MS Office Volume licensing for 10 computers?

[Velvis]

Anyone know anything about volume license for a small amount office users (10 or so)?

I've never dealt with it before.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Yes you can do it, but it's rather silly. That's $4000... why not just O365 it?

 

[fencepost]

For that quantity of local PCs, you probably just want Office Home & Business, list price $249/each. Volume License would require that you get Office Standard starting around $375 as your likely best price (list $410).

You can also go with Office 365 Business ($8-10/month) or Business Premium (12-15/month) which includes hosted Exchange. If going to O365 route, take a look at other discussions on here about AppRiver and Sherweb. I've also seen discussions on Reddit where Pax8 appears to be the preferred option. Note: AppRiver was just purchased, so there may be a bit of turmoil there over the next year or so.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Office 365. Nobody is doing VL anymore.

 

[nlinecomputers]

And you can sign up with Sherweb or Appriver and get a constant revenue stream.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Office 365. Nobody is doing VL anymore.

Nonprofits do VL... it's $20 for a seat... O365 E3 is $4.50 / month... cheaper to do volume.

But otherwise... yeah O365 that junk!

 

[nlinecomputers]

And non-profits can't make use of Sharepoint, Exchange, Teams, Flow and all the other Office 365 goodies?

 

[Sky-Knight]

And non-profits can't make use of Sharepoint, Exchange, Teams, Flow and all the other Office 365 goodies?

Nonprofits get O365 E1 for FREE. So all of that stuff is free, it's just the on premise stuff that costs. And it's cheaper to do Pro Plus volume for them.

 

[SAFCasper]

Volume licencing is more expensive than simply buying Home & Business so for an office of 10 computers it's not worth considering. The only real benefit would be group policy support, which you don't get in H&B or 365 Business, but that's rarely worth the additional cost for a small setup.


As for 365 ... it depends how much your client values upgrades.
If they are happy running Office 2019 for the next 5-6 years it's far cheaper to buy Home & Business or Volume Licence standard.

Office 365 Business is £9.50 per month
Year 1 - £114
Year 2 - £228
Year 3 - £342 -- at this point Home & Business would have been cheaper
Year 4 - £456 -- at this point volume licencing Office Standard would have been cheaper
Year 5 - £570
Year 6 - £684

Office 2019 is supported until October 2025 so 6 years usage isn't a crazy thought. Just think how many businesses still run Office 2010 which is now nearly 9 years old.

Of course 365 also comes with additional features (OneDrive, Teams etc) so you have to weigh that up also.


From an MSP perspective though... it's 365 all the way. Give me that recurring revenue and not having to worry about supporting old versions.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Note, the above is only possible because Office 2019 just released this past October. Microsoft's perpetual licensing flat doesn't make any sense unless you buy within a year of launch.

Also, just about every 3rd party integration, broke with 2019... AND, I really REALLY wish you luck keeping the office.com/myaccount list of installs straight... OEM office licensing is for the birds.

 

[nlinecomputers]

And again I state that the purpose for Office 365 is all the collaboration tools. If all you are doing is using Word and Excel you are wasting your money. Hell for most people the ONLINE FREE versions will do you just fine.

 

[SAFCasper]

Note, the above is only possible because Office 2019 just released this past October. Microsoft's perpetual licensing flat doesn't make any sense unless you buy within a year of launch.

Not really. 2019 was released with 7 years of support.

26 Months of Office 365 Business = MSRP of Home & Business 2019

If you bought Home & Business 2019 anytime before August 2023 and ran it until end of support - you saved money vs a 365 Business subscription.

Of course cost isn't everything and 365 comes with other benefits but it's still worth pointing out. Some people just want Word, Excel, Outlook and nothing else.

Also, just about every 3rd party integration, broke with 2019...

It's because they went to a click-to-run only installation (ie. no more MSI installer). But I don't see how that's relevant here as 365 suffers the same issue. If anything it's made worse by 365 as you are forced to upgrade to the latest version (after a grace period. 1 year I think?).

AND, I really REALLY wish you luck keeping the office.com/myaccount list of installs straight... OEM office licensing is for the birds.

Tell me about it. That place gives me nightmares. Anything over maybe 15 licences and it starts to get real messy.




Summary - As with most things in IT it's a case by case decision. Company size, budget, requirements etc.

 

[Sky-Knight]

All of the above is very fair, but beware... the click to run thing isn't new, Office 2013 OEM was all click to run. The change to 2019 didn't change this reality, yet a ton of plugins are still broken. I'm afraid the Outlook 2019 reality with plugins is rooted in something deeper than that.

Oh, and config.office.com lets you define how O365 seats update, it's pretty easy to take them out of monthly and stuff them into semi-annual, so at least you only have issues in March and September.

 

[SAFCasper]

All of the above is very fair, but beware... the click to run thing isn't new, Office 2013 OEM was all click to run. The change to 2019 didn't change this reality, yet a ton of plugins are still broken. I'm afraid the Outlook 2019 reality with plugins is rooted in something deeper than that.

Oh, and config.office.com lets you define how O365 seats update, it's pretty easy to take them out of monthly and stuff them into semi-annual, so at least you only have issues in March and September.

I'm just going off what support for one of our LoB apps told me tbh. They blamed click-to-run as the reason for integration not working with Office 2019 and a quick Google confirmed Microsoft have indeed removed MSI support in favour of going entirely click-to-run.

I'm now coming to the realisation they fed me a fresh load of BS, as every single 365 install is click-to-run and always has been. I think a new ticket may be getting opened Monday morning!

 

[Sky-Knight]

I'm just going off what support for one of our LoB apps told me tbh. They blamed click-to-run as the reason for integration not working with Office 2019 and a quick Google confirmed Microsoft have indeed removed MSI support in favour of going entirely click-to-run.

I'm now coming to the realisation they fed me a fresh load of BS, as every single 365 install is click-to-run and always has been. I think a new ticket may be getting opened Monday morning!

The only O365 sub that wasn't click to run, was ProPlus. But yes, they fed you a load of waffle.

Use config.office.com, put your installs in the Semi-annual channel, and redeploy 365, those users won't get Office 2019 until next month... in the meantime, your LOB vendor needs to get their sorry carcasses in gear, they've had this crap for A YEAR. No excuses.

It's also possible to lock into a specific version... but long term that's bad. Unpatched Outlooks give me the jibblies.

 

[fencepost]

Unpatched Outlooks give me the jibblies.

I want to use that as a quote on materials for "Why you should be on current versions of Office and have patch management"

 

[Sky-Knight]

I want to use that as a quote on materials for "Why you should be on current versions of Office and have patch management"

Right? Because, receiving an email and having an exploit cause an attachment to autoexecute and crypto your entire network and / or steal all the passwords for every account on your network wasn't enough of a reason?

We've got enough headaches from the above thanks to uneducated / ignorant / overworked users...