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Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise (formerly Office 365 ProPlus) vs Office 2019

Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise (formerly Office 365 ProPlus) vs Office 2019

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I’m sure you’ve wondered what the difference is between Microsoft 365 (formerly known as Office 365 Pro Plus) and Office 2019. I know I did – Had my pulling at my hair just because of how confused I was. Don’t let the similarity in the names fool you. Although both Microsoft 365 and Office 2019 give you access to the conventional desktop apps, we’re familiar with – several features that that set them apart from each other. I’m hoping that after reading this article, you’ll be able to easily identify which of the two will help your business grow.

Let’s get started.

What is Microsoft 365?

Microsoft 365 is Microsoft’s subscription that offers updated, modern productivity tools with the latest features to make your life and work easier. It furnishes web-based access to traditional apps like Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well as other web-powered applications like Teams, Stream, Yammer, and Sway - just to name a few.

There are several Microsoft 365 plans for users who need it for personal use, those for small and mid-sized businesses, enterprises, schools, and non-profits.

Why Use Microsoft 365 Apps

With the rich number of tools, features, and functionalities, Microsoft 365 Apps enable a new way of increasing productivity in the workplace. It is ideal for an organization that wants to take their company towards success and benefit from the latest features and security updates along with consistent tech support. With Microsoft 365, you also get extra online storage and cloud-connected features that let you collaborate on a file in real-time. With a subscription, you'll always have the latest features, fixes, and security updates along with perennial tech support at no extra cost. Also, you can use one license on up to five devices. This includes PC's, Mobile devices, macs, and tablets.

Here's a quick overview of the amazing apps that Microsoft 365 offers in various plans.

Word: This app sets the standard for word processors and is available with Microsoft 365 for both Business and Premium. If users in your enterprise need to create documents, this is the tool they will use.
Excel: The spreadsheet has been the workhorse for basic data analysis since its invention back in the previous version. Excel is the current standard-bearer and comes with Microsoft 365 for Business and Premium.
Outlook: Microsoft 365's solution for managing email and an appointment calendar is called Outlook. The app has been around for many years and its busy interface tends to be either loved or hated by users. It's available with both the Business and Premium subscriptions.
PowerPoint: Communicating information to a group of individuals at a meeting often involves a presentation. Microsoft 365's PowerPoint allows users to create, display, and disseminate information in formats ranging from the basic slide to animation to video.
Publisher: Sometimes communicating information to a broader audience requires something more permanent and more formal than a presentation at a meeting. The Publisher app in Microsoft 365 provides users with the tools they need to publish professional-looking newsletters, brochures, and booklets.
OneNote: As the workforce has become more mobile, the need to capture information on the go has become increasingly important. Applications like OneNote allow users to take notes on any device and then retrieve those notes from any other device. It's your basic productivity cloud app.
OneDrive: The other basic and fundamental cloud-based application is storage. With each Microsoft 365 Business subscription, Microsoft provides users with up to 1 TB of cloud storage in the form of an application called OneDrive for Business.
SharePoint: A subscription to Microsoft 365 Business Premium also provides an enterprise with a few applications for backend infrastructure management. SharePoint, for example, can be used to host intranet websites for the enterprise. It also can be used to host smaller sites designed for smaller teams or divisions. The permissions for these sites can be designated by the users themselves or by appointed administrators.
Exchange: Each Microsoft 365 for Business subscription includes an Exchange Server, which handles all the email management duties. By default, each user is granted 50 GB of storage for email. Maintenance of the Exchange Server is generally handled at the administrator level.
Microsoft Teams: Younger members of the modern enterprise workforce are very familiar and comfortable with chat applications. To satisfy the needs of those employees, Microsoft 365 now includes Microsoft Teams, a chat-based workspace that integrates people, content, and tools into a single hub for teamwork.
License scope: One licensed subscription to Microsoft 365 covers five phones, five tablets, and five PCs or Macs per user.
Support: Each Microsoft 365 subscription includes full 24/7 web and phone support.
Collaboration tools: Along with the typical productivity applications, Microsoft 365 includes many collaboration tools like Delve, Yammer, and Sway. These tools allow users to communicate, brainstorm ideas, share documents, and have video meetings while on the go.
Power BI: One of the most powerful tools any enterprise can have, regardless of size, is reliable business intelligence (BI) gathering applications. Microsoft 365 for Business, through its Power BI application, provides enterprises with a set of tools for collecting, sorting, and presenting business intelligence data.
Infrastructure: All Microsoft 365 subscriptions include a reliability guarantee of 99.9% uptime. In addition, permissions for internal access control are handled by administrators designated by the enterprise using tools supplied by Active Directory. Each Microsoft 365 subscription includes five layers of security and proactive monitoring to help safeguard your data.
Kaizala: Mobile communications is vital to many organizations, and Kaizala adds a secure mobile messaging and workflow app that can be deployed both internally and externally. Employees, customers, and vendors can all communicate and coordinate with each other in a secure environment.
Flow: Managing workflow in a dynamic business and across various applications can consume precious time and resources. Flow provides a simple system to manage notifications within Microsoft 365 across all the applications you use.
To-Do: An update to Microsoft 365 has added the To-Do app to the productivity suite. No longer an afterthought piggybacking on the Calendar app, To-Do is now a feature-rich standalone application that integrates with the rest of Microsoft 365.
PowerApps: For those situations when your organization needs a specific app to do a specific job, there is PowerApps. Using simplified development techniques, businesses can create sophisticated applications using features, procedures, and processes found in Microsoft 365.

Office 2019

Office 2019 is the standalone version of the office suite. All you need to do is buy it once with an upfront payment for one PC or Mac - and the copy is yours forever. The downside is that you get this version without any upgrade options and extremely limited security upgrades. You would have to buy Office for use on another device again at full price when the newer versions come out. Also, the installation process is a little difficult. You would have to have at least some knowledge if you’re doing it yourself.

Office 2019 is less powerful than Microsoft 365. There’s nothing new in Office 2019 that hasn’t already been available for quite some time to millions of Microsoft 365 subscribers, and in fact, Microsoft left several features out of Office 2019 that it had introduced in Microsoft 365 over the past few years. None of the Office 2019 apps offers the extremely useful AutoSave feature available in Office 365; it makes sure you don’t lose the latest edits to your files and lets you examine, use, and revert to older versions of your files.

Now, the capabilities and differences.

Microsoft 365 vs Office 2019

Here are a few major differences between the two to help you decide which would suit your needs better.

	Microsoft 365	Office 2019
Payment Model	Monthly Subscription Plans	One Time Payment
Products	Outlook, Teams, Sway, Lists, Stream, Forms, OneDrive, SharePoint, OneNote, Yammer and other AI based apps	Excel, Word, Powerpoint
Updates	Monthly Updates	Only Security Fixes
Coauthoring Across Apps	Yes	No
Extra online storage	1 TB Per User	Not included
Technical Support	Provided free throughout the subscription	For installation only

You can find out about Microsoft Pricing plans on the official Microsoft website.

The Twins Challenge

A few years ago, Microsoft released three videos that challenged three pairs of twins to compete against each other using Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. One of the twins used the Microsoft 365 version of the application and the other twin had the Office 2019 version of the application. It is understood, the twin using the Microsoft 365 version won without trouble.

Undoubtedly, you would want to go for Microsoft 365. But at the end of the day, you’ll have to investigate your own needs before making a purchasing decision. To do that, ask yourself how you plan to use the tools and what your budget is. However, if you want to grow with technology, we recommend that you switch your staff to Microsoft 365. You’ll find it easier to make the transition if you get help from a Microsoft Gold Partner.

FAQs

1. What is office 365 Pro Plus?

Microsoft Office Pro Plus is a web-based version of Office available through your active Microsoft Office 365 subscription and installed from the cloud on your local computer, smartphone, or tablet device. Office 365 Pro Plus is the always-up-to-date version of the Microsoft Office suite and its apps. You will always have complete control over software updates.

2. Can I buy just one app, like PowerPoint?

Yes. You can buy a standalone online version of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for Mac or PC. Go to the Microsoft Store and search for the app you want.

3. What Microsoft 365 business product or license do I have?

Click Settings, and then under My app settings, choose Office 365. On the My account page, choose Subscriptions. You'll see the services that you're licensed to use, such as the latest desktop version of Office, SharePoint in Microsoft 365 or OneDrive for work or school, and Exchange Online.

4. What's the difference between Microsoft 365 apps?

Microsoft 365 Apps is a version of Office that's available through many Offices 365 (and Microsoft 365) plans. It includes the applications that you're familiar with in a suite of desktop apps, including Access, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, Skype for Business, Teams, and Word.

5. How do I install Office on my mobile device?

You can install the new Office mobile app that combines Word, Excel, and PowerPoint into a single app, and introduces new mobile-centric features to view, edit and share files without the need to switch between multiple apps on your personal devices. Here's the step-by-step process.

6. How do I buy the latest version of Office?

Office 2019 is sold as a one-time purchase, which means you pay a single, up-front cost to get Office professional apps for one computer. One-time purchases are available for both PCs and Macs. However, there are no upgrade options, which means if you plan to upgrade to the next major release, you'll have to buy it at full price.

7. I'm a Microsoft 365 admin, how do I assign licenses to users in my organization or buy more licenses?

In the admin center, go to the Billing > Subscriptions page. On the Subscriptions page, select the subscription to which you want to buy or remove licenses, and then select Add/Remove licenses.

8. Who is Office 2019 ideal for?

Microsoft Office 2019 is a product specifically geared toward volume-licensed commercial customers with a specific need for on-premises or hybrid software deployment - or who are not yet ready for cloud-based software.

The move to the cloud is a journey, and if your organization is not yet prepared for digital transformation, Office 2019 may make sense. However, it is important to note Office 2019 is not a future-proof platform by any means.

Microsoft is undoubtedly steering customers towards Office 365 and the subscription-based model, as it allows them to update it with upgrades and patches constantly. Given that Office 2019's support period will end on 14 October 2025 - the same day Office 2016 support ends - there's a compelling argument to make that the perpetual-licensed Office suite purchase model is ending and that the cloud-backed Office 365 Pro Plus is the main way forward.

9. Why should you use Office 365 Pro Plus instead of Office 2019?

If you have Office 365 Pro Plus, you have the earlier version of Office 2019's entire feature-set and more. If you have Office 365 Pro Plus, you already have Office 2019's entire feature-set and more. Pro Plus has the added benefit of automatic and cumulative feature upgrades, whereas Office 2019 will never receive any new features added, just required security patches. If Microsoft releases another standalone edition, you will also need to pay another up-front fee for it. Through its constant cumulative updates, Office 365 Pro Plus had most of the features Office 2019 shipped years earlier. If you already have Pro Plus, Office 2019 is redundant and has less future proof than the former option. Another big reason to consider Office 365 Pro Plus for your business over Office 2019 is the latter only has seven years of support compared to Office 2016, which received a full decade.

10. How different is device-based subscription from user-based service licensing?

The most major difference is in the licensing method. Users on a licensed device will have access to the Office 365 desktop apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.). Access to Office 365 services like OneDrive will depend on the user's license.

11. What is the difference between Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise and Office 365 E1, E3 and E5?

Microsoft 365 includes Office apps like Word and Excel, OneDrive cloud storage, and services like Teams, Exchange Online, and SharePoint Online. Different suites offer different combinations of these elements.

Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise offers Office desktop apps plus 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage. These apps are always up to date, and new functionality can be added as often as monthly. It does not include services.
Office 365 E1 offers services only, plus web and mobile versions of the apps. Some customers buy E1 on their own, while others combine it with other versions of the Office apps.
Office 365 E3 provides a complete suite of apps, storage, and services. It combines the Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise desktop apps and storage, the Office 365 E1 services, and additional security and compliance features.
Office 365 E5 is our most advanced, secure, and comprehensive offer. It includes everything in Office 365 E3 (apps and services) plus advanced security, analytics, and voice capabilities.

12. What happens to my data if I cancel my subscription?

Your data is yours. If you decide to cancel your Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise subscription, you can download your data—for example, your email and documents on team sites - and save it to another location. You should save your data before you cancel. After you cancel your subscription, data associated with your Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise account will be available to your administrator(s) in a limited-function account for 90 days.

Last Updated 9 months ago

About the Author

Rijah is a professional Marketing Executive & content specialist. You may know her from her greatest hits like, "No, I can't just make it go viral." or "No, you can't have everybody as your audience." and "Yes, you're absolutely going to need a copywriter!"

Rijah Naseem

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