Microsoft is unveiling its new Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions today, which are designed to replace and enhance existing Office 365 consumer plans. Much like the Office 365 Personal and Home subscriptions that exist today, Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans will be available on April 21st, priced at $7 a month/$70 a year for personal use and $10 a month/$100 a year for the family plan (up to six people) subscription. Both options will include access to Office, and new features will gradually roll out in the months ahead.
Microsoft 365 plans add two new features that will roll out in preview in the coming months: a new Microsoft Family Safety app and new features in Microsoft Teams for consumers. The new Microsoft Family Safety app is designed to allow families to share their location and manage screen time across multiple devices. Similar to Apple’s Find My app, Microsoft Family Safety can generate notifications when a family member leaves home, work, or school, and enables location sharing.
The core features of Microsoft 365 are the same as before: You’ll get access to desktop Office apps, a terabyte of OneDrive storage per person and 60 minutes of Skype phone calling every month.
Microsoft Editor, the company’s AI tool for writing help, is expanding across Word and the Outlook web app. You can also use it on Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome with a browser extension. You’ll get the basic spelling and grammar help that you’re used to, but you can highlight a sentence to get some rewriting suggestions. There’s also a new similarity checker that could help you avoid potential plagiarism issues. It’ll recognize when your text looks similar to other content and suggest ways to cite that appropriately.
Additionally, PowerPoint’s Presenter Coach will can also monitor your pitch and suggest speech variations to add some sparkle to your words, and it can even offer up grammar suggestions for better phrasing. PowerPoint Designer is also getting super-charged to help you design better presentations, and you’ll get access to over 8,000 images and 175 looping videos from Getty images. You can plug in that media into Word and Excel as well, and those apps are also getting over 200 new templates.
Microsoft 365 consumer subscriptions are clear evidence of the company’s recent direction. Instead of launching a Spotify competitor or something to take on TikTok or whatever is the latest and greatest app, Microsoft has taken a step back and is trying to add value where it matters. It’s a different approach that relies on a balance of work and life and a niche area where Microsoft is uniquely positioned to provide services that respect privacy and are focused on productivity.
