Office 365 Personal plan launched by Microsoft

Office 365 logo

Microsoft's Office 365 Personal plan has been announced, which allows individuals to sign up to an annual or monthly subscription.

The Personal product will work on one PC, Mac or tablet and will cost $69 (41.50) for an annual subscription or $6.99 (4.50) a month.

Microsoft will continue to offer its Office 365 Home Premium subscription for households, but it will be re-branded Office 365 Home. The Personal plan is expected to be released in the coming months.

Chris Schneider, senior marketing manager at Microsoft, said in a blog post: "We recognise that there are households of all shapes and sizes, and we're committed to delivering the right Office for everyone whether that be one person or an entire household."

Both the Office 365 Personal and Office 365 Home products will allow access to the Microsoft productivity suite plus 60 minutes of Skype calling per month, 20GB of additional OneDrive storage with automatic updates to the most recent version of Office.

Schneider said: "We're committed to delivering a great Office experience to all of our customers and believe that giving you a choice about the Office 365 subscription that fits your unique needs is one way we can do that. We'll have more details to share closer to availability."

Microsoft also offers a number of business subscriptions, including Office 365 Small Business Premium for companies with between one and ten employees, with 50GB cloud storage per employee and Office 365 Midsize Business for companies with between ten and 250 staff.

Schneider said 3.5 million people have now subscribed to an Office 365 consumer product, which represents a 75 per cent growth in customers since October 2013.

Clare Hopping
Freelance writer

Clare is the founder of Blue Cactus Digital, a digital marketing company that helps ethical and sustainability-focused businesses grow their customer base.

Prior to becoming a marketer, Clare was a journalist, working at a range of mobile device-focused outlets including Know Your Mobile before moving into freelance life.

As a freelance writer, she drew on her expertise in mobility to write features and guides for ITPro, as well as regularly writing news stories on a wide range of topics.