Comparing Office Professional Plus License Types

Office Professional Plus 2010 has one perpetual and two subscription licensing options, each offering different sets of licensing rules, use rights, and other pricing- and licensing-related attributes. This chart compares features of the Office Professional Plus 2010 perpetual license, the Office Professional Plus 2010 subscription license, and the Office Professional Plus for Office 365 subscription license. All three options contain the same 10 applications: Access 2010, Excel 2010, InfoPath 2010, Lync 2010 (replacing Communicator 2007 R2 as of Dec. 2010), OneNote 2010, Outlook 2010, PowerPoint 2010, Publisher 2010, SharePoint Workspace 2010, and Word 2010.

Some rights described below apply to a licensed device’s primary user; if a device is shared, only one specific individual can be considered the primary user. Several rights depend on Software Assurance (SA), a subscription offering that can be added to a perpetual license for an annual fee.

Prices in the chart are Microsoft estimates of base U.S. prices for the Office Professional Plus 2010 perpetual license in the Open License program, the Office Professional Plus 2010 subscription license in the Open Value Subscription program, and the Office Professional Plus for Office 365 stand-alone subscription license in the Microsoft Online Subscription Program (MOSP). In general, these are the highest prices a U.S. organization would pay. For Open programs, prices vary by reseller, and in both Open and MOSP, discounts are typically available for large purchases and purchases that include other products and services (such as Exchange Online and similar Office 365 services).