As long as I can remember, Microsoft Office has been a behemoth in the world of productivity tools. These days, many people do use things like Google Docs, but it's really not the same, and I'll always see Microsoft Office as the more mature and more capable option.

For the past year or so, I've been paying for Microsoft 365 so I could use those tools, but when the renewal warning came up on my computer, I decided I wouldn't be paying up again. As much as Microsoft's suite of tools does, I simply don't see a need for it, and I think a lot of you may feel exactly the same way. Let's talk about some reasons why.

4 I hate the subcription model

I prefer one-and-done transactions

While I did grow up in the age of digital subscriptions, I've always been more on the side of preferring actual purchases of things. I like owning things, and I especially hate the idea of continuous payments for something that I could buy once and use forever. Something about continuous payments really makes me think about how much money I'm wasting on a given service.

As such, even if I did need Microsoft's tools specifically, I probably would be looking to buy the latest perpetual license, rather than pay the annual fee to keep using Microsoft 365. It's not like the subscription includes any extra tools that most people actually need anyway.

3 I very rarely use the Office tools

I just don't need all these capabilities

For all the great tools Microsoft Office (or Microsoft 365) offers, I've come to realize I really don't need almost any of it. All I use it for is managing my spreadsheet where I track benchmark scores for different devices, and occasionally editing a document template I need to fill in for customs processes. That's about it.

All of my writing is done on XDA's CMS, which has a reliable autosave feature anyway. There's next to no reason for me to really use anything else. In fact, it's easier for me to write plain text in Notepad if I can't access the CMS, because copying formatting from Word and into the CMS would just be more problematic.

I'm paying $100 a year for Microsoft 365, which isn't a ton, but the use I get out of it definitely isn't worth that price, and I can use that money to spend on things I actually enjoy. Plus, Microsoft 365 is actually losing some value in the near future with Publisher being discontinued.

2 Cloud storage? The free tier is enough

OneDrive is fine, but I also don't need it

What I get the most use out of with Microsoft 365 at this point is the cloud storage, of which I'm using about 10% right now. 1TB of cloud storage is certainly handy, and I thought that would be enough to keeo me paing for it, but after thinking about it, I don't think it makes sense.

While there's quite a bit of data stored on my OneDrive, a big chunk of what I've kept on there are files that I've had to transfer between devices, and OneDrive is generally the easiest way to do that since it's already installed on every Windows PC. But I can delete most of it, and it will bring me well into what's covered by free tier.

To be fair, I am one of the luckier users. Since I've had OneDrive for a long time, I've been eligible for some perks and I have 40GB of free storage. I have some pictures from trips that I want to keep on OneDrive, but they absolutely fit on the free tier for me.

For anything else I might want to have a backup of, I have external hard drives that can hold those files if I really want them, which is a lot cheaper in the long run. Maybe I'll even set up a NAS at some point.

Even if I did want more storage, I think alternatives exist that offer better value focused on storage alone. Microsoft's offering only goes up to 1TB, but Google One includes up to 2TB. And sure, Microsoft gives you 1TB per account on a family plan, but that means I personally am still limited unless I want the hassle of creating multiple accounts and splitting my files between them.

1 Free Office tools are pretty good these days

OnlyOffice may be my new go-to

For how little use I get out of Microsoft's Office suite, I feel like it's at a point now where I really don't need a paid suite of tools. I recently had to go hands-on with a few Microsoft Office alternatives, and I found that a few of them are actually quite good for my needs.

One of the more interesting ones for me is OnlyOffice, since it's fully cross-platform and doesn't require any kind of online account to work, nor does it have aggressive advertising or upsells. It's just a solid Office suit for personal use.

There is something important to this that could be missing, which is the ability to work in the cloud, but OnlyOffice works there too. While an online account isn't required to use the app, you can create one to use 2GB of free storage to store your documents with support for real-time collaboration and cloud syncing. All I need to do is move my benchmark spreadsheet over there and I can work on it from any PC I have without issues. And that's exactly what I plan to do once my Microsoft 365 subscription is done.

Even if OnlyOffice wasn't for me, options like MobiOffice, WPS Office, and SoftMaker Free Office are all excellent alternatives that I've also enjoyed using.

Microsoft 365 is an unnecessary cost for many people

I won't deny that a lot of people do need the advanced tools provided by Microsoft Office. There's a rich ecosystem of plug-ins, macros, and more apps like Access that make Microsoft's suite necessary for many professional environments. But with the kind of work I do, there's no reason to rely on Microsoft so much.

If you're a student or someone who simply writes basic documents or spreadsheets, there's probably no reason for you to be paying a yearly subscription, either. Check out some free Office alternatives and you may come away very impressed.