Microsoft’s Home Use Program Now Offers Office 365 for Consumers

I’m not sure when this happened, but Microsoft’s Home Use Program has quietly added support for Office 365 Home and Personal.

As you may know, the Home Use Program (HUP) allows Microsoft’s Software Assurance (SA) customers to offer various versions of the Office suite, and now Office 365, to their employees to use at home at a steep discount.

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Previously, HUP provided Office 365 ProPlus, Office Professional Plus 2019, or Office Home and Business 2019 as options at a cost of just $15 each. But as of a recent change, you can now pick between Office 365 Home and Personal as well.

The cost isn’t listed on the website unless you sign-in, but I’m told its $69.99 for Office 365 Home and $48.99 for Personal. Note, of course, that Office 365 Home and Personal are subscriptions, so you’ll need to pay for it again each year.

And yes, it supports stacking: If you already have an active Office 365 Home or Office 365 Personal subscription, your HUP benefit will add an additional year.

You can learn more on the Microsoft Home Use Program website. Thanks to Bradster62 for the tip!

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Conversation 20 comments

  • Aaron44126

    17 April, 2019 - 12:07 pm

    <p>I have access to the HUP through my employer. The prices are $70/year for Office 365 home and $49/year for Office 365 Personal. Cheaper than the retail prices, but it is no $15…</p><p><br></p><p>[Edit] Notes after checking it a bit further. They offer monthly purchase as well but the price is the same as retail ($10 and $7 per month). They are still offering Office 2019 (Windows and Mac), Visio 2019, and Project 2019 for $15 each.</p><p><br></p><p>Since Office 365 includes a service component (OneDrive storage) in addition to the Office apps, I'm not surprised that it costs a fair amount more.</p>

    • billalm

      17 April, 2019 - 12:22 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#421539">In reply to Aaron44126:</a></em></blockquote><p>The subscriptions are offered at a 30% discount and I am of the understanding that the discount is perpetual (even if you leave your employer).</p>

      • Aaron44126

        17 April, 2019 - 1:00 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#421541">In reply to billalm:</a></em></blockquote><p>It is not perpetual, it is only a discount for the first year. I just went through up to the checkout screen for Office 365 Home and it shows this text:</p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">We'll charge you&nbsp;$69.99 plus applicable taxes for the first year&nbsp;and&nbsp;$99.99 plus applicable taxes every year after that. You'll be notified before any future price changes. Cancel any time.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">That makes it a whole lot less interesting… It's basically an advertising hook to get you to subscribe at the regular price.</span></p>

    • red.radar

      Premium Member
      17 April, 2019 - 12:34 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#421539">In reply to Aaron44126:</a></em></blockquote><p>Still a nice discount. To be honest, I was suprised they were still offering the perpetual license version of Office in the HUP. I wouldn't be surprised if it eventually went away. </p><p><br></p><p>Only reason I still use Office at home is because of the perpetual license in the HUP (cost factor). It is good software but I am not going to pay a whole lot when opensource meets my <em>consumer </em>needs just fine. However….i have been using onenote more and more. When I overun the 5GB limit I suppose I will need to re-evalute. </p>

  • SamERuiz

    17 April, 2019 - 12:18 pm

    <p>Seems like it's a 30% discount for my employer. Not sure it varies for different companies but Office 365 Home is about $70 and Office 365 Personal is about $50.</p>

    • Nathan Webb

      Premium Member
      17 April, 2019 - 12:25 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#421540">In reply to SamERuiz:</a></em></blockquote><p>I see this price as well.</p>

  • Alexander Rothacker

    Premium Member
    17 April, 2019 - 12:23 pm

    <p>This is great, I was always annoyed that this was not useful to me, now it is. </p>

  • LocalPCGuy

    17 April, 2019 - 1:27 pm

    <p>The $15 price for a full version of Office Professional Plus, that never expires, has been and still is a fantastic bargain. Of course, Microsoft prefers that people switch to an annual subscription over the one time only $15 charge. Even at 30% off, the profit off of the corporate employee home user just skyrocketed. <em>If</em> one's job requires that Office 365 be used all the time, even at home or on the road with a personal device, one can't beat the savings.</p>

    • warren

      17 April, 2019 - 1:43 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#421559">In reply to LocalPCGuy:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Sure, Office Pro Plus is cheaper — but you also get less.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p>

    • Mplovan

      17 April, 2019 - 6:38 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#421559">In reply to LocalPCGuy:</a></em></blockquote><p>If ones company requires use of O365 all the time install it on your PC with the corporate login. Enterprise still allows 5 device installs. </p>

      • SvenJ

        17 April, 2019 - 8:49 pm

        <blockquote><a href="#421646"><em>In reply to Mplovan:</em></a><em> </em>BINGO. I haven't worked for many companies that wanted me to work on company business on my own device, with my own software, logged in with my personal account. So this is for people to use for themselves. It is more expensive than the perpetual version for the customer (cha-ching) and will potentially lead to yearly purchases even if the customer leaves the company and needs to pay 'full' price (cha-cha-ching). I like MS, but this is to their benefit. I personally subscribe to O365, and think it is a great value, so this isn't a bad deal, but the goal isn't helping consumers, its getting more subscribers. </blockquote><blockquote><br></blockquote><blockquote>For doing business work, you are better off using one of 5 installs allowed on a business O365 seat. </blockquote><p><br></p>

  • 02nz

    17 April, 2019 - 3:27 pm

    <p>Some discount – Amazon sells 365 Home for $10 more, and I've bought it on sale in the past for the same $70 price.</p>

  • RossNWirth

    Premium Member
    17 April, 2019 - 7:08 pm

    <p>Nice, thanks Paul!</p><p><br></p><p>As if Office 365 Home wasn't a given already!</p><p><br></p><p>Confirmed this worked for me (eventually – the sign-in didn't work I had to contact Microsoft support, but they got it there)! it says on the front page 30% discount, but doesn't show that price until you get the activation link. </p><p><br></p><p>One annoyance is that it's just a 1 year extension, you will renew at the retail price, so you have to remember to go and re-apply before renewal (new annual calendar entry created!).</p>

    • webdev511

      Premium Member
      18 April, 2019 - 12:23 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#421649">In reply to RossNWirth:</a></em></blockquote><p>You can stack 3 years. I believe it's the same for Xbox Live Gold as well.</p>

  • wright_is

    Premium Member
    18 April, 2019 - 2:29 am

    <p>Great. Except, I pay under 70€ on Amazon for Office 365 Home as it is, so add German sales tax to that price and it is still more expensive that Amazon.</p>

  • rejohnson

    Premium Member
    18 April, 2019 - 11:57 am

    <p>Depending on the license, an employee can install O365 ProPlus on multiple devices at no additional cosst. We have E3 licenses which allows up to 5. That would include one's home PC.</p>

    • gregsedwards

      Premium Member
      18 April, 2019 - 4:07 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#421781">In reply to rejohnson:</a></em></blockquote><p>Sure, but that can be problematic when someone else in your family wants to use it. Technically, only your work account is licensed, so that means either using a shared account or giving out your credentials to your kids. Plus, if you leave the company, you lose access in 30 days. With HUP, you're getting a separate license, which is yours to keep for the duration of the subscription. So, if you leave the company, then you've got the remainder of the subscription to keep using O365 on your personal devices.</p>

  • CompUser

    18 April, 2019 - 3:46 pm

    <p>Over the past few years, I experimented with the multiple device license for Office365 which was $99.00 (I think) for the year, and I purchased $15.00 licenses for Office Professional 2016 and 2019 with HUP. Before those, I had Office Professional 2007 on all my computers, and I've never come across anything in any of those newer versions of Office that I couldn't do with 2007. I actually prefer some of the features of Office 2007 over any of the newer versions, Outlook in particular, and if it wasn't for the $15.00 price for HUP, I would have gone back to Office 2007 after my experiment with Office365.</p><p><br></p><p>I also experiment with Libre Office, and keep it installed and up to date on my computers. If it had a built in Email client, something they say they do not plan to add, I'd consider using it instead of Microsoft Office. Just playing around with it, I've never come across any compatibility issues between it and Microsoft Office, including all the latest office extensions.</p>

  • beq

    18 April, 2019 - 6:14 pm

    <p>Wait, <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Office 365 ProPlus is itself a subscription ($144/yr + tax). How does HUP offer it for a one-time $15?</span></p><p><br></p><p>My family uses Exchange Online Plan 2 mailboxes (with unlimited archive), so I had to subscribe to O365 ProPlus to install on their computers because the version of Outlook in the Home/Personal editions cannot access EO's online archive storage.</p><p><br></p><p>I also keep multiple subscriptions to O365 Home as well (each $80-99/yr + tax) in order to have more device installs, but I just remembered that I need to re-evaluate things since Home now supports 6 users and unlimited installs. Too bad O365 ProPlus is still limited to 5 PC installs (and 5 users)…</p>

  • Brian Hodges

    Premium Member
    21 April, 2019 - 5:05 pm

    <p>It's $15 if you want stand-alone Office Pro 2019 on DVDs.</p>

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