Microsoft Home Use Program
Who doesn't like saving their family money? The Microsoft Home Use Program allows employees at eligible companies to buy an annual subscription of Microsoft 365 Family or Microsoft 365 Personal at a discount for use on personal devices. In select markets, eligible employees also receive a discount on select Surface devices and accessories. It provides 30% savings on Microsoft 365 Family or Personal subscriptions, or up to 10% on Surface hardware.
Microsoft 365 Personal allows you to install Office on up to five of your devices and is currently $69.99 per year. Microsoft 365 Family ($99.99) is similar but extends to others in your family (as added to your Microsoft Account).
Even if your company isn't eligible, note many Microsoft 365 plans include rights to install Office on up to five devices owned and used by the same person. However that doesn't include family members' PCs. Also, one must sign in on each device, so all devices would have access to the same data and OneDrive files.
Activate For Your Company
Your organization must qualify, and not all will. One of the following is required:
- Active Software Assurance for qualifying Office applications
- Microsoft 365/Microsoft 365 E3/E5 from Software Assurance
- 2,000 or more licenses of one or a mix of Microsoft 365 E3/E5
- Spend $250,000 or more in the previous 12 months on eligible Power BI, Office, Surface devices & accessories, Windows and Enterprise Mobility
- Education and non-profit customers
To activate at the company level:
- Sign in to Microsoft Store for Business. Use an account that's assigned the Global Admin role for your Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) tenant. ITS can help with this.
- Under Benefits, select Manage, and then select Microsoft Home Use Program.
- On the Domains tab, add a corporate domain to your Azure AD tenant. Employees with email addresses that use this domain will be eligible for Microsoft Home Use Program discounts. [normally, this will already have been done if you have set up 365]
- On the Manage benefits tab, select Invite Employees to send a Microsoft Home Use Program invitation email to your employees. One can upload a .csv file of email addresses, or use an Azure AD distribution list.
Do I Qualify?
To verify eligibility, each employee can enter their work email at www.microsoft.com/en-us/home-use-program.
Microsoft sends the work email a special link to click. Sign in with your personal Microsoft account (not your work email address). We suggest using a private/incognito browser window, or signing in on your home PC, so Microsoft doesn't sign you in with your work account.
If you already have a Microsoft 365 Family/Personal subscription, use the same account so that purchasing a year will extend the existing subscription.
Click "Microsoft 365" or one of the "Surface" links to shop.
After purchasing, use account.microsoft.com to share the subscription with your Microsoft Family members. It will also show the new expiration date at the top of the page under Manage Subscription.
July 2022
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