For most small businesses, this is a fairly clear-cut decision: Office 2024 costs less over time, does everything you need day to day, and you own it outright. Microsoft 365 has genuine advantages — but they apply to a narrower range of situations than the marketing implies.
The fundamental difference
Office 2024 is a perpetual licence. One payment, installed on one PC or Mac, yours to keep indefinitely. Microsoft 365 is a subscription — monthly or annual — and when you stop paying, your access goes with it.
That’s not a subtle distinction. It shapes your software budget, your data posture, and what happens when someone joins or leaves your team.
| Feature | Office 2024 Professional Plus | Microsoft 365 Business Standard |
|---|---|---|
| Payment model | One-time purchase | £9.40/user/month |
| Devices per licence | 1 PC or Mac | Up to 5 per user |
| Access if you cancel | ✓ Permanent | ✗ Lost immediately |
| OneDrive storage | ✗ Not included | ✓ 1 TB per user |
| Microsoft Teams | ✗ | ✓ |
| Feature updates | Security patches only | Continuous, automatic |
| Works fully offline | ✓ Always | Requires periodic sign-in |
| Data stays local | ✓ Completely | Account-linked by default |
What it actually costs over five years
Microsoft 365 Business Standard is £9.40 per user per month — £112.80 a year, per seat. By the end of year two you’ve spent more on the subscription than an outright licence. By year five, more than seven times more.
Cumulative cost per user — Office 2024 Pro Plus (one-time £79) vs Microsoft 365 Business Standard (£9.40/user/month). Prices correct May 2026.
| Period | Office 2024 Pro Plus | Microsoft 365 Business Standard |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | £79 | £113 |
| Year 2 | £79 | £226 |
| Year 3 | £79 | £339 |
| Year 5 | £79 | £565 |
Across a team of five, that’s £395 in outright licences against £2,825 in subscription costs. It’s not a close call.
Where 365 genuinely earns its keep
There are real cases where the subscription makes sense. They’re just more specific than the “always up to date” pitch implies.
You run heavily on Teams. Teams is available as a free standalone app, and for most small businesses that’s perfectly adequate. But if your team lives in it — shared channels, meeting recordings, structured workspaces — the 365-native integration is meaningfully better.
Staff work across more than one device. A single Office 2024 licence covers one machine. If people split time between office PCs and laptops, you’d need multiple perpetual licences, and 365’s five-device allowance starts to close the cost gap.
Cloud storage is genuinely central to how you work. 1TB of OneDrive per user is useful if you’re collaborating on large files across sites. Bundled into 365, it’s reasonable value — if you’d be paying for it separately anyway.
Why Office 2024 is the better fit for most small offices
The applications small businesses depend on — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook — are identical in both products. Office 2024 is not a reduced version. You get the full suite, with no cloud dependency and no renewal risk.
- Data stays where you put it. Files on your local machine don’t pass through Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure. For businesses handling sensitive client data, that’s a cleaner GDPR position and less to manage.
- No ghost seats. Someone leaves, you forget to cancel their 365 seat for three months. That problem simply doesn’t exist with perpetual licences.
- No feature churn. 365 pushes continuous changes to your applications. If your team has a settled workflow, unsolicited UI updates are friction, not a benefit.
- No account dependency. Office 365 requires periodic internet-connected sign-in to validate your licence. With Office 2024, that dependency doesn’t exist.
The subscription drift problem
Microsoft 365 Business Standard has increased in price by around 20% since 2021. When you commit to a subscription, you’re also committing to whatever Microsoft decides to charge in three years’ time — with your workflows embedded in the platform and the switching cost keeping you there.
Mainstream support for Office 2024 runs until October 2029; extended support until October 2034. One purchase, a decade of use. The value calculation isn’t complicated.
Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2024
£79Genuine perpetual licence with instant digital delivery. Full desktop suite for one PC or Mac — no subscription, no renewal, no cloud dependency.
Frequently asked questions
For most small businesses, no — not compared to a one-time Office purchase. At £9.40 per user per month, Microsoft 365 Business Standard costs over £560 per user across five years. A perpetual Office 2024 licence covers the same core applications for £79. The subscription makes sense if you genuinely need Teams deeply integrated, multi-device access per user, or the bundled OneDrive storage — but if none of those apply, you’re paying for features you’re not using.
Yes. Microsoft still sells Office 2024 as a perpetual licence — one payment, permanent access. Editions are Home & Student, Home & Business, and Professional Plus. The Professional Plus edition adds Access and OneNote to the core Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook suite. It installs on one PC or Mac with no ongoing subscription required.
No. Teams is not included in any edition of Office 2024. Microsoft removed it from the standalone suite in 2023 following EU antitrust pressure. You can download Teams as a free standalone app — sufficient for most small business needs — or get the fully integrated version through a Microsoft 365 subscription.
Your Office apps move into read-only mode — you can view files but not edit them. OneDrive remains accessible for a short period (typically 30 days) before storage drops to the free 5GB tier; anything above that becomes inaccessible until you resubscribe or download it locally. Keeping working copies of important files on your machine rather than solely in OneDrive avoids the worst of this.
Mainstream support runs until 14 October 2029; extended support until 14 October 2034. Mainstream covers security patches and bug fixes; extended covers critical security updates only. Buying Office 2024 today gives you a fully supported product through the rest of this decade from a single purchase.
Gary Walsh is the Head of Tech Support at Software Supplies, with more than 20 years in the IT industry. Fully Microsoft-certified and experienced across the full business software stack — from Windows and Office to cloud infrastructure and device management — Gary delivers practical, no-nonsense advice that helps users and businesses get the most from their technology.
