Microsoft updates Office 365 Home subscription to offer better value

Microsoft has made its Office 365 Home subscription more appealing by upping the number of users who can make use of the subscription, while also massively increasing the number of devices Office 365 can be installed on at once.

Office 365 Home is a subscription service costing $99.99 / £79.99 / AU$129 per year, and includes the Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access Office apps. Each user also got 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage space, and 60 Skype minutes each month for ringing landlines around the world.

Previously five users were able to use the same subscription, but the new model allows for six users to share a subscription, while retaining the 1TB per user OneDrive allowance and 60 Skype minutes a month for no extra cost.

Unlimited devices

Perhaps even more usefully, an Office 365 Home subscription now allows you to install Office on an unlimited number of devices, with each user able to be signed in on five devices simultaneously.

This is a big increase over the previous offering, which allowed Office to be installed on just five PCs or Macs, five tablets and five phones.

The subscription changes follow news that Microsoft is also making Office 365 Personal more attractive by allowing subscribers to install Office apps on five devices at once, rather than just a single PC, smartphone and tablet.

It certainly looks like Microsoft is making moves to broaden the appeal of Office 365 subscriptions, which is good news for existing subscribers as well. The changes should roll out automatically in the coming days.

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