Microsoft Details Office 2013 Pricing, Includes Subscription Model

Microsoft has detailed the pricing structure for its upcoming Office 2013 suite of products, and much like Adobe with its recent Creative Suite launch, the company is hoping you’ll opt for a subscription package. Real bad – to the point where the company seems to be going out of its way to make the stand-alone version sound way less appealing.

If you opt for “Office 365 Home Premium”, it’ll set you back $99/year and cover five PCs in your household. Unlike the stand-alone version, Office 365 will be updated on a regular basis with new features. This is best compared to an MMO, where you pay monthly and always have new features to look forward to. Applications included with this subscription are Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher and Access. In addition, you’ll also be given 60 minutes of “world minutes” with Skype each month, get 20GB of SkyDrive storage and also have the ability to stream your Office applications from your PC while on another PC that doesn’t have it installed.

Considering the pricing of previous Office versions, $99/year here seems pretty nice, and it’s no wonder Microsoft is pushing it so hard. Small business owner? There’s a version for you as well at $149/year that removes the SkyDrive and Skype perks but adds bonuses Lync and Infopath applications, business e-mail and calendar, HD video conferencing, collaboration tools and 10GB+500MB per user of cloud storage.

If you’re still not interested in a subscription version of Office, the traditional versions will be for you. They’ll also be less tempting, however, as the basic Home and Student and Home and Business editions skip over a few included apps that come with Office 365 and there are no Skype / cloud storage bonuses. However, these one-off purchases mean you won’t have to worry about a subscription. Pricing for Home and Student 2013 is $139.99 and includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint.