Microsoft would still rather you subscribed (for either $10 a month, or $100 for the year), as evidenced by its giant subscription breakdown on the official product page. However, it does begrudgingly tell you about the benefits of a one-off payment, if only so it can show off the additional features you can get as part of an Office 365 subscription.
That said, if you don’t need all of those extras, or just prefer a traditional software purchase model, you can buy Office Home & Student 2016 for $150. It gives you one install (rather than five with a subscription) and a free 15GB of online storage as part of Microsoft’s OneDrive.
Related: Preview: Office 2016 isn’t revolutionary, and that’s ok
There are other versions available too if you want more features though. There’s the Office Home and Business version, which also gives access to Microsoft’s Outlook email software, and that is available for $230. For real power users, there’s the Office Professional 2016, which adds Publisher and Access to the mix, in the process bumping the price up considerably to $400.
For comparison, Microsoft’s subscription packages would cost less than $100 a year for even the full Office 365 Home. There’s also the 365 Personal package which is even less, at $70 — though of course you’ll be paying for it for as long as you use it.
Whether you opt for the single, one-off payment, or a rolling subscription, Office 2016 is available for Mac users too — it will be interesting to see how many Apple users can be converted to using software made by their old enemy.
