Microsoft teases Office for Mac update coming, without subscription

Alongside the version included in the Office 365 subscription package, Microsoft says it will release another Office for Mac update in 2021, which will be a single purchase.

Ahead of its refreshed Outlook for Mac coming in October, Microsoft has announced that it will release a new edition of the full Office for Mac with what it calls a "perpetual licence" instead of subscription. Coming some time in the second half of next year, what may be called "Office 2021" is to be sold as a one-off purchase.

"Microsoft Office will also see a new perpetual release for both Windows and Mac, in the second half of 2021," said Microsoft in a blog post. No further details were provided, and the blog post was chiefly about updates to Exchange Server, which "are only available with the purchase of a subscription license."

Office for Mac was originally a single, one-off purchase from when it first came out in 1998. From 2013 onwards, however, Microsoft has been increasingly promoting its continuous subscription version, Office 365, for both Mac and Windows.

More recently referred to as Microsoft 365, the subscription comes in business, personal and family versions. The business version costs from $5 per month per user, and the personal edition is $6.99 per month.

Microsoft recently announced that it was officially ending support for Office 2016 for Mac on October 13, 2020.

19 Comments

bageljoey 1997 comments · 18 Years

About 4 years ago

I will get this. I refuse the subscription model for this product.

george kaplan 169 comments · 16 Years

bageljoey said:

I will get this. I refuse the subscription model for this product.

For me, it depends upon the price, since I don’t need Office for work. But I wonder if Microsoft took too many hits from improved versions of Pages/Numbers/etc and Google Office to be able to justify charging Mac users a subscription fee?

I know the Apple and Google suites aren’t identical to Office, and for some it must be Office, but for many of us, what Apple and Google offer is more than good enough.

Graeme000 42 comments · 4 Years

bageljoey said:

I will get this. I refuse the subscription model for this product.

Seconded. The last time I paid for office was when they last had a perpetual license. I will definitely consider this.
I really hope Adobe is considering a non-subscription version too.

rob53 3299 comments · 13 Years

bageljoey said:

I will get this. I refuse the subscription model for this product.

I agree but I'm using the $99/yr subscription on a few computers and I have to wonder how often Microsoft would release what they consider an upgrade instead of an update, again charging full amount for each and every Microsoft product. I also would worry they'd continue using their activation process, again on a per computer basis. I hate saying anything Microsoft sells is a good price but their subscription cost is much less than Adobe's.

danvm 1475 comments · 9 Years

Graeme000 said:

bageljoey said:

I will get this. I refuse the subscription model for this product.

Seconded. The last time I paid for office was when they last had a perpetual license. I will definitely consider this.
I really hope Adobe is considering a non-subscription version too.

Maybe you didn't knew, but MS never took out from the market the boxed version of MS Office. And Adobe have some applications without subscription, at least with business licensing, like Adobe Acrobat Pro. The thing with Adobe Acrobat, is that the perpetual license is for old versions, in this case from 2017. At least that was my experience with a customer, different from MS, that gives you an updated version of MS Office.