But the two soon diverged: Microsoft began rolling out new features to Office 365 that the perpetual Office 2016 version didn’t get. When Office 2016 was first released in late 2015, the perpetual version and the Office 365 version had the same features. Office 365/Microsoft 365 subscribers pay ongoing fees to use the software, while buyers of the perpetual version pay a one-time fee and own it forever.

Before we get into those new features, though, let’s look at how Microsoft has differentiated its subscription and non-subscription versions of Office.įor years now, Microsoft has been pushing the subscription version of its office suite - known as Office 365 or Microsoft 365, depending on the license - over the non-subscription version, which it calls the “perpetual” version of Office. The enterprise and consumer Office 2021 versions have a similar set of new features. Two weeks after releasing Office LTSC 2021, the new non-subscription version of its office suite for enterprises, Microsoft has released Office 2021 for consumers, students, and small businesses.

Office plus 2021