Microsoft has announced plans to hike the pricing of some Microsoft 365 and Office 365 premium services by up to 25%. The hikes will go into effect on March 1, 2022.
The Redmond, Washington-based company justified the higher costs by asserting, then specifying in considerable detail, the changes to the plans since Office 365 debuted in June 2011. “This new pricing reflects the enhanced value we have given to our customers over the last ten years,” said Jared Spataro, corporate vice president for Microsoft 365, in an Aug. 19 blog post.
Spataro also claimed that this was the first price rise in the history of Office 365, though he qualified it with the term “the first substantial pricing upgrade in that post. While it’s true that the majority of Office price increases have been to the perpetual license version of the suite, making such suites less competitive with Office 365 subscriptions, there has been at least one case when Microsoft has raised the latter.
In 2014, the firm raised plan costs for certain enterprise customers by nearly 15%, a greater percentage increase than many of the plans set to go up in March
