People look for a Microsoft 365 alternative when one subscription has to cover mail, storage, chat and desktop apps and they only use part of it, or when the plan tiers, the 300-user ceiling on Business plans and the US vendor no longer suit them. They move to another hosted suite, to software they run themselves, or to a plain desktop editor.
Sebastiaan SmitsFounderShort answer: The first three alternatives to Microsoft 365 in our office suite ranking are Google Workspace, Zoho Workplace and ONLYOFFICE. Places 1 to 3 go to challengers, vendors outside the best-known brands in a category, wherever the category has them; the established names follow from place 4 in their ranked order. Choose Google Workspace if you want another full hosted suite with mail and meetings, billed per user. All 11 alternatives below are ranked products from Best Office Suites in 2026, and each says where it differs from Microsoft 365.
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Microsoft's plan documentation splits the product into Business plans (Basic, Standard, Premium, Apps for business), Enterprise plans (E1, E3, E5, F1, F3), Education and Government families. Business Basic includes the Office apps for the web but no desktop apps, while Apps for business has desktop apps but no Exchange Online or Teams. A buyer has to match each person to a plan before knowing what the total is.
Microsoft states that the Business family is designed for organisations with up to 300 users, counted across all Business plans together, and reserves the right to enforce it. A growing company has to move to the Enterprise family, which is a different set of plans, so the licence structure changes at the point where administration is already busy.
Exchange Online, SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams sit inside the same plans as the editors. That is convenient while you want all of them, but a team that only wants documents still buys into the bundle, and Azure Information Protection is not included in Business Basic or Business Standard. Leaving means replacing each of those services, not only the editors.
| Alternative | Headquarters | Free option | Pricing | Key difference | Switch if | Our rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Workspace | United States | No free tier | Per-user tiers, published; 14-day trial | Docs, Sheets and Slides sold per user with Gmail and Drive | you want another full hosted suite with mail and meetings, billed per user | #9 |
| Zoho Workplace | India | No free tier | Per-user tiers, annual or monthly billing; 15-day trial | Mail, file storage and Writer, Sheet, Show in one per-user bundle | you want one hosted suite with its own mail and are happy to run on a vendor outside the big two | #10 |
| ONLYOFFICE | Latvia | Yes | Free cloud tier; Business priced per admin, published; self-hosted option | Browser editors from Riga, as cloud or on your own server | few people manage documents and many only read or edit them, or you want to host the editors yourself | #2 |
| Nextcloud | Germany | No free tier | Enterprise subscription per user per year, published from 100 users; editor is an optional extra | Self-hosted workspace with Euro-Office or Collabora as the editor | you want files, chat and documents on infrastructure you control and have an administrator to run it | #4 |
| LibreOffice | Germany | Yes | Free of charge, open source, no licence fee | Six-application desktop suite published by a German charitable foundation | you mostly need local editors for DOCX, XLSX and PPTX and not a hosted workspace | #3 |
| SoftMaker Office | Germany | No free tier | Subscription for one or twelve months, published; 30-day trial | German desktop suite with DOCX, XLSX and PPTX as native formats | you want a paid, supported desktop suite with Word-compatible formats and no forced cloud | #1 |
| Collabora Online | United Kingdom | Yes | Free development edition; Business per user per month, published; self-hosted | LibreOffice-based online editor sold per user for servers you operate | you already run a file platform and need Microsoft-format editing in the browser on your own servers | #6 |
| Proton Docs | Switzerland | Yes | Free plan with 5 GB; paid Drive tiers published | End-to-end encrypted documents and spreadsheets inside Proton Drive | confidentiality of the content matters more than a full set of Office features | #5 |
| WPS Office | Singapore | Yes | Free download; paid Pro+ tier adds AI features | Desktop and mobile suite with a free download and a paid tier | you want a no-cost desktop and mobile suite with PDF tools for a few users | #11 |
| Apple iWork | United States | No free tier | Optional Apple Creator Studio subscription for premium content; 1-month trial | Pages, Numbers and Keynote from Apple, with Pages in the browser | your staff already use Apple devices and need documents, not a managed tenant | #12 |
| Apache OpenOffice | United States | Yes | Free download, no licence fees | Long-running desktop suite under the Apache 2.0 licence | you want a stable, no-cost local suite and can accept a slow release pace | #7 |
United States · Per-user tiers, published; 14-day trial
The closest like-for-like hosted suite: Docs, Sheets and Slides in the browser with mail, Drive and Meet. Starter, Standard and Plus show per-user prices in euro on the pricing page, Enterprise is quoted, and a 14-day trial is offered. It is a US vendor, so it changes the product more than the country of the contract.
Switch from Microsoft 365 if you want another full hosted suite with mail and meetings, billed per user.
India · Per-user tiers, annual or monthly billing; 15-day trial
A hosted bundle of mail, calendar, WorkDrive storage and the Writer, Sheet and Show editors, with Cliq chat and Meeting included. Plans are billed per user per month, annually, and Enterprise is quoted. The pricing page also lists a free mail plan for up to 5 users, which does not include the editors.
Switch from Microsoft 365 if you want one hosted suite with its own mail and are happy to run on a vendor outside the big two.
Latvia · Free cloud tier; Business priced per admin, published; self-hosted option
Charges per admin, not per user: Business is USD 20 per admin per month with unlimited users and guests, and a Startup plan is free with 3 admins, 12 rooms and 2 GB. Docs is built on an open-source core and can be deployed on your own servers. It has no mailbox or calendar, so mail must come from somewhere else.
Switch from Microsoft 365 if few people manage documents and many only read or edit them, or you want to host the editors yourself.
Germany · Enterprise subscription per user per year, published from 100 users; editor is an optional extra
A file-sync and collaboration platform you host, with Nextcloud Office, Talk and groupware around it, under the AGPL. Enterprise support is sold per user per year (EUR 71.29, 104.99 or 204.75 depending on tier), starting at 100 users. Someone has to run the server, and the editor engine is chosen separately.
Switch from Microsoft 365 if you want files, chat and documents on infrastructure you control and have an administrator to run it.
Germany · Free of charge, open source, no licence fee
A desktop suite with Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Base and Math that costs nothing to license, with source code under the Mozilla Public License and The Document Foundation behind it. It has no hosted storage, mailbox or built-in team workspace, and support comes from the community or paid partners.
Switch from Microsoft 365 if you mostly need local editors for DOCX, XLSX and PPTX and not a hosted workspace.
Germany · Subscription for one or twelve months, published; 30-day trial
A desktop suite from Nuremberg that uses DOCX, XLSX and PPTX as its native formats and runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android. It is sold as a subscription (EUR 49.90 per year or EUR 4.99 per month for one company computer) with volume licences from EUR 199 for five computers. Collaboration is limited to comments in the documents.
Switch from Microsoft 365 if you want a paid, supported desktop suite with Word-compatible formats and no forced cloud.
United Kingdom · Free development edition; Business per user per month, published; self-hosted
A browser editing server built on LibreOffice that you install in your own environment, usually inside a file platform. The Development Edition is free for testing and home use, Business is EUR 3 per user per month for up to 99 users, and 100 or more users are quoted. It supplies editors only, with no mail, chat or storage of its own.
Switch from Microsoft 365 if you already run a file platform and need Microsoft-format editing in the browser on your own servers.
Switzerland · Free plan with 5 GB; paid Drive tiers published
End-to-end encrypted documents and spreadsheets inside Proton Drive, from a Geneva company. The free plan has 5 GB, and Drive Professional is listed at USD 9.99 per user per month for 1 TB. The pages we read show Docs and Sheets but no presentation editor, and the encryption means the provider cannot read your files.
Switch from Microsoft 365 if confidentiality of the content matters more than a full set of Office features.
Singapore · Free download; paid Pro+ tier adds AI features
A free office suite from Kingsoft's Singapore entity covering Writer, Spreadsheet, Presentation and PDF on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS. The pricing page contrasts the free version (1 GB cloud storage) with Pro+ (20 GB, with AI tools limited by a daily usage cap). It is aimed at individuals more than managed company tenants.
Switch from Microsoft 365 if you want a no-cost desktop and mobile suite with PDF tools for a few users.
United States · Optional Apple Creator Studio subscription for premium content; 1-month trial
Pages, Numbers and Keynote for Mac, iPad and iPhone, with Pages also available in a browser through iCloud. Real-time collaboration is described for Keynote. The core apps are part of Apple devices, and an Apple Creator Studio subscription adds premium content and AI features. There is no company admin console on the pages we read.
Switch from Microsoft 365 if your staff already use Apple devices and need documents, not a managed tenant.
United States · Free download, no licence fees
A free desktop suite under the Apache 2.0 License that reads and writes OpenDocument and other common formats. Version 4.1.17 came out on 14 October 2026, eleven months after 4.1.16, and the project says it is developed entirely by volunteers. It has no hosted workspace or commercial support plan.
Switch from Microsoft 365 if you want a stable, no-cost local suite and can accept a slow release pace.
Microsoft 365 stays the sensible choice when you want desktop Office apps, Exchange mail, SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams under one tenant and one administrator. Its enterprise plans add compliance and security tooling, such as Purview and Defender suites in E5, that none of the lighter alternatives here replicate. The cost is the plan sorting and, above 300 users, a move to Enterprise plans.
Microsoft 365 is an editor plus mail, calendar, storage and chat. Write down which of those your staff use. A document-only replacement such as LibreOffice or Collabora Online will leave you needing separate mail and file storage, while Google Workspace or Zoho Workplace bring their own.
Take your five most complex DOCX and XLSX files, with macros, tracked changes and charts, and open them in each trial. SoftMaker and Nextcloud state compatibility with Microsoft formats, and the trial versions (30 days for SoftMaker, 14 days for Google Workspace) let you check before a purchase.
Exit means ending the plans in Microsoft's admin centre, moving mailboxes and files and re-pointing users. If your company is near the 300-user Business limit, compare the running cost of the new tool against the Enterprise plans you would otherwise need, since per-admin and per-server pricing scale differently from per-user pricing.
We could not read Microsoft's pricing pages, because microsoft.com blocked our requests, so we state no prices.
Microsoft's plan documentation lists the plan families and says Business plans are for up to 300 users. Check the current figures on Microsoft's own pricing page for your country.
Yes, several. LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice are free to use and open source, WPS Office has a free version, ONLYOFFICE has a free Startup cloud plan and free desktop editors, and Proton Docs has a free 5 GB plan.
Free versions have limits, for example WPS caps its AI tools daily on the paid Pro+ plan.
ONLYOFFICE Docs (self-hosted deployment), Nextcloud (AGPL server), Collabora Online (installed on premise) and, for the editors alone, the Collabora Development Edition. LibreOffice, Apache OpenOffice and SoftMaker run locally on each computer rather than as a server.
Google Workspace and Zoho Workplace bundle mail, storage, meetings and editors in one per-user subscription, as Microsoft does. The others replace the editors or the file layer only, so you add mail and chat separately.
SoftMaker (Germany), Nextcloud (Germany), LibreOffice (The Document Foundation, a foundation under German law), Collabora (UK) and Proton (Switzerland) are all based in Europe, according to their own sites.
The country of the vendor says nothing about product quality, so judge each product on features and price.
No. According to Microsoft's plan documentation, Business Basic and Office 365 E1 include the Office apps for the web only, while Business Standard, Business Premium, E3 and E5 include the desktop apps.
Founder of The Knowledge Engineers and of 2 Steps Ahead, an AI search visibility agency. Editorially responsible for every page on this site; research and drafting are AI-assisted.
Written, edited and fact-checked by Sebastiaan Smits. Last reviewed 23 October 2026. How we review.
