Microsoft changes Home Use Program to favour Office 365

Microsoft changes Home Use Program to favour Office 365

Microsoft have long offered a “Home Use Program” (HUP) for Software Assurance customers, enabling employees to purchase reduced price copies of certain software for non-commercial use at home. They made some tweaks to it early in 2019 and now another has arrived; they have removed the option to purchase the full, perpetual version of Office – now it is only the Office 365 version that’s available. As per the Microsoft FAQ:

” Office Professional Plus 2019 and Office Home and Business 2019 are no longer available as Home Use Program offers”

Instead, eligible employees can purchase Office 365 Home or Office 365 Personal for a 30% discount.

Which companies are eligible for HUP?

The current criteria for HUP eligibility is:

• If you’re a commercial or Government customer, you need to have 2000+ licenses of Microsoft 365 E3/E5 and/or Office 365 E3/E5 (or a mix thereof)
• Education and non-profit customers need to have 2000+ licenses of Microsoft 365 A3/A5, Office 365 A3/A5, or Office Education A3/A5
• Equally, customers with “From SA” SKUs for Microsoft 365 E3/E5 and/or Office 365 E1/E3/E5 are eligible
• Organisations with active Software Assurance (SA) on qualifying Office applications – which are:
  • Office Standard
  • Office Professional Plus
  • Office for Mac Standard
  • Visio Standard
  • Visio Professional
  • Project Standard
  • Project Professional
  • and/or any standalone Office program (i.e. Excel, PowerPoint, Word)

  User Perspective

  For the individual user, if you leave the company, you can continue to access the subscription and even renew at the reduce price. However, should you choose not to renew for some reason, you lose access to the discount should you wish to re-subscribe later.

  For those of you building flow charts and managing projects at home, fear not – “regular” Project Professional & Visio Professional licenses are still available for $14.99 via HUP 🤣