Microsoft 365

What hackers pick instead

• LibreOfficeA free office suite that handles everyday documents, spreadsheets and even dissertations, with a choice of ribbon or classic menus, though formatting often breaks when exchanging files with Microsoft Office.345recommend
• Microsoft OfficeThe default business office suite, hard to replace for Excel macros and enterprise governance, though critics dislike the Copilot push, the ribbon, weak Linux support and the limited web version.256recommend
• Google WorkspaceRecommended for custom-domain Gmail, easy collaboration and low-admin IT, and widely used by companies; critics cite account lockouts, hard-to-reach human support and fewer enterprise features than Microsoft.107recommend
• OnlyOfficeFree office suite with an interface close to Microsoft Office and strong compatibility with Office files, recommended as an alternative to MS Office. Common caveats are its Russian ties and license restrictions.58recommend
• La Suite numériqueFree, open source French government office suite praised for polished interface and reuse of existing open source projects. Critics say it is more collaboration tool than true office suite.25recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 612 comments. Each links to the original.

1. Microsoft is actually offering one of the better deals out there especially if you want to give a significant amount of storage to each family member at a low cost.

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices”

2. already having the processor agreements set up - and Microsoft actually at least trying to do the bare minimum regarding compliance - is worth a lot

   Mixed · Oct 2026 · in “Swedish government offices to ban ChatGPT and Claude”

3. The ability for everyone to work on it simultaneously, with version history and no more document-v12-copy3_FINAL_FINALv2 is most welcome.

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices”

4. They use it precisely because it's a) bundled with 365 already and b) already very well integrated into the rest of the entire ecosystem.

   Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices”

5. The big benefit of the MS package is that you get it all for one price. And that it's integrated so you have less configuration.

   Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “Danish Gov agency to ditch Microsoft software in push for digital independence”

6. The best security choice for any small business that doesn't have a dedicated full time security staff is Microsoft 365.

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?”

7. Office 365 is cheap and training everyone on another platform will cost more and make it harder to onboard new talent

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Danish Gov agency to ditch Microsoft software in push for digital independence”

8. You get a lot of stuff "for free" with something like an E5 license: EDR, DLP, MDM, a full cloud IAM system

   Recommends · May 2026 · in “Microsoft degrades functionality of perpetually-licensed offline products”

9. to get something nearly as good as 365 would realistically cost 100x as much as just buying from Microsoft

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “ICC ditches Microsoft 365 for openDesk”

10. it's the M365 package deal of all of them, and once you're in that ecosystem then you might as well use it

    Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “Blender 5.0”

11. the 1TB of storage you get with Microsoft 365 for <$100/year is more space than most computers come with

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down”

12. Docs in the cloud give you better collab capabilities and remove the need to have fancy networking, VPNs

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices”

13. Multiple people being able to edit the same file simultaneously with no or minimal issues is pretty big

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices”

14. These price increases aren't excessive relative to inflation for other services in a business context.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices”

15. Their Power suite, Teams and the existing integrations make it cost effective even with the increases.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices”

16. turnkey(ish) microsoft solution that grows out the side of 365s head for every big business problem

    Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices”

17. Microsoft might not be great but lots of tech-debt has gone into securing it within that platform

    Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices”

18. A Microsoft 365 Business Standard subscription, for example, gets you bundled Teams and Exchange.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices”

19. It's the office suite, email, PIM, chat, wiki/collaboration, document management, and a lot more.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices”

20. Microsoft's tiers and pricing for Microsoft 365 is completely insane as far as the overwhelming number of different ways to fundamentally buy the exact same software.

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “I hate you Microsoft”

21. saying they had to increase their prices but not mentioning that they could downgrade to a 'classic' subscription. totally misleading under australian consumer law.

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices”

22. The ones that tell you there's a problem with your MS365 subscription, but don't tell you which one are an especially exciting challenge to deal with.

    Criticizes · Apr 2026 · in “Veracrypt Project Update”

23. M365 has become an intangible mess of a multitude of different admin dashboards redirecting you around and complicating things beyond comprehension.

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “Bye Bye Big Tech: How I Migrated to an Almost All-EU Stack (and Saved 500€/Year)”

24. Microsoft-everything on a new ios, macos, windows or android personal computing device is clearly designed to sign people up for subscriptions.

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “American AI is locked down and proprietary. It's losing”

25. Microsoft has made the world dependent on them. They are one of the biggest corporations that use drug lord tactics to keep its users.

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices”

26. I keep watching and waiting for Office 365 compatibility improvements but it seems most contributors are focused on gaming support

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “Wine 11.10 – Run Windows Applications on Linux, BSD, Solaris and macOS”

27. they seem to have gone to a lot of effort to make office use a billion microservices that would be a nightmare to run through wine

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March”

28. They make it as painful as possible, and even disable copy/paste functionality when your User-Agent and Sec-CH headers say Linux.

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “Since Chronium 148, Math.tanh is now fingerprintable to link underlying OS”

29. Microsoft software became really good over time and the loss of productivity and the inefficiencies introduced by the change to clunky software will absolutely not be worth it.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Switzerland's Federal Government Is Replacing Microsoft on 3k Computers”

30. Many businesses don't need 100% of Office 365, in fact I will assert that if they aren't listed on DAX, or similar indexes, they most likely only need Word and Excel.

    Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Office.eu launches as Europe's sovereign office platform”

31. I don't like Office 365 but I'm a paying customer because, after long research, I haven't found a competitor that meets all my requirements.

    Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Bye Bye Big Tech: How I Migrated to an Almost All-EU Stack (and Saved 500€/Year)”

32. None of this was around in Office '98. There were some very early reaches into these sorts of things, but they would be unrecognisable now.

    Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices”

33. As much as I hate Microsoft, and even though all our company servers run Linux, the mass majority of employees are using Windows

    Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “Europe Wants Digital Sovereignty. 2,165 Polish Organisations Show the Gap”

34. Setting and running all of that is as simple as making O365 account and clicking couple of buttons by one person.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “The state of Schleswig-Holstein is consistently relying on open source”

35. Even Microsoft's own programs (Office 365, Teams) are running faster and have better UX on macOS than on Windows.

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra”

36. None of it seems to be as simple as Microsoft 365 where a new hire can be onboarded from a single control plane

    Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “Europe Wants Digital Sovereignty. 2,165 Polish Organisations Show the Gap”

37. the office 365 offering to show up and make everyone's (software, account management) work easier and cheaper

    Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions”

38. it actually has a track record of actually having support, support people that you can talk on the phone with

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Sad Story of My Google Workspace Account Suspension”

39. Microsoft's stuff accounts for a million+ edge cases that you don't really encounter until you're neck deep

    Mixed · Dec 2025 · in “Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices”

40. one bad windows update post away from vibe coding a firewall exclusively for windows and office 365 updates

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Windows 11 KB5074109 update nukes Nvidia gaming performance and stability”