Big savings with the new Office Home Use Program - 2019 style
The Microsoft Office Home Use Program (HUP) is a great way to save on Office 365 or Office 2019 for employees of many companies, organizations, governments and even some military personnel. Here’s details on the savings possible with the recent changes to the HUP.
What’s changed?
The Home Use Program (HUP) is changing to the annual payment Office 365 Home and Office 365 Personal plans. The new offerings are very generous, some might say suspiciously generous.
Like the rest of the MS Office range, Microsoft is doing all they can to move customers over to annual payments for Office software and services. Annual software rental is much more profitable for Microsoft than the old ‘pay once’ ‘perpetual licence’ way of getting software.
It was only a matter of time before Microsoft changed the Home Use Program over to Office 365 annual plans. The surprise is that it didn’t happen sooner.
Office 365 Home (6 users each with 5 Office logins) or Office 365 Personal (1 person / 5 logins) are both available with a 30% discount.
Details at Get cheap Office 365 for employees with the Office Home Use Program and Home Use Program for Microsoft Office 365 – who can get it and how?
More profit for Microsoft
The new Office 365 discounted offers under the Home Use Program are definitely better for Microsoft. Certainly more profitable than the old HUP.
Under the old HUP, employees paid a token amount (about $10-15) which would not even cover any Microsoft support costs.
The new HUP has Office 365 plans at a decent discount, roughly at about the wholesale price for the same plans (to retailers for resale). That means Microsoft is making some profit even on the discounted HUP plans.
Once people are on the Office 365 plans, Microsoft has the option to vary the entitlements and prices into the future.
Unlike the old Home Use Program, the new Office 365 HUP discount really a way for Microsoft to get more people onto the annual ‘subscription’ track.
What about Office 2019?
Office 2019 ProPlus for $15 (perpetual licence) might still be available depending on where you are, when you buy and possibly the relative positions of the Sun & Moon!
Microsoft’s current documentation is fuzzy on this point. Some pages say the perpetual licence option is still available, others say it’s being phased out and others suggest it’s up to each employer and the type of Volume Licence they have.
Most likely these conflicts are because the HUP documentation hasn’t been properly updated to the new offers. But it does make the HUP confusing in the meantime.
If you do prefer Office 2019 for Windows or Mac, we suggest moving quickly before Microsoft drops that option entirely.