Do you want to replace an old version of Microsoft Office on your company’s computers or add this productivity suite to some new machines? If so, you might be wondering whether it is better to use Office 2019, which Microsoft released in the fall of 2018, or Office 365. Here is what you need to know to make the best decision for your business.
Fundamental Differences Between Office 2019 and Office 365
Office 2019 is an on-premises product that you purchase upfront for use on a single computer. You can use this suite’s apps for as long as you want – whether it is three years or three decades. However, Microsoft will not be offering any upgrade options for Office 2019 in the future. This means that if you want to upgrade to the next major on-premises Office release (say Office 2022), you will have to buy it at full price. (Despite rumors to the contrary, Office 2019 will not be the last on-premises version of Office, according to company officials.)
Microsoft offers three Office 2019 suites available through volume licensing: Office Professional Plus 2019, Office Standard 2019, and Office Standard 2019 for Mac. If you need fewer than five licenses, you can use Office Professional 2019 or Office Home & Business 2019, both of which are licensed for business use.
All these suites (except Office Standard 2019 for Mac) need to run on Windows 10 computers. So, if you are running older Windows versions on your computers, you will not be able to use Office 2019.
If you have Mac computers, you can use either Office Standard 2019 for Mac or Office Home & Business 2019. These suites are compatible with the three most recent versions of macOS, which are 10.14, 10.13, and 10.12 at the time of this writing. The next time Apple releases a new major version of macOS (say 10.15), Microsoft will drop support for the oldest of the three versions (10.12) and support the newest version and its two predecessors (10.15, 10.14, and 10.13). The Office apps will still work on computers running the dropped version (10.12), but the apps will not receive any updates.
Office 365 is a cloud service that you subscribe to on a per-user basis. With office 365 you get both the web-based version of Microsoft Office applications as well as the traditional versions you install and run locally on your PC.
Office 365 is billed either monthly or annually. You pay a higher per-user fee if you choose to pay each month. When you stop paying, the users’ licenses to run the Office apps expire. The apps that are installed on users’ devices do not immediately stop working, though. They usually continue to work for 30 days thanks to a grace period.
Unlike Office 2019, Office 365 will work on computers running older versions of Windows. Office 365 is compatible with Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 7 Service Pack 1, and the two most recent versions of macOS.
Functionality and Support
Not surprisingly, Office 2019 offers more functionality than its predecessor Office 2016. For example, in Office 2019, Microsoft added a text-to-speech feature to Word and funnel charts to Excel.
However, Office 2019 provides less functionality than the current Office 365 apps. The Office 2019 apps do not include many of the cloud- and artificial intelligence (AI)-based features that Microsoft has added to Office 365 apps the past few years. For instance, in Office 2019, Word does not include the Editor feature, even though it is available in the Word app provided through Office 365. This feature uses machine learning and natural language processing to make suggestions on how to improve your writing.
Further, with Office 2019, you will not get any new features delivered through updates. The updates will include only security and stability patches. In contrast, Microsoft will continue to add new features to Office 365 through updates. These updates will also include security and stability patches.
There is another difference in how Microsoft supports Office 2019 compared to Office 365. As long as you subscribe to Office 365, you will receive mainstream support. With Office 2019, Microsoft will provide only five years of mainstream support and two years of extended support.
The Bottom Line
What is best for your company will largely depend on your comfort with cloud computing. If you are comfortable using cloud services, subscribing to Office 365 might make more sense. It offers more features and better support than Office 2019. Plus, Office 365 apps work on older versions of Windows. However, Office 2019 is a viable alternative if using cloud services is not a good fit for your business. Contact us if you have any questions about Office 365 or Office 2019.
