Microsoft is officially launching Microsoft 365 for consumers today. The company officially introduced Microsoft 365 for consumers back in March, and it involves a major shift in strategy for Microsoft.

The reason? Well, Microsoft 365 is replacing the Office 365 brand starting today. Paul has a very extensive article outlining the new changes, so I would suggest checking that out here. 

Microsoft 365’s new Personal and Family subscriptions are replacing the existing Office 365 plans. The subscription prices remain unchanged. Microsoft 365 Personal costs $6.99 a month, while you can get Microsoft 365 Family for $9.99 a month — which can be used within a family of up to six people. If you are an existing Office 365 customer already, you will automatically get upgraded to the new Microsoft 365 service.

Microsoft 365’s new consumer plans don’t really change anything for consumers, though: it’s essentially just a new brand, and everything else practically stays the same. You still get access to the Office apps like before, you still get the 1TB of OneDrive storage, and you still get to use apps like Microsoft To-Do.

Microsoft is, however, introducing some new features for Microsoft 365 for consumers:

• Access to over 8,000 images and 175 looping videos, 300 fonts and 2,800 icons on PowerPoint Designer.
• AI-powered monotone speech detection and speech refinement in PowerPoint’s Presenter Coach feature.
• Money in Excel lets you manage, track and analyze your finances, but that’s not available as of yet.
• Microsoft’s new Family Safety app lets families track screen time across all their devices, and it’s also not available yet. When it launches, the new Family Safety app will have a free offering as well.
• Microsoft Teams is getting new consumer-focused features, too.

So yes, there are some interesting new bits as part of Microsoft 365 for consumers, but most of that is not ready yet.

Tagged with Microsoft 365, office, Office 365