Office 2019 was released earlier this year. You may be wondering: What is the difference between Office 2019 and Microsoft’s Subscription version of Office, Office 365? We’re here to tell you.

Office 2019: Before Office 365, there was generally only one way to buy Office and that was via what they call a perpetual license. Basically, you pay once, and the license to use that version of Office is yours until…well…whenever you feel like it (for better or for worse). You were able to use Office beyond its lifecycle, but you’d also not get any security updates after the program expired, nor would you be able to get new versions of the program.

This is still the case with Office 2019. If you purchase a copy of Office 2019 Home and Business with a one-time purchase (generally about $275 or so), you get the full versions of Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for Mac or PC for a single computer. That’s it. You don’t get any of the back-end cloud features, collaboration tools, etc… . You had to have a separate server for that. If a feature is added to Office, it generally doesn’t get added to the perpetual licenses, only to Office 365. Perpetual Office licenses like Office 2019 are best for folks that have computers that are rarely (if ever) online or need to stick with a specific version of Office for third-party compatibility with an add-on or other application.

Office 365: Office 365 gives you the same apps that come with Office 2019 (with the addition of Publisher and Access, depending on which version of Office 2019 you had). In addition, Office 365 is cloud-based, meaning it gives you a bunch of cloud-centric features, a bunch of group collaboration features, frequent updates (both feature and security updates), web apps, SharePoint, online storage (OneDrive), chat tools, and much more. It also gives you the ability to install the applications on up to 5 computers as well as use of the mobile apps. The other benefit of Office 365 is that your entire organization will be on the same version of Office consistently.

Note that Microsoft likes to make things even more confusing, and has recently started marketing Microsoft 365, which is a bit different.

Honestly, other than the ability to use it in an offline environment or because of third-party requirements, there are very few reasons to choose perpetual licenses over subscription-based licenses. Weston recommends (and is certified) in Office 365 solutions and migrations. Contact us today to start your Office 365 migration.