Microsoft 365 Is Raising Prices and Ditching Its Free VPN

Paying more and getting less seems to be standard operating procedure these days. Certainly that’s what Microsoft 365 (the fancy new name for Microsoft Office) users are about to experience, as the service's included VPN is being dropped as of February 28.

According to a support note on the Microsoft site, the company “routinely evaluate[s] the usage and effectiveness of our features” and has decided that the VPN is no longer a necessary part of Microsoft 365. 

As VPNs go, it was only OK

In truth, it’s not a major loss. Microsoft’s VPN came with a 50GB monthly data limit and didn’t allow you to trick your browser into thinking you were elsewhere in the world, making it arguably less useful than even some of the best free VPNs. It obscured your traffic, sure, but not much else.

Still, it’s a bit of a slap in the face, as it follows the first Microsoft 365 subscription price hike in 12 years. Both the Personal and Family plans now cost $3 more per month, a roughly 43% increase. Supposedly the increases are justified by the addition of limited Copilot AI features, which used to involve paying for a $20 add-on.

That add-on still exists if the limited AI credits included with the new subscriptions aren’t enough for you, but my fellow AI skeptics have only one way to avoid paying more for the now VPN-less service: For the next 12-months, existing subscribers can downgrade to a “Microsoft 365 Personal Classic” or “Microsoft 365 Family Classic” plan, which has all the same features as the current plans, minus AI (and the VPN, of course). The company says it’s "assessing the length of availability of these subscriptions,” though, so they may not be around for long.

New customers, meanwhile, have no choice but to go along with the new prices. On the plus side, despite its lack of a VPN, the current 365 plan does still include identity theft protection and credit monitoring.

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