Upon the release of Office 2013, Microsoft began to promote the service as the primary distribution model for the Microsoft Office suite, adding consumer-focused plans integrating with services such as OneDrive and Skype, and emphasizing ongoing feature updates (as opposed to non-subscription licenses, where new versions require purchase of a new license, and do not receive feature updates).

[8][9] Following the official launch of the service, Business Productivity Online Suite customers were given 12 months to migrate from BPOS to the Office 365 platform.

[15][16] On March 19, 2013, Microsoft detailed its plans to provide integration with the enterprise social networking platform Yammer (which they had acquired in 2012) for Office 365, such as the ability to use a single sign-on between the two services, shared feeds and document aggregation, and the ability to entirely replace the SharePoint news feed and social functionality with Yammer.

[18] On July 8, 2013, Microsoft unveiled Power BI, a suite of business intelligence and self-serve data mining tools for Office 365, to be released later in the year.

[25] However, due to abuse and a general reduction in storage options implemented by Microsoft, the 1 TB cap was reinstated in November 2015.

[29][30] In October 2017, the existing Outlook.com Premium service was discontinued and folded exclusively into Office 365, with all Personal and Family subscribers subsequently being upgraded to 50 GB of storage.

[34] It is a superset of the existing Office 365 products and benefits, positioned towards "life", productivity, and families, including the Microsoft Office suite, 1 TB of additional OneDrive storage and access to OneDrive Personal Vault, and 60 minutes of Skype calls per month.

Microsoft stated that "over the last several years, our cloud productivity offering has grown well beyond what people traditionally think of as 'Office'", citing examples such as Forms, Planner, Stream, and Teams.

They are installed using a "click-to-run" system which allows users to begin using the applications almost instantaneously, while files are downloaded in the background.

Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are available as mobile and web app, usable for free with limitations, although they do not contain all of the functionality as the desktop versions.

The mobile apps were originally limited to Office 365 subscribers,[52][53][54] but basic editing and document creation has since been made free for personal use.

[70] Microsoft 365 offers subscription plans aimed at different needs and market segments, providing different sets of features at different price points.

[73][74] There are two separate backends for the products:[75][76] Aimed at mainstream consumers, both plans offer access to Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, and Access) for home/non-commercial use on one computer (Windows, macOS, and mobile devices), with access to additional online-based services and premium creative content, 1 TB of OneDrive storage with Advanced Security, 60 minutes of Skype international calls per month (subject to area), and partner offers.

At the same time, Microsoft also unveiled a new "Trust Center" portal, containing further information on its privacy policies and security practices for the service.

[98] In Finland, FICORA has warned Office 365 users of phishing incidents and break-ins that have caused losses of millions of euros.

[99][100] In September 2019, NCSC-FI (National Cyber Security Centre of Finland) created a detailed guide on how to protect Microsoft Office 365 against phishing attempts and any data breaches.

[101] In July 2019, the German state of Hesse outlawed the use of Office 365 in educational institutions, citing privacy risks.

"[107] TechRadar gave the 2013 update of Office 365 a 4.5 out of 5, praising its administration interfaces for being accessible to users with any level of expertise, the seamless integration of OneDrive Pro into the Office 2013 desktop applications, and the service as a whole for being suitable in small business environments, while still offering "powerful" options for use in larger companies (such as data loss protection and the ability to integrate with a local Active Directory instance).