Differences between Office 365 and MS Office 2019

Corporate users always use Microsoft Office for day-to-day operations, but the question is which Office is better: Office 365 or Office 2019. For instance, Office 365 is based on subscription model whereas Office 2019 is a stand-alone suite. However, they include more or less the same applications. In the following article, we will touch upon differences between Office 365 and MS Office 2019.

What are the purchase plans?

As mentioned previously, Office 365 offers a subscription model with monthly or annual payments (which in most of the cases can be more cost-efficient). It provides the right to access associated services and run the applications from the suite. Once you stop paying the services of running the app will expire. Office 365 targets small businesses, individual consumers and institutions.

MS Office 2019 is a one-time purchase through one copy in retail or volume licensing. Before receiving the software you have to pay up-front and lay out the whole purchase. The license does not expire and the user can run the software in perpetuity. The packages are available for enterprises and retail packages.

How to deal with cloud service?

None of the software versions support cloud services, but they can connect to a limited extent to the Microsoft cloud service (e.g. One Drive storage). A major change occurred within Office 2019 applications that were purchased up-front. In order to connect with Microsoft cloud services, they have to be in the stream of support period in the first five years of the product lifecycle.

How does the service support?

Microsoft aims to be perceived as a fast developer and customer-oriented, therefore, the IT team has to prove the expectations.  The company provides monthly security updates. Moreover, it can fix non-security bugs for the first five years.

Office 2019 does not receive any upgrades, therefore, what you buy is what you buy. If you switch to a new edition, you will need to pay again. On the other side, Office 365 offers a different pricing model: they get upgraded features twice a year on a specific schedule.

If you want to get more updates and news on the latest developments in Microsoft Office, follow the keySkillset page. You can also access the free trial access for courses.

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