While we might not like the cost of the Microsoft Office 365 Subscription in some instances these products fit a great niche.

The issue now is that Microsoft is making it harder than ever to own Microsoft Office without moving into their subscription plan. If you qualify as a non-profit or educational customer, than your options are not bad. If you are a consumer or commercial client your options are a lot less. There are a couple of perrenial options with either Open Licensing Office Pro Plus or Standard (very expensive) or PKC products with either Home and Student or Home and Business. Let's look at the benefits of these options.

	MOLP Pro Plus	MOLP Office Standard	PKC-Home and Student	PKC-Home and Business
What is included	Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access, Publisher, MS Office Web Apps, Commercial Use Rights, Skype for Business, InfoPath	Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, MS Office Web Apps, Commercial Use Rights	Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote	Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook
How many machines can it be put on	Limited by device but includes the following: Work System, Home System and Virtual on the server using RAS	Limited by device but includes the following: Work System, Home System and Virtual on the server using RAS	1 PC only (once it is licensed and installed on a machine it is only allowed to be installed on that hardware)	1 PC only once it is licensed and installed on a machine it is only allowed to be installed on that hardware)
Notes	This is also a portable license which means that if you update your hardware you can reinstall this software	This is also a portable license which means that if you update your hardware you can reinstall this software
Price	$508.00	$373.00	$149.99	$229.99

If you have more than one device then you might want to pick one of the Office 365 Subsciption offerings. One of the first benefits is that each user license allows you to install the Office desktop Apps on up to five of your devices. For example: Work Desktop, Notebook, Home Workstation, Mobile Devices like Apple iPhone, iPad and Android devices. You can also install it virtually on your network server to have it working from you Remote Access Server (RAS) and your remote desktop client. It can also give you access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote Web Apps as well. You have a few choice here as well.

Business Essentials and Business Premium provide for up to 300 user licenses in an organization. Enterprise provides for unlimited number of users. So how do you choose which one is right for you? Easy, let's talk about several scenerios and see where you might fit in.

Hosted Exchange: This is one of the main reasons for us to move you into a Office 365 subscription. Over the years we had many customers that opted in for Microsoft Small Business Server because this product provided an Exchange Server as one of the many things that it did. In Microsoft's infinite wisdom they no longer have this product available and as the SBS server versions continue to become End of Life we have to make a decision on how to provide Exchange as we migrate to new hardware and software. For many of our clients moving to the cloud is the answer. Exchange Servers are a resource hog and require you to have larger servers to accomodate them. So how do we get around this issue? Hosted Exchange Servers. The entry level plan for this is Office 365 P1 and all that it provides is just Hosted Exchange. It costs around $48/user/year. For just a little bit more you can move into the Business Essentials version that provides you with Hosted Exchange, Skype for Business, Office Web Apps, 1TB of personal online storage, and Team Sites for Hosted SharePoint Services. The cost of this service is $60/user/month.

Office Desktop Applications: Always having the most current version of Office may be one of you goals. This gives you more consistant environments for your users to work in. The Office 365 Business Premium and Enterprise E2, E3, E5 plans provde Office for your desktop and laptop systems. 

	Business Premium	Office 365 ProPlus	Enterprise E3	Enterprise E5
Desktop Apps	Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook and Publisher	Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, Access	Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, Access	Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, Access
Hosted Exchange	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Skype for Business	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
OneDrive	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Organizational User Limit	300	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Annual Cost	$150	$144	$240	$420