[HN Gopher] Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 lic...
___________________________________________________________________
Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices
Author : taubek
Score : 202 points
Date : 2025-12-08 13:49 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (office365itpros.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (office365itpros.com)
| lenerdenator wrote:
| That's an interesting way to make up for missing revenue targets.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| They saw what the Xbox division is doing and said give me some
| of that.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| Xbox spent $75 billion buying activision-blizzard, an
| acquisition which is very far away from making its money
| back, so price hikes were inevitable to cover the massive
| money hole that left.
|
| Of course this price hike is inevitably dragging Xbox brand
| into the hole long term, but those in charge of the price
| hikes probably expect not to be around when that happens,.
| abrouwers wrote:
| I don't think the price hikes have been received terribly
| well - their Ultimate game pass service is now $30 a month
| (in the US), which seems to be pricing out a lot of their
| members. It now makes a lot more sense for many to just buy
| games outright.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> I don't think the price hikes have been received
| terribly well_
|
| What did I say?
| abrouwers wrote:
| Sorry, it wasn't clear if you were suggesting raising
| prices was an effective way to recoup the cost of the
| acquisition. When I wrote my comment, only the first half
| of yours was showing up.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| Which would be fine if acquisitions they made made some
| great games instead of just... okay to kinda bad.
|
| Hell, even Call of Duty somehow underperformed
| JSR_FDED wrote:
| Copilot in every nook and cranny...that stuff costs money!
| goku12 wrote:
| In that case, a lot of software is going to raise their
| subscription prices. I don't think any AI provider is making
| profits with these integrations.
| puttycat wrote:
| Is there any reason to use Office nowadays except for being able
| to open documents sent by institutions where secretaries still
| use Word/Excel/PPT? (universities, etc.)
| throw03172019 wrote:
| I just open them in Google Docs/Slides and then export later to
| the original format after edits. I'm sure it's not feature
| complete but it's good enough!
| ok123456 wrote:
| This will ruin the formatting randomly. I would not do this
| if you're working on a deadline.
| hypeatei wrote:
| "is there any reason to use Office other than _< literally
| every profession using it>_?"
|
| No, I don't think so. I either sail the high seas or subscribe
| for a month or two when job searching then toss it when I'm
| done.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| For an individual, probably not. I've been an OpenOffice and
| LibreOffice use for my personal use and contracting business
| since 2004. I've had no need for "real" Microsoft Office in
| that time. I also don't deal in macro-encrusted documents or
| with more esoteric features.
|
| For an org where individual users aren't technical I'd never
| try to get by w/o Microsoft Office. The assumption by all large
| orgs. that you're going to use Microsoft Office is pervasive.
| Even if the Free Office suites work fine tech support is always
| going to be mired down in compatibility issues, both real and
| perceived.
| bix6 wrote:
| Do you know anyone who does serious financial work in anything
| besides Excel?
| flakeoil wrote:
| If they do serious financial work I for sure hope they do not
| use Excel or any other spread sheet tool. It can go wrong so
| many ways.
| Aurornis wrote:
| If you think spreadsheets aren't used in serious finance,
| you're going to be very disappointed if you ever have to
| work with that world.
| noosphr wrote:
| My first job out of uni was developing a devops pipeline
| for Excel spreadsheets after one went rogue and cost the
| broker trader I was hired by $10m in one fun afternoon.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| An application I consulted on was a web interface that
| made heavy use of the Excel portions of Microsoft Graph
| so that the finance team could continue to send clients
| spreadsheets that they could adjust without also sending
| them the formulas to "steal" (and take other parts of
| their business elsewhere, to noticeable millions of
| dollars of project spending habit shifts). The finance
| team wasn't going to _stop_ using Excel ( "how dare you
| suggest it"), so it was wildly custom solution to figure
| out where formulas existed in any of the spreadsheets
| finance felt like giving to the app, build a custom UI
| for entering the inputs to those formulas, run those
| formulas most with Microsoft Graph cloud magic/some with
| other web libraries, and return the results.
|
| If it were just about any other group than that company's
| "finance department" that so deeply wanted "just tightly
| wrap Excel in a web UI and leave the key computations as
| Excel formulas we can continue to edit in Excel because
| all we want to understand is Excel" project would
| probably have been rightfully laughed out of the room.
| Finance has the keys to a lot of companies and like
| keeping those keys for comfort in Excel.
| recroad wrote:
| Yup, I have. And had to deal with converting "this
| awesome tool that does X, Y and Z" to an actual multi-
| user app because it was just so great. You end up
| discovering that there are tons of miscalculations in
| these formulas that only surface when you start writing
| tests for them, and that a lot of the business decisions
| based on these tools had flawed assumptions.
|
| Having said that, I love that Excel has democratized app-
| building and made it easier for people to solve their own
| problems. In terms of alternatives, I think it's more
| about the UI and mental model that people have when using
| Excel, not necessarily the functionality. There may be
| 1-to-1 competitors in terms of functionality, but in
| terms of UX, Excel is sort of king.
| richardlblair wrote:
| Oh friend, if only you knew.
|
| Not only that, software nerds are rediscovering that they
| can build so much in Excel. You don't need an app for
| everything.
| noosphr wrote:
| Do you know anyone who does serious financial work in Excel?
|
| I know plenty of people who think they do. I know a few that
| cost the world economy about a trillion dollars:
| https://inthesetimes.com/article/the-excel-spreadsheet-
| error...
| speff wrote:
| Going by what my accounting buddy says - everyone in
| accounting in the US.
| AlanYx wrote:
| I know a few people who use Quantrix for financial modelling.
| It is an exceptionally nice piece of software, basically the
| successor of Lotus Improv, with Improv's more robust and
| auditable separation of data and formulas.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| I used Apple Numbers for all my spreadsheeting so it depends
| what you mean by "serious financial work". The vast majority
| of folk could probably get by without using Excel I am
| guessing.
| AnonHP wrote:
| I sometimes use Apple Numbers for some quick and dirty
| lists, but it severely lacks in keyboard use and keyboard
| navigation when compared to Excel.
| wongarsu wrote:
| I'd still consider Excel best in class
| benterix wrote:
| While I agree, there is no reason NOT to use a perpetual
| license (e.g. for Excel 2016), unless you really, really need
| the subscription-based version.
|
| You may notice the last edition of softwares that had
| perpetual licenses but moved on to subscription model tend to
| be very expensive today as they are no longer sold and people
| know how to count. So, let's use the opportunity while it
| lasts as I don't believe the end of perpetual licensing for
| Office (or Windows for that matter) is far away.
| layer8 wrote:
| I wish standalone versions were still standard, but the
| latest Excel versions have been adding really useful
| features in the core formula language.
| munchbunny wrote:
| In practice, it's like how having Adobe Reader used to be. You
| mostly don't need it, but occasionally you need it for
| interoperability with other people, such as lawyers.
|
| Otherwise, I keep it around for the desktop Excel app. Still my
| preferred spreadsheet app, even though Google Sheets does
| pretty much all of what I need.
| donatj wrote:
| As a home user and a Mac user, I haven't needed Office in well
| over 15 years given iWork and Google Docs.
|
| My company pays for office though, and I end up having to use
| it to play their Sensitivy Rules games for labeling files.
| sneak wrote:
| Excel has no competition whatsoever in the local software
| space. Google Sheets is somewhat useful for 80% of users but
| for people who must be on-prem/local it's Excel or nothing.
|
| Someone really should Pixelmator Excel. That's a viable
| startup, I think, though I have no idea what the GTM looks
| like. Some killer feature/perf that makes people install it
| alongside?
| adabyron wrote:
| Excel has amazing super powers.
|
| PowerPoint is underrated.
|
| For enterprises it almost always comes down to - does it reduce
| risk, is it easy to manage, authentication & authorization
| features, is it good enough & is it compatible with our current
| stuff.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Excel is the best spreadsheet software in my experience when
| you have to move beyond the basics. I've even tried hard to use
| the open/Libre alternatives.
|
| Hacker News is a different world than the target customer base
| for these products. If your use case for spreadsheet software
| is putting things into tables with some formatting and some
| light formulas then all of the products will do the same job.
|
| For professionals who use these tools, suggesting they use
| LibreOffice or something is the equivalent of someone coming to
| you and suggesting you give up your customized Emacs or Visual
| Studio Code setup in favor of Notepad++ because they both edit
| text and highlight code.
| rawbot wrote:
| > Excel is the best spreadsheet software in my experience
| when you have to move beyond the basics. I've even tried hard
| to use the open/Libre alternatives.
|
| I agree 100% with this, since I've been trying the same.
| Although I do think some power-users take it way too far and
| should be using more robust data analysis tools (Python, DBs)
| instead of having these monstrous Excel spreadsheets with
| millions of rows and columns.
| reactordev wrote:
| When all you know is Hammer...
|
| I agree and you'd be surprised at the response when I
| showed some of them how to do it in python numpy.
| AnonHP wrote:
| > Excel is the best spreadsheet software in my experience
| when you have to move beyond the basics. I've even tried hard
| to use the open/Libre alternatives.
|
| I strongly agree, but even for the basics! I use LibreOffice
| for personal use and put up with it only because it's not
| Microsoft. It's laggy, copy paste sometimes doesn't work, the
| user interface is quite dated, the fonts are ugly...the list
| goes on. I donate to Document Foundation so that it can get
| better, but it moves very slowly.
| timbit42 wrote:
| Have you tried LO's other interfaces under View > User
| Interface? There is Standard, Tabbed, and five other
| variations.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The tabbed/ribbon UI should be the default IMO
| kristjank wrote:
| It's interesting how views differ; I have never been able to
| make decent scientific graphs in Excel while Calc worked fine
| for me.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Calc has many features focused on correctness and
| reliability. Excel is a joke on both of those accounts.
|
| Turns out close to 100% of the spreadsheet users out there
| don't care about that. It's unnerving and absurd, and IMO,
| what is even the point of all the effort of entering your
| data and working it if you don't care about the result
| being correct? But that's how the world is.
| richardlblair wrote:
| I agree that Word has a million replacements. Hell, I usually
| just roll with a markdown file.
|
| But nothing beats excel or power point.
| lousken wrote:
| Sharepoint and office is the modern version of cancer. Nobody
| wants to manage onprem AD and mapped drives because cLoUd is
| the solution. Doesn't help that Microsoft stopped caring about
| onprem.
| Oleksa_dr wrote:
| Power Query + Power Pivot + M. I don't use formulas in cells.
| The sheets are just a canvas for Pivot Tables, final tables,
| and charts connected to the data from Power Query and Pivot.
|
| I deal with hundreds of API integrations involving various
| JSON, CSV, TSV, and XML files with mixed validity. My workflow:
| Notepad++ for a visual check -> Prototype everything in Excel.
| I give users a "visual", connect it to real data, and only then
| migrate the final logic to BI dashboards or databases.
|
| Nothing else delivers results this fast. SQL, BI tools, and
| Python are too slow because they generally need "clean" data.
| Cleaning and validation take too much time there. In Excel,
| it's mostly just a few clicks.
|
| PS: I spent 2 years (2022-2023) using LibreOffice Calc. I
| didn't touch Excel once, thinking I needed to break the habit.
| In the end, I did break the habit, but it was replaced by a
| pile of scripts and utilities because Calc couldn't do what I
| needed (or do it fast enough). The experience reminds me of
| testing Krita for 2 years (2018-2020) -- I eventually returned
| to Adobe Photoshop (but that's another story).
|
| PS2: About (Query + Pivot + BI). This allows you to process
| millions of rows (bypassing grid limitations). It also allows
| you to compress everything into an OLAP cube, taking up little
| space and working quickly with data.
| hu3 wrote:
| Interesting. I'm not experienced in data cleaning. About
| Python vs Excel: Isn't manual cleanning of data in Excel
| prone to permanent error? Because:
|
| - it's hard to version control/diff
|
| - it's done by a human fat fingering spreadsheet cells
|
| - it's not reproducible. Like if you need to redo the
| cleaning of all the dates, in a Python script you could just
| fix the data parsing part and rerun the script to parse
| source again. And you can easily control changes with git
|
| In practice I think the speed tradeoff could be worth the
| ocasional mistake. But it would depend on the field I guess.
| acheong08 wrote:
| This feels like a dangerous game they're playing. Yes, there is
| some lock in, but competitors exist and are better than ever. The
| new "features" they're justifying this with (Copilot) isn't even
| something that most people want
| mc32 wrote:
| Google was increasing their pricing too. Also before last year
| they were charging an extra license for Gemini but then decided
| to throw it in.
| emadb wrote:
| Other than Google, what are other competitors that worth
| evaluating?
| Bombthecat wrote:
| Open source... But yeah.. ms won this game
| sneak wrote:
| There is no foss competitor to Excel.
| croes wrote:
| But for many of Excels use cases
| ambicapter wrote:
| Google Docs works fine for most people though (not FOSS,
| but most Office customers don't care).
| mc32 wrote:
| It's about the same price without the AzureAD stuff or AV
| integration even if substandard. Also Google emasculated
| its Google sites.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| My problem is the knee-jerk "Google will sell/read our
| data" that suggesting any of their suite seems to
| engender. It doesn't really matter what Google says in
| their contracts, too many executives trust them less than
| MSFT.
|
| Agreed that their actual products seem to work fine for
| almost everyone.
| boh wrote:
| Open Office, Libre Office, Only Office to start.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I want to love these, mostly because they're FOSS and
| Office/Google Spreadsheets seems to get more and more
| bloated, and subsequently slower.
|
| But the UX is just a lot worse, and it isn't easy to go
| from one application to another because they're slightly
| different enough that your productivity takes a hit from
| all the small papercuts.
|
| I'm waiting for some FOSS spreadsheet solution that
| doesn't just try to copy Office, but comes up with
| something better. Then it'll feel like it's worth it to
| learn a whole new program and its UX, rather than just
| suffering through it because you wanna use FOSS.
| boh wrote:
| Check out Only Office. It's an almost total copy of the
| 365 aesthetic.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Yeah, that's the opposite of what I want, then I'll just
| continue using Excel... What I want is for someone to
| figure out a better UI and better UX, not just copy
| what's out there.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| Have you tried grist[0]?
|
| It's self-hostable (and the community version is FOSS I
| think), and really useful in a way I find better than
| just a spreadsheet.
|
| It's no good for importing complex excel things, but I've
| found it very useful for new work.
|
| [0](https://www.getgrist.com)
| embedding-shape wrote:
| That actually looks kind of neat, similar to Airbase
| unless I'm mistaken. Thanks for the recommendation, I'll
| definitely check it out.
| Krssst wrote:
| LibreOffice seems to have an optional ribbon-like
| interface for the people that happen to like it (View ->
| User Interface) (but I don't use this UI mode as I
| personally find ribbon-like UIs hard to work with).
| baranul wrote:
| Many would say that the FOSS alternatives don't copy
| Office enough. Often, by going there own way with various
| tasks, they create a bigger jump. Case in point, the
| Linux distros that attract the most attention for common
| folk and not niche use, are the ones that are more
| Windows-like. Examples: Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Zorin, etc...
| The smaller the jump, the more you can convince people to
| switch over.
|
| When there is a significant difference, it needs to be
| shown what the equivalent is in the alternative. The jump
| can be a bit mitigated by education or information, but
| usually by only so much, where it's still seen as
| attractive.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I think the main issue for most people is that the layout
| is slightly different, probably to help prevent microsoft
| from suing them.
|
| But once you get used to those differences, (also,
| knowing that there are a handful of themes that can
| shorten the difference significantly) then it becomes a
| non-issue after less than 10 hours of use.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Yes, but take OpenOffice off the list, development has
| slowed to a glacial pace and it's close to abandoned in
| favour of LibreOffice, which is actively maintained.
|
| Looks like there was finally a OpenOffice release
| recently but that was after years of people complaining
| of security vulnerabilities not fixed in the release
| version.
| richardlblair wrote:
| Or power point. I had to make some slides for the first
| time in a decade. I was in Google Slides for 5 minutes,
| then I tried to import an SVG.
|
| That was the moment I booted into windows for the first
| time in 4 months. I started up Power Point and sure
| enough SVGs are no problem.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| For legacy spreadsheets, you're 100% correct. I'll need
| to keep a version of Excel around forever. If they price
| me out of 365 by making me pay for Copilot shit I don't
| use or want, a perpetual license to Office 2019 runs
| about $20 and will do that job for me.
|
| For new work that I might have otherwise done in Excel,
| there are good options. Collabora works. Libre Office
| works. Google sheets works. And Grist is quite good, and
| self-hostable.
| sneak wrote:
| None of the things you listed are suitable replacements
| for Excel. None.
|
| It has nothing to do with existing files/compatibility.
| Excel is unparalleled.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Can it open Quattro Pro files?
| array_key_first wrote:
| The solution is actually just not using Excel. If you're
| essentially using Excel as a LOB backend and database,
| that should probably not be in Excel.
|
| It's fine if you have a few formulas. As soon as you're
| busting out macros it's time to sunset the workbook and
| make an application. There's a lot of God Excel workbooks
| sitting around on share drives with no audibility or
| quality control.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Yes, there's many many cases that should likely not be
| using Excel.
|
| But given that Excel is the second-best tool for
| everything, world runs on it.
|
| And when you try to build systems to replace Excel for a
| specific task, you quickly learn how extremely powerful
| Excel is and how hard is to replace it and add value that
| customers would care about.
| array_key_first wrote:
| I've been there, the problem is that replacements are not
| as versatile or "floppy". But that's also a good thing,
| because Excel is _too_ versatile to the point where most
| workbooks are filled with bugs on top of bugs and nobody
| cares.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| That depends on your workload. I've been using Excel
| since 1993, and I find the things I've listed help me get
| things done just as well as Excel does, unless I have a
| pile of macros and vbscript I need to interop with.
|
| This is not theoretical; I learned it by needing to get
| shit done in a context where having an activated copy of
| Excel wasn't practical. Excel was paralleled and in one
| case surpassed.
| baranul wrote:
| Have to disagree. It depends on what you are doing. That
| the alternatives can be replacements, including the open
| source ones, is relative and should be looked at as a
| percentage.
|
| If you listed out all the things that Excel can do, we
| might find that the alternative is at 80% or so (just a
| number), with some additional things that Excel can't do.
| That 80% could be good enough to switch. It should not be
| looked at as "all or nothing", especially for every
| person or business.
| moepstar wrote:
| > a perpetual license to Office 2019 runs about $20 and
| will do that job for me.
|
| Isn't that only perpetual as long as the activation
| servers are up?
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| Probably. I meant "perpetual" as opposed to
| "subscription" but I agree with your concern.
| nottorp wrote:
| You just stash a cracked version downloaded off some high
| seas site just in case.
| adornKey wrote:
| Libre Office Calc is pretty similar to Excel for general
| use. For importing csv files it has always been superior
| to Excel. Some niche areas in Calc are also better than
| Excel. Inflexible users are locked into Excel, but for
| general purpose use Calc is all you need.
| breckognize wrote:
| Shameless plug: Row Zero has real enterprise traction.
| AWS uses us.
|
| 2B row limit, connected, eliminates the Excel security
| risk because it's hosted.
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| Zoho and Collabora spring immediately to mind.
| stackskipton wrote:
| Zoho is crap. Sure, on the tin it comes with 64 different
| things, but many are poorly integrated and feature set is
| just enough to be like "Yes, we have that feature."
| DANmode wrote:
| As of what date?
| stackskipton wrote:
| Probably been about 2 years since I was forced to last
| use it but with amount of slop being added, their
| development priorities would have to massively changed.
| DANmode wrote:
| Gotcha - 8-10 years more relevant than my experiences!
| croes wrote:
| For which feature?
|
| How people in companies really need the features of Word,
| Excel and PowerPoint?
|
| I often see people using space to right align a date, the
| pros use tabs.
| basch wrote:
| Canva is a go to over Microsoft and Adobe for a huge crowd of
| people
| preisschild wrote:
| Collabora Online
| alternatex wrote:
| Unironically Proton. Seems like they are slowly building
| their own suite of office tools.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Can I just get the version without CoPilot for cheaper? Or at
| all?
|
| Likely they'd charge more for it.
| jsheard wrote:
| I think the only way to get the no-Copilot version now is to
| already have the Copilot version and try to cancel your
| subscription, and only then they'll offer the "Classic"
| version sans Copilot as a last ditch retention effort. If
| users actually wanted this stuff they wouldn't need to bury
| the option to not pay for it.
| noosphr wrote:
| >How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Business basic goes from $6 to $7. Business premium is
| unchanged from $22 to $22.
|
| Price increases are normal. (I've been on HN long enough to
| remember when "raise your prices" was treated as the best
| startup advice around in HN comments) These price increases
| aren't excessive relative to inflation for other services in a
| business context. I don't see this as a dangerous game.
|
| > The new "features" they're justifying this with (Copilot)
| isn't even something that most people want
|
| Most people who comment on HN, maybe. Their average customer is
| probably demanding it and at risk of switching products if the
| AI integration is not as good as a competitor's.
|
| The Venn diagram of their customer base and Hacker News
| commenters doesn't have much overlap.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > Their average customer is probably demanding it and at risk
| of switching products if the AI integration is not as good as
| a competitor's.
|
| There's no substance to this comment. It's pure speculation.
| If you actually want to look at evidence, look at the recent
| news that Microsoft has cut AI sales targets in half.
|
| > The Venn diagram of their customer base and Hacker News
| commenters doesn't have much overlap.
|
| Ironic that you posted this as a comment on HN.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Ironic that you posted this as a comment on HN.
|
| It's not ironic at all. Posting here was deliberate to
| highlight the bubble that happens here for consumer
| products. This comment section has a lot of people
| evaluating these price hikes as if they were targeted at HN
| individual users, not for a product targeted at a different
| audiences and corporate subscriptions.
|
| Hacker News commenters are frequently unaware that their
| use cases and customer preferences do not reflect the
| average customer demand in the market.
|
| Remember when Dropbox was launched and the top comment was
| doubting its utility because they could replicate it with
| rsync and other commands duct taped together? That level of
| disconnectedness with the market is common in every thread
| about consumer products.
|
| As for AI demand: If you don't think AI is in demand, you
| haven't been looking at the explosive adoption of AI tools
| from ChatGPT to Sora (consistently high on app charts) by
| consumers. These products are in high demand, though you'd
| never know if it your only perspective was through upvoted
| HN stories and comments.
| qsort wrote:
| I broadly agree with you but the AI demand part is more
| nuanced. Demand is very large for consumer-ish apps like
| ChatGPT and Sora, but even Claude, which is huge for
| coding and arguably the best model right now, is tiny.
| I've had an interaction with someone nontechnical who,
| after seeing the Claude logo bounce, asked me why my
| ChatGPT had fireworks.
|
| Yeah, the demand is there, but I have a hard time
| believing nontechnical people are clamoring for Copilot,
| they likely don't even know such a thing exists. The
| market is insane right now.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > but even Claude, which is huge for coding and arguably
| the best model right now, is tiny. I've had an
| interaction with someone nontechnical who, after seeing
| the Claude logo bounce, asked me why my ChatGPT had
| fireworks
|
| So they had used ChatGPT enough to recognize that you
| were using a different tool?
|
| I don't see this as contradicting anything. Even the
| nontechnical people in your life are familiar with these
| tools because they're using them.
| expedition32 wrote:
| I agree MS365 or whatever the official name is nowadays
| is just a tax write of for companies.
|
| There are alternatives for consumers but enterprise isn't
| going to screw around with those.
| jjgreen wrote:
| _Business basic goes from $6 to $7_
|
| So a 16% hike when current US inflation is 3-4%?
| jfindper wrote:
| Percentages are fun because they can make something with a
| small absolute change look like a giant change.
|
| No business is really going to care about $1.00/user,
| especially when it costs hundreds of dollars per user (or
| thousands) to migrate entirely away from the Microsoft
| ecosystem.
| Terretta wrote:
| For an enterprise with fungible employees there is
| nothing cogent to migrate to.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Did you notice every price was a whole number?
|
| Or that this was for business accounts that were already
| cheap? $1/seat isn't going to cause a mass migration off
| the platform.
|
| Or that some of the price hikes were 0%?
|
| Fixating on this lowest price increase is deliberately
| misleading.
|
| You would also have to go back and calculate price
| increases over time to compare against inflation over time?
| jjgreen wrote:
| If they charged by the day then (rounding up for your
| convenience) gets $31/mo, you're missing a trick Redmond
| ...
| gruez wrote:
| >So a 16% hike when current US inflation is 3-4%?
|
| When was the last price hike? Looking at historical
| inflation and working backwards, you only need to start at
| around late 2021 to get 16% cumulative inflation. In other
| words if they didn't raise their prices for 4 years, they'd
| be at par with inflation.
|
| edit: another commenter mentioned the last price hike was
| around 4 years ago, so it's indeed in line with inflation:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46192356
| redserk wrote:
| Since when does any organization factor in inflation for
| renewals from vendors?!
|
| All the purchase renewal decisions I've been part of have
| been:
|
| 1) Will they budge on renewal rates?
|
| 2) Does an alternative vendor exist?
|
| 3) Is the increase reasonable compared to the cost of
| switching to an alternative?
|
| 4) Do we anticipate future price increases, and if so,
| how can we prepare ourselves to consider a switch in the
| future?
| gruez wrote:
| >Since when does any organization factor in inflation for
| renewals from vendors?!
|
| Don't ask me, ask the person who posed the question of
| inflation in the first place. That said...
|
| >All the purchase renewal decisions I've been part of
| have been:
|
| All but one of the reasons you listed are tied to
| inflation in some way. Inflation affects everything in
| the economy, so a company that doesn't raise prices in
| line with it is losing money. Even SaaS businesses with
| low marginal costs aren't exempt, because they still need
| to pay salaries for developers and support staff, both of
| which roughly track inflation. Therefore if business see
| price hikes that raise with inflation, they can assume
| that competitors will raise prices as well, and it's not
| going to be worth switching unless they're already on the
| fence for some other reason.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > All but one of the reasons you listed are tied to
| inflation in some way.
|
| Only if you assert that all prices move together at the
| same velocity.
|
| It's usually a reasonable thing to assert, when the
| economy isn't in a complete revolution. And it's a really
| bad premise right now.
| tallanvor wrote:
| How much inflation has there been since the last price
| increase? From 2022 to 2025 it look likes like about 11%,
| so not all that different if you're trying to keep a round
| number.
| graemep wrote:
| > Their average customer is probably demanding it and at risk
| of switching products if the AI integration is not as good as
| a competitor's.
|
| Which customers? Some enterprise customers want AI, others
| restrict its use. Other want integration with something other
| than Copilot.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Are we treating MS like a start-up now?
| tacticus wrote:
| > Their average customer is probably demanding it
|
| The average australian customer managed to get angry enough
| that the ACCC is working to force a slop free variant and a
| refund for everyone dark patterned into upgrading.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > The Venn diagram of their customer base and Hacker News
| commenters doesn't have much overlap.
|
| You're completely right about this. But how does the Venn
| diagram look for features between different Office versions
| and for customer needs? Another commenter here said that
| Office 98 is good enough for most users, and I have to agree.
|
| What reason is there today for somebody to upgrade from a 10
| or 15 year old version of Office? Is Copilot it?
|
| I've managed a very information-intensive career so far
| without using MS Office. Apple's iWork software is perfectly
| fine. And I'm not avoiding Office out of any principle. If I
| needed or wanted it, I'd be happy to pay for it.
| boh wrote:
| Most of their enterprise clients get bundled services so it
| often still retains its competitive edge. Their Power suite,
| Teams and the existing integrations make it cost effective even
| with the increases.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| I wish I could agree with this, but the ecosystem lock-in is
| too great. They might lose business for sure but it may not put
| a dent in their revenue at all.
|
| If you replace office, you'll have to replace sharepoint,
| onedrive, etc.. and it isn't just the tools but the policies
| and critical features that go along with those. For most orgs,
| this is literally their lifeblood, not just some tool they can
| yank out. For smaller orgs it might be easier, but those don't
| pay Microsoft as much anyways.
|
| From a user point of view, there are tools that have similar
| features, some even better features. G-suite is the only
| platform i know of that unifies all the office productivity
| products like 365 does. But neither G-suite nor any other
| platform can be managed/policed as well as 365. At the end of
| the day, will Google behave any better than Microsoft anyways
| (cost or otherwise)? And it isn't just policing and management
| but securing all that precious data in there, Microsoft might
| not be great but lots of tech-debt has gone into securing it
| within that platform. A migration would be costly, justifying
| it with cost savings alone might be difficult.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > If you replace office, you'll have to replace sharepoint,
| onedrive, etc.
|
| At least in my workplace, people do their best to avoid using
| sharepoint and onedrive anyway.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| in corporate america, it's everywhere, to the point where
| people's compromised accounts being used to send phishing
| content via sharepoint/onedrive is extremely common. It is
| (rightfully) highly encouraged as well due to their built-
| in data loss prevention stuff (Microsoft information
| protection/MIP), it's the only reasonable way I've seen to
| get a handle on secret documents/content/slides from
| leaking too much.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| In my experience, most people, especially execs who are
| negotiating the licensing deals, want Copilot. Even if they are
| underwhelmed after using it, at that point, MS doesn't care.
| They already have your money.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > This feels like a dangerous game they're playing. Yes, there
| is some lock in, but competitors exist and are better than
| ever.
|
| Except there are not really any competitors if you look at the
| whole package.
|
| A Microsoft 365 Business Standard subscription, for example,
| gets you bundled Teams and Exchange.
|
| The fact you get the big-four (Word, Excel, Outlook and
| Powerpoint) thrown in is really just icing on the cake.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Teams has annoyingly some lock in value for 365. Nobody
| should prefer Exchange Online over Exchange though, Microsoft
| is too unreliable of a service provider.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > A Microsoft 365 Business Standard subscription, for
| example, gets you bundled Teams and Exchange.
|
| That's a negative.
| trinix912 wrote:
| For end-users maybe, but for the business' IT who get a
| working mail server they don't have to mess with, and a
| whole remote work and videoconferencing package that "just
| works" and most people already know how to use, it's a hell
| of a deal.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| The great unwashed masses will still continue to pay it. It's
| not a sizeable increases that they'd be willing to move
| elsewhere. People rationalize it in the context of it's only a
| buck a month and other things increase by more. M$ are not
| stupid but do know what they're doing. May take is. Don't do
| drugs. Don't do subscriptions. Don't do MICROS~1.
| jgerrish wrote:
| > This feels like a dangerous game they're playing.
|
| There are different types of danger in playing the "We are the
| Monsters" game that Microsoft and the US Intelligence agencies
| seem to love.
|
| There's the danger their allies in Europe like Germany running
| the Open Document Foundation aren't as powerful as they think.
| I'm sorry if that's the case and I wouldn't want to be making
| those calculations.
|
| But there's a different danger to normal US citizens just
| trying to live their fucking lives and build their life
| spreadsheet. It's so easy nowadays to fall into the trap of
| identifying more with European values, including digital data
| protection and open source. Or wanting to leave the country.
|
| But some people don't want to be forced out of their home when
| they're vulnerable. It hurts knowing we are seen as monsters
| ourselves and I don't blame that sentiment.
|
| But where will the next generation be shifted to?
|
| Launched to Europe after Canada? Then launched into Space?
|
| It's tied into the other social situations like public support
| for Luigi Mangione's actions and horrible calls for the death
| of political actors. You know it's a convenient way to demonize
| a large portion of the population and legally protect
| institutions like the FBI. Who does important work and is just
| doing their fucking job.
|
| That game isn't as dangerous for them. The cost to them is
| minimal, but huge for citizens stuck down here.
|
| It sucks. I really do love the work Microsoft has done in the
| past decade with LSP and developer experience.
| Havoc wrote:
| The family plan was already noticeably more expensive this year
| on Black Friday (roughly +20% over prior year).
|
| Already moved all my usage away from MS...now just need to
| persuade rest of fam
| zkmon wrote:
| While businesses definitely don't need all those features, I
| guess most use it for compatibility sake - to work with existing
| files and to collaborate with others who use MS Office.
|
| What's current state of open-source alternatives that can work
| with the MS file formats?
| flakeoil wrote:
| LibreOffice is working great and is compatible. I have never
| had any issues with formulas. I suppose if there are some very
| complex macros or formulas then it will break, but then you are
| probably using the wrong tool anyway.
| gtirloni wrote:
| > most use it for compatibility sake
|
| Which kind of is on Microsoft for not fixing the situation and
| just carrying cruft every release. They could have a separate
| tool to fix/migrate to whatever modern format they are using
| nowadays (or to some "light" format that doesn't allow all the
| features 99% of users don't care about).
|
| Their subscription could be much cheaper.
| spogbiper wrote:
| It goes beyond the file formats. There is an entire ecosystem
| of industry specific extensions and plugins that are heavily
| used in law and accounting firms. These only work with MS
| office and they are critical to how many businesses operate.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Considering the last price increase was almost 4 years before
| this one goes into effect, most of those are pretty modest
| 1-4%/year increases. In line with inflation. The notable outliers
| are F1 and F3 which got a lot more expensive
|
| Apparently F1 and F3 are "Office 365 for Frontline Workers". F3
| is kind of like Office 365 Basic, F1 is stripped down to mostly
| read-only access plus Microsoft Teams
| crazygringo wrote:
| Seriously. I don't understand why this is even news or posted
| here.
|
| If they were doubling prices or something then of course, raise
| the alarms. This is not that.
| cfn wrote:
| The price increases seem reasonable (from 6 to 7, 12 to 14, etc)
| given inflation. Have they been increasing prices frequently or
| am I missing something?
| SomeHacker44 wrote:
| My OneDrive went from 70 to 100 USD. That is a huge increase.
| 7thpower wrote:
| I have a family license and am more or less stuck with it, but
| for my business I will be moving things over to gsuite so I can
| be price gouged by them instead. It will cost more, but I'll have
| Gemini, which is actually useful.
|
| The last straw, aside from the price increases, was switching my
| office.com landing page to copilot. It feels like a new low, even
| for Microsoft.
|
| You just lost $6/mo., Microsoft. I hope it was worth it.
| boh wrote:
| If most companies had to for some reason revert to Windows XP and
| MS Office from 1998, they would barely be impacted. There is
| literally no benefit to this subscription model besides paying
| for what you already have and what you don't want. None of this
| stuff needs to be on the cloud even for bigger firms. For the I
| need/like X in Office 365, it's not worth it from a costs
| perspective.
| Angostura wrote:
| I'd disagree in terms of the cloud capabilities. When it is
| used _properly_. The cloud stuff is very useful. I currently
| have a document that is going through multiple versions with
| about 8 people, with different expertise collaborating. Some
| have edit privs, some only have review. The ability for
| everyone to work on it simultaneously, with version history and
| no more document-v12-copy3_FINAL_FINALv2 is most welcome.
| bombcar wrote:
| Multiplayer PowerPoint is the single largest advance in the
| business world since the spreadsheet.
|
| If used properly.
| rs186 wrote:
| If you heavily rely on Word and PowerPoint. I know several
| companies that almost never use those products except in
| limited situations (legal, keynote presentation etc). All
| "regular" discussions/presentations take place on
| Confluence/Notion/Quip etc. I wish my company did the same
| thing.
| sneak wrote:
| They'd get owned by security vulnerabilities in the first hour,
| fwiw.
| boh wrote:
| Ah yes security, the ultimate shakedown mechanic. Tony
| Soprano should've been in software sales. "You don't want
| anything happen to your nice little business do you??"
| AnonHP wrote:
| Security has not been Microsoft's priority for many years
| now. The CEO just says some words that don't mean anything.
| rz2k wrote:
| I think a surprising number of companies only survive because
| Microsoft Office gets around hostile internal IT departments
| and gives workers capabilities they can't otherwise get on
| their locked down workstations.
|
| It was only in 2007 that the row limit in Excel increased from
| 65k to one million and the column limit increased from 256 to
| 16k. There are better tools to work with data, but these
| companies' IT departments aren't letting users install them.
| AnonHP wrote:
| > If most companies had to for some reason revert to Windows XP
| and MS Office from 1998, they would barely be impacted.
|
| But what about the impact of increased productivity when not
| having to deal with the garbage that are New Teams and New
| Outlook? The employees would start doing more in lesser time
| and the companies could potentially make more profits too. Why
| would they want that if they could just be locked in with
| Microsoft month-on-month? /s
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Bullshit. Just from a document editing perspective, going back
| to a network share where only one person can edit a doc is not
| going to fly. I used to have to deal with this as IT/desktop
| support and it fucking sucked. Docs in the cloud give you
| better collab capabilities and remove the need to have fancy
| networking, VPNs, international security exclusion groups etc,
| domain controller bullshit, connecting all of the companies
| offices together. Connect to the Internet, and all your stuff
| is there no matter where you are. It sounds like you've never
| had to support the infra for office workers before. This is way
| better than it used to be. For a small company, sure, do
| whatever. But the bigger it gets, the harder all that shit
| becomes and requires a lot of work to keep it running.
| throwaway613745 wrote:
| Nobody is buying Co-Pilot so....fuggit...jack up the price! What
| is anyone gonna do about it? Leave? lmao
| bhouston wrote:
| Haven't opened Microsoft Office in I think 7 years. Haven't also
| used Apple's Office suite either - it is just Google
| Docs/presentations/sheets/drive for everything. I feel my life is
| better. They were massive installs and I prefer to have
| everything online all the time anyhow - just safer and more
| convenient.
| sneak wrote:
| Way more convenient for the FAA702 users, too.
|
| If you have absolutely nothing in your documents that you
| wouldn't mind giving the FBI to read without a warrant or
| probable cause, it is possible you are wasting your one and
| only life.
|
| A good example would be anyone in the state-legal cannabis
| industry. This is still a federal crime (Schedule 1!), and
| giving cloud providers (and thus DHS without a warrant thanks
| to FAA702) concrete detailed evidence of same is, from a
| criminal liability standpoint, the same thing as mailing the
| FBI photos of your meth lab with your return address on it.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| That you _would_ mind.
|
| But yes your point is correct.
| bhouston wrote:
| I am a Canadian. Pot is legal here at the federal level. My
| province (e.g. Canadian state) runs its own online pot store
| (hosted on Shopify BTW): https://ocs.ca. It includes various
| edibles too.
| gary_0 wrote:
| They can set whatever price they want. Most customers have no
| choice but to pay; there is no competitor with anything
| approaching full compatibility or a similar feature set.
|
| Companies like Microsoft and Adobe have maintained a business
| software monoculture for decades. Nobody has invested significant
| resources into competing products, just tiny companies and open
| source volunteers putting out niche alternatives. Microsoft could
| probably double their prices, and double the built-in
| advertising, and most customers would complain loudly and keep
| using them. Docx files, PSDs, PDF forms, etc with any complexity
| will only ever run properly in one corresponding proprietary
| application.
| hypeatei wrote:
| > They can set whatever price they want
|
| Then why don't they? I think it's precisely because they don't
| want anyone "investing significant resources into competing
| products"
|
| There's a line for everyone and current prices obviously _aren
| 't_ too much for a majority of people, including me. I just
| don't stay subscribed when I'm not using it.
| gary_0 wrote:
| I mean, they kind of are? Obviously they can't set it to a
| million dollars a month, but where's the ceiling? Five
| hundred? A thousand? Who knows? And maybe they make it play a
| 30 second video ad once a day?
|
| They keep getting away with it, and nobody has any idea when
| the buck will finally stop.
| hypeatei wrote:
| Yes, that's how markets work. It seems like Microsoft
| understands it well or we'd be seeing mass exodus from
| Office products. No price increases for three years doesn't
| seem too bad, IMO.
|
| > And maybe they make it play a 30 second video ad once a
| day?
|
| Maybe. While we're at it, I'll also add a hypothetical:
| what if it encrypted all my files and made me pay a ransom?
| gary_0 wrote:
| On the contrary, I don't think end-user market forces are
| having any significant effect at all. There's currently
| boundless slack on that side as far as Microsoft is
| concerned. The only thing effecting the prices are the
| upcoming quarterly financials. "Line goes up" is the only
| economic law at play here. Their hopelessly trapped
| customers should consider themselves lucky a steeper
| deflection wasn't in order.
| dangus wrote:
| Have you stopped and thought about what you're saying or
| are you just assuming this is expensive because it's
| Microsoft and they're Bad?
|
| Let's actually look at what you get for your money (I'll
| just go by current consumer pricing since it's easy to
| find/understand):
|
| Microsoft 365 Family:
|
| $130/year
|
| 6 people, 1TB storage per person
|
| Each person gets 5 devices for all Office apps
|
| Higher AI usage limits than free (only primary user, not
| shared)
|
| Let's try to buy this from someone else:
|
| Google: $99/year for 2TB, shared between 6 people, but your
| limit is 2TB total. No Gemini in Google apps unless you're
| paying for Google AI which bumps this all up to $20/month
| with no additional storage. I can't actually see how much
| additional storage costs to make this equivalent to
| 1TB/person without signing up.
|
| Apple: $420/year to get 6TB of storage shared between 6
| people. iWork apps are garbage, no AI included. iCloud+
| does have some side features like private relay, custom
| domain email, etc.
|
| Proton Family: 3TB, $288 a year
|
| pCloud: 10TB family lifetime plan is $1500, equivalent to
| about 10 years of paying for Office 365.
|
| All this to say, tl;dr, Microsoft is actually offering one
| of the better deals out there especially if you want to
| give a significant amount of storage to each family member
| at a low cost.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > No Gemini in Google apps unless you're paying for
| Google AI
|
| Not true. Gemini in Google Apps (Gemini for Workspace) is
| included by default as a set of core features (Help me
| write in Docs, Gemini side panel in Docs/Sheets/Meet,
| etc.). The AI Pro tier of Google One adds additional AI
| functionality, (billed annually, which seems the correct
| comparison given all your other price quotes are per year
| and seem to use annual billing pricing, it is $199, or
| $100 more than the 2TB tier without AI Pro.)
| dangus wrote:
| Interesting, Google's price comparison made it look like
| free tiers didn't get that.
|
| I did try to use annual pricing with annual discounts
| wherever I could, some services don't really list it
| explicitly.
|
| I will admit Microsoft's pricing doesn't really look as
| good if you're not sharing the storage, and they get
| demerit for not providing a free tier for most of the
| apps at all.
| bcrl wrote:
| LibreOffice is good enough for many use cases. A competing
| product doesn't have to be a 100% match feature for feature to
| be Good Enough for most users.
| LeoWattenberg wrote:
| I bet the folks of the state Schleswig-Holstein are celebrating
| right now, having switched away from it recently
|
| https://www.heise.de/en/news/Goodbye-Microsoft-Schleswig-Hol...
| hereme888 wrote:
| Should be the standard for modern governments.
| kome wrote:
| they increased the price also last year... i went back to
| pirating after, dunno, 15 years or more.
| baggachipz wrote:
| That often wrong and unnecessary AI bullshit ain't gonna pay for
| itself!
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| They also are actively decreasing the value by sunsetting
| Publisher in October 2026 [0]. Hilariously, the suggested
| replacement is PowerPoint, despite it being unable to natively
| open .pub files. The solution for that? Run a powershell script
| to convert all your publisher files to (uneditable) PDF.
|
| There are many memes about inserting photos into Word, and the
| content flying around and breaking. My pet theory is that the
| younger generation never realized Publisher existed or was
| included in M365, and used PowerPoint as an everything-is-a-
| hammer crutch, and have now gotten jobs at Microsoft and are
| sticking with it.
|
| Also, as far as I can tell, Publisher is the only application
| where the color-picker includes Pantone colors which is a must
| for professional poster production. I assume Microsoft is paying
| a licensing fee for this, and I wonder if they'll remember to
| cancel it.
|
| Perhaps Affinity can eat their lunch and release a word-
| processor.
|
| [0] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/microsoft-
| publish...
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Weird that with as much as they're pushing Co-Pilot everywhere,
| they for some reason can't use it to maintain Publisher. Maybe
| Co-Pilot isn't as good as Microsoft claims.
| mosura wrote:
| The reality is DTP outside of pro sectors (i.e. these days
| InDesign) was rendered worthless by how ubiquitous the tooling
| was.
|
| In any sector where the barriers to entry are destroyed you
| either have to go really big or go home.
| dybber wrote:
| And for publisher there probably isn't the same network
| effect as for Word/Excel/Powerpoint.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > And for publisher there probably isn't the same network
| effect as for Word/Excel/Powerpoint.
|
| There isn't because any serious print shop will laugh you
| out the door if you come to them with a Publisher file.
|
| Publisher is fine for home/office printing, and you will
| probably get away with it at your local corner shop that
| does digital printing on a Xerox box in the back of the
| shop.
|
| But if you're sending stuff off to the big-boys you will
| suddenly find yourself needing to adhere to artwork
| preflight settings, colour profiles, PDF and TAC specs.
|
| Not only will the printer give you validation settings
| files you can load into Acrobat and Indesign, but if there
| are issues, the printer's preflight team will be more
| willing (and able !) to help you if you are using industry-
| standard tools.
| Terretta wrote:
| > _There isn 't because any serious print shop will laugh
| you out the door if you come to them with a Publisher
| file._
|
| You say this like customers don't show up with a
| PowerPoint file.
| trinix912 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they not only show up with a PowerPoint
| file, but one with missing/nonembedded fonts, web images,
| perhaps even a video in there somewhere. At least that's
| been my experience with people sending me stuff to print.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| When I did IT work for my university, I was in charge of
| a big plotter printer that the science students used to
| print posters with summaries of their research for
| conferences. The only format I ever got was PowerPoint.
| Based on the number of search results for "powerpoint
| research poster template", it looks like this PowerPoint
| is still the format of choice.
|
| I never really thought about it, but it is kind of odd
| that the same community that loves using LaTeX for
| document formatting and typesetting research papers is
| also using PowerPoint as a desktop publishing substitute.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| Sorry but what does this mean? I can't quite parse it. What
| tooling was ubiquitous?
| trinix912 wrote:
| They probably meant Publisher, which was a part of every
| more expensive MS Office deal. It was simple to use and
| much more suitable than Word for simple design jobs
| (business cards, leaflets, stationary, etc) and with which
| the "average" MS Office user could now do what was once the
| domain of DTP "professionals".
| mosura wrote:
| I did not mean this.
| trinix912 wrote:
| So please tell us what you did mean.
| mosura wrote:
| I am perfectly happy with the original statement.
| chrisoverzero wrote:
| No, we don't mind. Go ahead.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| A lot of this seems to be related to death of the amateur and
| semi-pro DTP industries:
|
| 1. Printers stopped catering to semi-pros and became more
| binary between "home" and "enterprise" solutions, with very
| little crossover and with "home" products trying to be as
| "good enough" dumb as possible (and also in many cases nearly
| as hostile to semi-pro usage as possible because so many
| "home" printers became loss leaders for ink cartridge
| subscriptions).
|
| 2. A lot of DTP moved to web publishing. Who needs printed
| invites when you have "evites"? Who needs printed greeting
| cards when you have "ecards" and now Facebook walls and group
| messaging stickers/gifs/memes? Etc.
|
| I have fond memories of the home DTP creative scene in the
| 1990s. Partly because my mother was deep into it and very
| creative with it. It is interesting how much has changed
| between that era (when Publisher was one of several nearly
| ubiquitous home tools alongside Print Shop) to today (where
| Print Shop is a dead brand for many years and Publisher has
| been zombie-like or comatose in the same span, and now
| scheduled for death).
| askvictor wrote:
| No-one will pay for it, but the presence of Publisher, as a
| tool that people know and use, in the Office Suite, would
| probably be a substantial feature for many people.
| xnx wrote:
| Pretty sure Gemini could create a Slides doc from a PDF of a
| Publisher file.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| I used Publisher (2.0! and then 95) quite a bit in the mid to
| late 1990s. I haven't used it since then because Word now has
| all the features that were previously exclusive to Publisher,
| so its purpose has evaporated. It's certainly true that Word
| has bugs and frustrations but I'd be surprised if Publisher
| didn't too.
|
| It's very odd that they propose PowerPoint as the Publisher
| replacement. How do you create a fold out leaflet in
| PowerPoint!? Maybe most of the people left using Publisher
| actually only need PowerPoint's features, rather than the full
| power of Word?
| spogbiper wrote:
| > How do you create a fold out leaflet in PowerPoint!?
|
| There appear to be templates for this in Powerpoint
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| You need more than a template if you're going to make a
| booklet by folding a piece of paper in 4 - half of the
| "pages" (quarter pages) need to be upside down.
|
| In truth, I haven't tried this in Word either, although it
| appears to be possible in page setup. Maybe I just stopped
| using Publisher when I started getting duplex printers. Or
| even stopped needing silly layouts for school projects.
| trinix912 wrote:
| PowerPoint is probably the replacement because it doesn't
| restrict where things can be placed (at least not by
| default). Word would be much more suitable, if only they made
| and advertised some sort of DTP mode that would do away with
| the image position defaults and let users put things over
| margins.
| basch wrote:
| What's crazier is that it actually stops working if installed.
|
| Of the last two times I had to make a flyer, one of the two I
| pulled up PowerPoint to accomplish. It's not a completely
| outlandish direction. They should add a Publisher mode that
| transforms the interface for print document design.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Install LibreOffice.
| Guestmodinfo wrote:
| I used Scribus. Top choice for replacing Publisher by open
| source software. Scribus is very intuitive and with enough
| time I could churn out a beautiful looking effective resume
| on my first try
| supportengineer wrote:
| Sunsetting a product to save money smells like promo-driven
| culture
| Elfener wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing about people seemingly not
| knowing about Publisher.
|
| And I always found those memes about photos moving around your
| text annoying, because that it literally what you want when
| making a document (you know, what Word is designed for) (but
| you can just change the behaviour if you want a different
| layout anyway).
| stuaxo wrote:
| Powerpoint for DTP... did the person writing that know what
| Publisher even is ?
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| >My pet theory is that the younger generation never realized
| Publisher existed
|
| For most it didn't. The non 365 Office came in 3 tiers Student,
| business, and enterprise. Publisher only came with enterprise.
| sharts wrote:
| Who still uses this garbage? None of these products have
| meaningfully improved since Office '97 --and that was like peak
| Office
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I bought Microsoft Word, years ago, before it was "licensed".
| However, it auto-updated itself with my permission from time to
| time. A few weeks ago, I went to edit a document and was
| presented with a pop-up that said I needed to update my license
| fee in order to be allowed to make modifications to it.
|
| This is doubly frustrating when Word is the standard for resumes.
| sylens wrote:
| The height of me using Microsoft Office in a personal capacity
| was when I was in school and university. I've been fine living
| out of Google Docs since then. At work, my company is a Google
| Workspace customer and I have to say I've come to enjoy the
| comment/live editing functionality of Google Docs more than Word.
| lewisjoe wrote:
| At this point Microsoft office suite is practically a monopoly.
| Governments around the world rely on it. Every big enterprise and
| every business needs it.
|
| The spec for office documents was authored by Microsoft( and
| approved by Microsoft!). The spec is basically the docx
| datastructure published publicly as a standard - which makes
| building competing office suites even harder.
|
| Given the situation there isn't much customers can do if
| Microsoft decides to hike the prices anyhow they like.
|
| Note: Indian Government recently adopted Zoho office suite to
| insulate themselves from Microsoft.
|
| But I don't think many other governments or businesses have the
| guts to make such move.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| > At this point Microsoft office suite is practically a
| monopoly.
|
| There are loads of competitors in the space. Google Docs,
| LibeOffice, OnlyOffice, WPS Office, and I'm sure there are many
| others in the space that are lesser known. All of these are
| compatible with Office formats.
| goku12 wrote:
| > Note: Indian Government recently adopted Zoho office suite to
| insulate themselves from Microsoft.
|
| India's central government didn't adopt Zoho just to insulate
| against Microsoft. It was done when Trump imposed a 50% tariff
| on imports from India. It was targeted against US IT companies
| in general, though the most mentioned one was Google. Zoho is
| an Indian company.
|
| I had switched to Zoho about 6 months before them and it has
| provided a rather decent experience so far. The biggest
| attractions for me though, are that it's very economical and it
| has transactions in local currency using local payment systems.
| They also have a good selection of apps.
|
| Honestly, this was a wasted opportunity for GoI. Indian
| domestic IT market is an untapped gold mine that they didn't
| promote much until recently. But better late than never, I
| guess.
|
| Another relevant point here is that India is one of the
| countries that voted against Microsoft OOXML document format in
| favor of ODF at ISO. There are several central and state level
| government agencies that adopted ODF officially.
| mdasen wrote:
| At this point?
|
| I remember when Microsoft Office truly felt like a monopoly. In
| the 90s, nothing could really read/write Microsoft formats
| reliably. People weren't using PDFs as much and teachers, jobs,
| etc. all expected you to be sending them .doc files.
|
| Yes, Microsoft wrote the spec fox .docx, but submitted it as an
| ECMA standard and that meant that people could create
| alternatives that could read/write .docx quite well. Sure,
| Microsoft has a little bit of a leg up, but it's nothing like
| the monopoly they had on .doc.
|
| Today, we expect programs to be able to read and write
| Microsoft Office formats. In the 90s, we truly didn't. Yes,
| there might be some advanced things that don't always work, but
| it's so different today.
| paradox460 wrote:
| I got a bad grade in a highschool English class because the
| teacher didn't like the doc file generated by StarOffice. My
| dad came round the school raising hell and got her to grade
| the paper on contents, saying if they wanted me to have
| office they could buy a copy of it. I got an A- after that
| nitwit005 wrote:
| It's more a ton of inertia than some sort of monopoly. A lot of
| new companies immediately start on an alternative these days.
| They don't see a reason to pay the higher price.
|
| I agree that it's a lot of work to build something that can
| render and edit their complex format, but quite a few companies
| have managed now.
| sigzero wrote:
| I wish they would allow Microsoft Family to have personal domains
| again. :(
| mrbluecoat wrote:
| Switched to the free OnlyOffice a year ago and never looked back:
| https://www.onlyoffice.com/desktop
|
| https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE
| AnonHP wrote:
| Wow, I hadn't heard about this before. I like that it's FOSS
| with AGPL 3. The OnlyOffice screenshots of the spreadsheet
| application look beautiful (compared to the ugly LibreOffice
| Calc ones). It says that it works with ODS files (which
| LibreOffice Calc uses).
|
| Any gotchas to be aware of with OnlyOffice?
| baal80spam wrote:
| https://www.softmaker.com/en/products/softmaker-office is a
| thing as well, and I prefer it to Only Office. The maker is
| German.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| It's a bit slower performance wise
| piker wrote:
| Microsoft raising prices on Office?!
|
| Must be for all those new useful features brought to your desktop
| over the last decade. Definitely not monopolistic rent-seeking.
| No siree.
|
| If you or someone you love is a legal user and interested in
| checking out an in-development word processor built for lawyers,
| please consider Tritium.
|
| It's free to download: https://tritium.legal/download or check
| out the web version: https://tritium.legal/preview
| jraph wrote:
| Yeah, sure, why not repeat the multi-decade old mistakes and
| decide to go from being dependent and locked in on one piece of
| proprietary software to being dependent and locked in on
| another piece of proprietary software.
|
| 2026 is definitely a great time for still not considering free
| software since lessons have not been learned yet.
|
| You are trashing a competitor despite having the exact same
| fundamental flaws.
|
| Please be actually better, please don't lock your users in.
| It's still time to make the right decision.
| piker wrote:
| Yes, yes, everything should be free. Nobody should leave
| gainful employment to attempt to compete. Everyone should
| work using hamster and solar powered devices from their apple
| orchard communes. Understood.
|
| > Please be actually better, we have too much trash
| proprietary software in this world.
|
| What we're attempting :)
| jraph wrote:
| > Nobody should leave gainful employment to attempt to
| compete.
|
| That's not what I'm saying. You can thrive with an open
| source business model. I'm working for such a company.
|
| Falsewoods software founders still believe about free and
| open source software in 2026
|
| 1. That's it's 100% made unpaid, outside business despite
| the numerous clues that it's not
|
| (note to whom might read this thread: I edited my previous
| comment to tame it and make it a bit more constructive,
| piker cited something that doesn't appear anymore in my
| comment but that I indeed wrote)
| piker wrote:
| That business model exists and appears here periodically
| complaining about how unfair Microsoft is. We don't care,
| we'll meet Microsoft where they are and just offer their
| customers a more specific solution.
| jraph wrote:
| Then make this specific solution open source, and make
| the laywers pay for support and roadmap decisions /
| features they require! Make them pay for integrations
| with Azure AD and struff like this! Make them pay for the
| binary! The possibilities are endless, it can work!
|
| You can aim for better than "where MS is".
|
| This could constitute a killer argument to make your
| solution appealing.
| chris_wot wrote:
| They got into major shit in Australia for their way of increasing
| prices.
|
| https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/microsoft-in-court-for...
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| The only reason people still need office -- other than a niche of
| advanced Excel users -- is because no one, despite the last
| several decades, has managed to make a 100% compatible DOCX
| editor (not LibreOffice, not Apple Pages, not Google Docs). I'm
| guessing it's because there are aspects of it that MSFT keeps
| secret?
|
| The only reason I still use Word is because I don't want to have
| to deal with random layout incompatibility issues when sharing
| docs with colleagues.
|
| In general, I find Apple Pages much more pleasant to work with
| and by far my favorite word processor (and I have used them all
| extensively on Win/Mac/nix).
| reactordev wrote:
| the era of ai enshitification begins with trying to recoup the
| costs...
| jve wrote:
| There are also positive news in Dataverse: Environments get some
| free capacity upgrade:
| https://licensing.guide/december-2025-dataverse-default-capa...
| ochronus wrote:
| Ooooh but it has AI ;) blergh
| xaxaxb wrote:
| LibreOffice
| skeledrew wrote:
| Well, take the fact that they aren't seeing the adoption of their
| AI products as they'd wish and a switch from their products by
| several governments in the EU... they need to do something to
| keep revenue on target I guess.
| SomeHacker44 wrote:
| I would prefer unbundling this. I do not use Microsoft Office
| apps; I use Google Workspace apps which can read those files. I
| do heavily use OneDrive space though. I want to pay only for
| that. And cannot.
|
| I would love to find a OneDrive replacement that works well both
| on Linux and Windows (and Android, iOS).
| timbit42 wrote:
| NextCloud?
| FpUser wrote:
| I stopped paying for MsOffice as soon as they've introduces
| Office 365. I saw where the ball was going. Sticking with the
| alternatives
| CodeCompost wrote:
| Why do I, as a European, have to pay for Trumpflation?
| guywithahat wrote:
| You don't? The price increases are below euro inflation
| (although the numbers are listed in USD so I'm unsure if the
| price will be meaningfully different in Europe
| SilentM68 wrote:
| Hoorah for Libre Office :)
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Most people using excel and word would be just as functional
| using office '98.
|
| SaaS is largely just a cancer on society. Monthly subscription to
| pay for features you never use and bug fixes you never should
| have needed.
| binarymax wrote:
| The only main feature post 98 is that the file format is zipped
| xml documents. Before that it was proprietary binaries.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I came to say something similar. Office 2000 seems more than
| sufficient for everybody outside of some very specific niches.
| The success of the comparatively much more basic Google Docs
| and Sheets are proof of this.
|
| Similarly I could live happily ever after with Photoshop 7.x or
| CS1 if they took full advantage of modern operating systems and
| hardware.
| quantumwannabe wrote:
| They haven't really added anything to Office since 2013, the
| last pre-subscription version. There were massive changes
| between Office 98 and 2013, including entirely new programs
| like OneNote. They just found a way to get their customers to
| rebuy the same product every year.
|
| Same thing happened with Adobe and CS6; feature development
| slowed to a crawl after the change to a subscription.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| 25%++ up in my region (EU)
| jkhall81 wrote:
| WPS - Free tier
| qingcharles wrote:
| As an alternative, if you need Office, just search the web, there
| are plenty of places selling legitimate Office 2024 licenses for
| the cost of one month of one of these subscriptions.
|
| [also massgrave will activate Office if you are really stuck...]
| IshKebab wrote:
| I'd be surprised if many normal people pay for this. It's for
| businesses, who aren't going to pay for sketchy keys. Also
| businesses generally _want_ the web-based collaboration
| features. The days of emailing round files are long gone.
| varispeed wrote:
| Interesting. Businesses I know banned use of anything cloud
| based, especially if the hosting is owned by the US company.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| This is a nothingburger with fries and a drink. The largest
| increase is $3/month for heavy (as in big enterprise) licenses.
| This is not newsworthy and certainly not worthy of the HN
| frontpage.
| aydyn wrote:
| Does anyone else remember when it was possible to include
| interactive graphs ala plotly in powerpoint?
|
| Because it isn't possible now.
|
| Office just keeps getting worse and worse and worse. The only
| thing they have going for them is vendor lock-in, and that's sad.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-12-08 23:00 UTC)