What is M365 or Microsoft 365?
Microsoft 365, or M365 in short, is the new branding for the Office 365 subscription line of products by Microsoft. As of April 2020, more than 38 million people subscribe to Office 365, mostly the Home and Personal versions, which include the latest Office desktop apps, OneDrive cloud storage, and Skype calling. The business and enterprise plans of Office 365 are superior and include additional products such as Teams. There are already business plans with Microsoft 365 branding; which is bound to create some confusion.
Overall, the Microsoft 365 branding can now accommodate more cloud-centric products that are becoming universally adopted as Microsoft Office was in the 1990s. Microsoft is marketing the new product around the idea of saving time – which in turn could be used for your personal experiences. Because Microsoft wants to be a part of that personal experience. It is for the same reason it has branded the product with the slogan –Make most of your 365 – where ‘365’ symbolizes the days of a calendar year.
Though Microsoft has come up with an emotive reason to explain the new product, is it the same old wine packaged in a new bottle? Is it a usual name change which is a ritual at Microsoft? How will it impact the existing Office 365 plans? Would it provide solutions or add more to the confusion? Let us find out the plans.
Office 365 Home Plans
The existing home plans are Office 365 Home, Office 365 Personal, and Office 365 Home & Student 2019.
With the Office 365 Home plans becoming Microsoft 365, there are more features added to the same price. There is a one-month free trial available for Office 365 Home plan.
The new features will revolve around cloud storage, advanced security, and premium Office apps. Some of the features include premium templates in PowerPoint, AI-powered writing assistant for Word, Money in Excel, upgraded OneDrive cloud storage, automatic backups on Windows, OneDrive Personal Vault, Family Safety, and more. These will be automatically upgraded to Microsoft 365 on April 21, 2020.
More changes could be rolled out of the Office 365 Home plans. A bundling of features from Office 365 Home and Office 365 Personal is possible. These plans would be called as Microsoft 365 Family and Microsoft 365 Personal, or colloquially known as “M365” plans to keep it informal to keep up the nature of plans.
Office 365 Business Plans
Similarly, the existing business plans are Office 365 Business, Office 365 Business Premium, and Office 365 Business Essentials.
With the business plans, you have a new name, the same price, and the same features. There is a one-month trial for Office 365 Business Premium plan.
Since Office 365 becomes Microsoft 365 on April 21, these plans will be known with their respective names with ‘Microsoft’ replacing the word ‘Office’ in all the plans. For instance, Office 365 Home will be called Microsoft 365 Family, Office 365 Personal will be Microsoft 365 Personal, and so on.
If you want to get more information about M365 plans and what lies in store for existing Office 365 users, Apps4Rent will keep you posted on the updates.
If you want to migrate to Microsoft 365/Office 365, contact our experts who are available 24/7 via phone, chat, and email. If you have any questions, feel free to initiate the chat in the bottom right corner.
