Microsoft Office 365 Home and Office 365 Personal Price in India Hiked

Microsoft has increased the price of Office 365 Home in India by around 15 percent. This is an annual subscription service that includes the following Microsoft apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, and Access. The last two apps are PC-only, while the rest can be accessed on desktops and mobile devices. It also includes 1TB of OneDrive storage for one year. Office 365 Home's price in India has gone up from Rs. 4619 to Rs. 5,299, exclusive of taxes, per year for up to six users. The new pricing tier will be valid from January 8, 2019, Microsoft informed Office 365 subscribers via email.

It's a significant price jump for the subscription service, but the pack does offer good value for money. This is because all six users get 1TB of OneDrive storage each in their accounts. If you have six people sharing an Office 365 account, the price comes to around Rs. 884 per person exclusive of taxes, which is a good price considering the apps and services you get with it. This plan doesn't include OneNote, Sharepoint, Microsoft Teams, and Skype for Business, which are included in the business plan. It's to be noted that Office 365's prices went up ever since GST was rolled out in India due to an increase in taxes for the software service. However, you can still save a fair bit of money if you buy Office 365 Home before January 8, 2019 via Amazon India or Microsoft India.

The price for Office 365 Personal, which includes all of the above for one user, has gone up too. In an email Gadgets 360 received, the price was marked up from Rs. 360 per month to Rs. 420 per month. The reason mentioned in the email is, “Microsoft periodically assesses its pricing to ensure reasonable alignment with the needs of customers, partners, and the marketplace, and may make changes in response to that assessment and feedback.”

The change in Office 365 Home's pricing was first reported by Tushar Kanwar on Twitter.