Many office suites offer the latest version to existing users at a discount, so you might not need to pay full price when you decide it's time for an upgrade. That's an important benefit, but if you don't really care about getting the absolute newest updates, you might prefer to purchase a static standalone version. With any subscription-based office suite, your apps automatically stay up to date with all the latest features and security updates. The cost of a subscription depends on how many devices you need to use the software on, as well as which apps you need. Google Workspace is a subscription-based service (we refer to the free version as Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides), while Microsoft 365 and SoftMaker Office both offer standalone and subscription-based versions. Others, such as Corel WordPerfect, require you to pay a one-time cost. Some office suites-such as those from Apple, Google, and LibreOffice-are free. We’ve surveyed workalike and work-almost-alike suites from Apple, Corel, The Document Foundation, Google, and SoftMaker to help you pick the best one.īuying Guide: The Best Office Suites for 2023 That doesn’t mean Microsoft 365 is necessarily the best suite for your specific purposes, however. Microsoft 365, the current name for what used to be Office 365 and before that Microsoft Office, is the colossus of office suites and the one that much of the world uses by default. Office suites haven't replaced the water cooler, but your company's business messaging app might have. Today, most people understand an office suite to be a batch of applications on your computer or mobile device that you use to do all those tasks, either alone or with collaborators, and not just during the workweek. Go back one millennium, and the term office suite meant a bunch of rooms in a brick-and-mortar building where people gathered on weekdays to type letters, hold meetings, calculate earnings, and waste time at the water cooler. Read our editorial mission (Opens in a new window) & see how we test (Opens in a new window).

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