Office 2019 vs. Office 365 – Comparison between both Applications

Read time: 4 minutes

Microsoft Office comes in various versions, each offering improved features and minor self-recovery capabilities, such as repairing Excel files. The inaugural release was Office 95 on August 24, 1995, followed by numerous subsequent versions.

This blog will compare Microsoft Office 2019 and Office 365, the two major versions. We’ll explore their similarities, differences, and determine which one offers better advantages.

Office 2019 Vs. Office 365

Both Microsoft Office 2019 and Microsoft 365 offer robust productivity applications, meeting the demands of individuals and enterprises. They grant access to key desktop applications like Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

We will see more about each suite separately.

• Microsoft Office 2019
  Office 2019 is the current widely used version, available as a one-time purchase for Windows and Mac. This single payment provides lifetime access to Microsoft Office. Key applications include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, suitable for both personal and professional use.
• Office 365
  Office 365 (Microsoft365) is a subscription-based service that provides cloud services along with Office applications. You can install Microsoft 365 on a local PC and enjoy benefits of its multiple plans which suit home users, small firms, medium-sized firms, large enterprises, etc. Apart from common web-based applications, Office 365 provides access to other cloud applications such as Teams, Yammer, Stream, Sway, and so on.

We will see the difference between these two versions.

• Payments
  Office 2019 is a one-time purchase, while Office 365 is a monthly subscription. Each has its advantages and drawbacks. The one-time purchase provides cost predictability, while Office 365 mandates monthly payments for at least a year.
• Latest updates and functionality
  The (limited) security updates in Office 2019 do not bring any new features. As your version of Microsoft 365 continues to improve, you’ll receive regular security updates as well as additional features. Adapting to new features can sometimes be overwhelming. However, as you become accustomed to them, they become more intuitive.
• Online applications
  Both the Office applications have access to One Drive. But Office 2019 has no storage space in One Drive. But Microsoft Office 365 includes free storage space of 1 TB so that you can edit any files or store them online.
• Scalability
  Office 2019 is suitable for commercial customers seeking essential applications and those avoiding cloud migration. Office 365 enhances productivity with updates and is ideal for businesses focused on growth and the latest features and security enhancements.
• Technical support
  The Office 2019 suite is still a relatively new product, but Microsoft has already announced it will phase it out in the near future. As of 2025, Microsoft will no longer provide extended support for Office 2019. It is expected that no further security fixes will be released after that point (although users can continue to use the apps).
• While Office 2019 is still being developed, Microsoft offers only limited technical support. Suites come with installation support, but none for issues encountered while using productivity apps. Microsoft 365, on the other hand, comes with 24×7 email support with its subscription.

If you plan to stay on-premises for a few more years and don’t need Microsoft online services, Office 2019 may make sense as a standalone purchase. In contrast, if you prefer to have an up-to-date feature set within Microsoft Office that is enabled by cloud services, then Microsoft 365 apps are an OpEx cost (pay yearly or monthly).

MS Office users often encounter file corruption issues in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, regardless of the version they use. To address this, professional tools like KernelApps’ MS Office repair applications can effectively repair Word and excel file and recover these documents. These applications are compatible with all MS Office versions.

Wrapping up

We have tried to put together a detailed and worthy comparison between Office 2019 and Office 365. With criteria based on payments, updates, scalability, support and more, we hope it has become an easy task to choose your preferred suite. Along with this, we advise you to keep our top-notch Office related tools as an ultimate measure to fix any type of issue.