Microsoft announced today that it will raise the cost of its Microsoft 365 Commercial subscriptions starting in March 2022. It is also adding some new audioconferencing capabilities in Teams to take your mind off the price hike.

“Today we are announcing changes to our commercial pricing for Microsoft 365 – the first substantive pricing update since we launched Office 365 a decade ago,” Microsoft’s Jared Spataro revealed. “This updated pricing reflects the increased value we have delivered to our customers over the past ten years in three key areas—communications and collaboration, security and compliance, and AI and automation—as well as the addition of audioconferencing capabilities that we’re announcing today.”

Microsoft’s original post has a lot of information about all the value it has added to its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 subscriptions over the years, but all we really care about is the new pricing. It breaks down like so:

Microsoft 365 Business Basic is going up from $5 to $6 per user per month. Microsoft 365 Business Premium is going from $20 to $22, Office 365 E1 is going from $8 to $10, Office365 E3is going from $20 to $23, Office 365 E5 is going from $35 to $38, and Microsoft 365 E3 is going from $32 to $36. These changes will be effective March 1, 2022. And there are no changes to the pricing for education and consumer products at this time, Microsoft says.

As for the new stuff, Microsoft notes that Microsoft Teams now has over 250 million monthly active users and is “the new front-end across work, life, and learning” for those users. It has received over 300 new features since its launch in 2017, and it’s about to get some more.

“We will add unlimited dial-in capabilities for Teams meetings across our enterprise, business, frontline, and government suites over the next few months,” Mr. Spataro notes. “Even as cloud connectivity increases, we know that people join Teams meetings while they are on the go or struggling with a bad internet connection. Currently included with Microsoft 365 E5 and Office 365 E5, we have come to see dial-in as an important part of the complete Teams experience. Available with subscription in over 70 countries and with interactive support in 44 languages and dialects, unlimited dial-in provides peace of mind that users will be able to join their Teams meeting from virtually any device regardless of location.”

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