Why Does Microsoft Word Cost Money

Total costs: $1,497 per copy of Microsoft Office MSRP: $199. Indeed, Microsoft actually sells Office at a loss of nearly $1,300 per copy. They could charge more, of course, but Microsoft owns such a massive amount of capital that they can afford to sell Office at an enormous loss. They do so for the public good. Reducing Supply Costs. While word processors and the computers to run them certainly cost money, so do the materials to use paper documents. A prolific employee might go through several reams of paper in a month, as well as a variety of pens, pencils, staples, paperclips and binders.

  1. Why Does Microsoft Word Cost Money
  2. Microsoft Word Free Download
  3. What Does Microsoft Word Cost
  4. Why Does Microsoft Word Cost Money Now

Despite what big box store sales people try to sell you, don’t buy a copy of Microsoft Office. On all new commercial computers today, manufacturers install a trial version of Microsoft Office AND a copy of Microsoft Office StarterEdition.

Microsoft Office Starter Edition does NOT expire and is every bit as functional as its costly brethren. The Starter editions includes only Word and Excel. If you need PowerPoint or other Office components, then yes, you will have to pay for it, but for many, many users, the Starter Edition with Word and Excel is more than adequate.

  1. Well, the simple answer is that someone had to pay the programmers to create the program, and the person funding the project wanted their money back and wanted to make a profit for all their efforts. Most people have skills like this to earn a living.
  2. Word is powerful and flexible, but you pay for that utility. Photograph: Microsoft. There are many reasons for using Word. The best is that you like using it, because of its power, rich feature.
  3. Recently began an internship and a lot of the documents I'm dealing with involve Microsoft Word, and it hasn't been very pleasant. No one at this office works with Adobe and they're going through a rebranding and so there are lots of things I'm updating or having to rely on working in Word to design documents for.

If you buy a new computer, here’s how to setup the Microsoft Office Starter Edition:

1. Click Start –> All Programs –> Microsoft Office

2. Click the Use Office Starter 2010 button

3. Click green Open button on next screen

4. Wait for Windows to install and configure the program

5. Click Accept on the Microsoft Office License screen

6. Click Use Recommended Settings option, then OK on next screen

7. Word will open and you will find access to both Word and Excel in your All Programs menu under the Microsoft Office Starter Edition folder.

8. Click the Donate button to the right of this tip to donate some of the $100+ I just saved you!! 😉

Related

Microsoft Office, a suite of products developed by Microsoft, includes Microsoft Word, Excel, Access, Publisher Outlook and PowerPoint.

Microsoft Office has been at the forefront of dominance in the office suite market until recently when it started facing strong competition from the likes of Google apps for business, OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice.

Apart from being available in the traditional desktop-based form, they also offer different versions of Microsoft office through the cloud (office 365) and via different mobile devices like the Windows Phone.


“Microsoft Office 365 lansering” (CC BY 2.0) by Microsoft Sweden

How much does Microsoft Office cost?

As of 2017, Microsoft offers Office 365 Home, which in order to use online, you will have to pay an annual subscription, ranging from $100 to $400+ a year, depending on the package and if it’s either for personal use or business. To make things easier, we created a table below breaking up the costs.

Why
Software PackagePrice
Office 365 Home$99.99/year
Office 365 Professional$69.99/year
Office Home 2016$149.99 one-time fee
Office 365 Businessstarts at $8.25/user
Office 365 Business Premiumstarts at $12.50/user
Office 365 Business Essentialsstarts at $5/user
Office Home & Business 2016 for PC$229.99 one-time fee
Office Professional 2016 for PC$399.99 one-time fee

If you want to bypass the annual subscription fees, then Microsoft does offer Office Home and Student 2016 for $149.99, but you may be able to find it cheaper via third-party retailers or even on eBay for a lot less. Office Home & Business 2016 retails for $229.999, while Office Professional 2016 retails for $399.99. These are the prices for both PC and Mac.

At Best Buy, for example, the prices are the same for the subscription cards, but in some cases, they may hold a sale to bring the costs down. Other retailers to check out includes Sam’s Club, Costco and Walmart.

Microsoft Office, designed for the iPad, is free for reading only, but if you want to use the full functionality, you will need an Office 365 subscription.

In the end, when purchasing Microsoft Office, you have three options: either paying the annual subscription, one-time fee or using the slim downed version online via Office.com for free.

An outdated version — Microsoft Office 2013 — can be purchased brand new for about $55.


Microsoft Office overview

Annual personal subscriptions come with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher (PC only), Access (PC only), 1TB OneDrive cloud storage per user, Microsoft support, and 60 minutes per month Skype calls per user. These subscriptions will include up-to-date applications for up to five users. The one-time fee, however, will only include one install only. There will be no upgrades, support or the additional premium add-ons.

As for the business subscriptions, all packages will come with 1TB of OneDrive storage and Desktop versions of Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, plus Access and Publisher for PC only, with the exception of the Business Essentials package. The Premium package only includes business-class email with 50GB of storage and HD video conferencing. The one-time download only includes Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for one user only.

What are the extra costs?

Adding online storage via OneDrive can be an additional cost if you don’t buy the annual subscription.

Why Does Microsoft Word Cost Money

Adding additional users to the online business software can cost $5 to $15 per user depending on which software version you buy.

While optional, some new users prefer a guide to help learn the software. MS Office for Dummies, for example, can retail for $15 to $25.

How can I save money?

Microsoft Word Free Download

Consider downloading a free trial to see if it’s worth the investment.

Consider free alternatives that are just as good, such as OpenOffice.org, Google Docs or Libre Office if you don’t want to spend the money.

What Does Microsoft Word Cost

If you are a student or teacher, be sure to take advantage of the student or teacher version to save money.

If you do not want the newer 2013 version, consider using the 2010 version, which can be half the cost. This includes most of the same features in the newer versions.

The one-time fee is often the best deal if you don’t want the premium support, multiple users and/or online storage.

Why Does Microsoft Word Cost Money Now

eBay has a handful of older versions and software downloads for a fraction of the costs of buying new.

Office.com provides a limited, online-version only of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and other tools for 100 percent free. All you will need is a Microsoft account, which is free to create.

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Average Reported Cost: $74

Less Expensive $1 $1.5K $3K $5K $6.5K More Expensive $8k

How much did you spend?

  1. Evelyn Parziale (Crossville, Tennessee) paid $74 and said:

    $74.35

    Was it worth it? Yes