 years.) The mail app also runs smoother in the web browser when you are sharing calendars. This function used to consistently crash our computers when sharing a calendar on the Outlook Desktop Application.

Cons
Overall, I like Office 365 much less than I like my Windows Desktop Application Suite. Specifically, there is less functionality in the web based apps. I like several windows open in Outlook which is easier accomplished within the desktop app. I also do a lot of work without access to WiFi. Desktop Apps allow you to at least create content which can then be shared upon access to internet. Our office internet is also very slow and unreliable. We try and reduce the amount of reliance on web pages. I think it will be hard to ever have the full functionality that a desktop app has, but this is a good temporary solution to access your email or word docs on the move. Pricing - Office 365 is now subscription based. You used to be able to buy a license and only pay again when you wanted to upgrade. Now you get constant upgrades, but this comes at a cost.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 5/10

Pros
With nearly 25 years in the Windows universe, despite the fact that there are free Office software alternatives, Microsoft Office continues to be the most widely used on a global scale among users and customers, whether at the corporate or personal level, none of these tools has arrived. to pose a threat to the reign of Microsoft Office, The Redmond company now offering services for the Microsoft cloud based on a subscription model, with desktop applications for Windows that include Word, Power Point, Excel, Outlook and Access, and One of its innovations is that they allow the collaborative edition of documents and teamwork, this is a great step from the suite to a set of applications where tablets and smartphones with iOS and Android operating systems can access these documents through web applications that Microsoft has released so that users can temporarily use a document of the classic tools of Off ice: Word, Excel and Power Point, boosting productivity in an increasingly connected and prepared environment for modern work and collaboration online and in a team within a company or personal level.

Cons
In a Microsoft Office administrative installation, more disk space is used on the server, the amount of disk space required on the server ranges between 100 and 325 MB or more, depending on the version of Microsoft Office, if other programs use your server network or if you use it to store data files, it is possible that the server does not have enough disk space, however, this problem is more due to the limited storage of the PCs than the program itself, what it does have is a cost per license very high, apart from that I find no disadvantages that subtract points in favor of Microsoft Office

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
The basic functionality is quite good. It essentially does what it's supposed to do: It allows you to chat with team members. The direct chat option is pretty straightforward. The option of creating different teams (hence the name) to structure the group chats is quite conventient, because it adds another layer, making it three: Teams, channels, threads (within channels). Notifications are pretty reliable, mentions and activities in channels you follow are logged into an activity feed, which is quite useful. The part where Teams really shines though is the option to add other functions to a channel. The Wiki can be nice, although using it is sometimes a bit counter-intuitive. What's really helpful is the Planner, because it allows you to include kanban-like views of tasks (or other things). We actually use it less for tasks and more for ideas and backlogs of things for the entire team to review.

Cons
One thing that bugs me is an issue that also came up with Slack: You sometimes miss notifications because, when you open the app, you automatically jump into the last channel (or chat) you where when closing it. When you actually want to go to some other place, you might leave the channel, leaving all notifications marked as "read" - but you might not even have noticed there was something new in them! I don't know how to solve this, I only know that it can be a problem. The real downside of Teams is, for me at least, the very limited possibility of your notifications. You can essentially turn them on or off for mentions, channels you follow, and chats. There are some other options, but they are all of the "all-or-nothing" type. I either get notifications (and therefore push notifications on my smartphone) for all mentions, or for none of them. Here, Slack has a much better system. The other thing is the mobile app. On Android, it's just not as reliable as it could be. Activating the "don't disturb" status, for example, does nothing. If I want to turn of push notifications, I need to that completely and manually. Sometimes, uploads don't work. And when I'm on the road, messages might not get through - but instead of sending them once I have a connection, it sits there with warning sign, waiting for me to resend it... kind of an archaic way of dealing with this issue.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10