

Licensing: The most apparent difference between the two products is the licensing model and how users pay for each product.While both Office 2021 and Microsoft 365 include traditional productivity applications like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, there are differences between the two versions.

Read on to discover the benefits and disadvantages of each version so that you can choose the right plan for your organization. This post explains the differences between Office 2021 and Microsoft 365. Through both products, Microsoft offers numerous plans to choose from depending on your organization’s needs and budget. Since 2011, Microsoft has split its Office offerings into two main product categories: Microsoft Office, the traditional stand-alone suite, and Office 365, the online subscription-based service, which controls more than 48% of the market share. Essential Office software components like Word, Excel and PowerPoint are considered cornerstone applications in today’s business world. Microsoft explains Office LTSC and its changes in more detail in a Tech Community post (opens in new tab).When it comes to productivity suites, over 1 billion people across all work fields use Microsoft Office. Office LTSC will be supported for five years going forward, which is two fewer than what Microsoft provided previously. At the same time, we definitely have customers who have specific scenarios where they don't feel like they can move to the cloud." Microsoft's Jared Spataro, head of Microsoft 365, told The Verge, "We certainly have a lot of customers that have moved to the cloud over the last 10 months, that's happened en masse really. Microsoft expects businesses to use Office LTSC in specific scenarios rather than rolling it out across an entire organization. Microsoft explains that Office LTSC is for "regulated devices that cannot accept feature updates for years at a time, process control devices on the manufacturing floor that are not connected to the internet, and specialty systems that must stay locked in time and require a long-term servicing channel." Office LTSC is for a different use case than Office 2021.
