Home Use Program Updated

• Employees can buy heavily discounted applications through the Home Use Program, which received updates in Feb. 2019.
• The program helps training by giving employees home copies of the application versions they have at work.
• Licenses are for personal use and do not cover work at home for the employer.

The Home Use Program (HUP) permits employees of eligible organizations to buy heavily discounted Per-User subscriptions to Office 365 Home or Office 365 Personal or Per-Device licenses for client applications. Ways that organizations can be eligible include purchasing more than 2,000 Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3/E5 suite subscriptions or having Client Access Licenses covered by Software Assurance (SA). HUP offerings are for the employees’ noncommercial use. The value of HUP to organizations is that it allows employees to learn how to best use the features of Microsoft products.

Types of HUP Offerings

Effective Feb. 2019, there are two different classes of HUP offerings.

Per-Device licenses for client applications. The traditional HUP offering provides perpetual Per-Device licenses for the Office Professional Plus suite, Project Professional, or Visio Professional for a nominal fee (US$15 in the United States). An employee licensed for a qualifying product may buy one HUP license for the associated suite or application. The HUP license permits installation and activation of the software on one PC (or Mac in the case of Office suites). Licensing terms (which users must accept at installation) require that the software be used only for noncommercial purposes and not for “work from home” scenarios. The right to use the HUP software ends if the SA coverage on the qualifying licenses is allowed to lapse. Employees are also obligated to stop using the software if they leave the organization. Although organizations must inform employees of the termination-of-use rules, the organization is not held accountable for user compliance. If a new version of an application is released while SA is still active on the qualifying licenses, users can acquire the latest application version to replace their current installed version.