Free Office 365 alternative

Using Bitrix24 as free Office 365 alternative

Office 365 is a cloud office suite that combines online storage, document management, email, group collaboration and communication tools. Its pricing is rather complex and starts at $5/user/mo with annual commitment for Office 365 Small Business and goes as high as $22/user/mo for Office 365 Enterprise E4.

As an office suite leader, Microsoft has got online document management right with Office 365, but as a collaborative platform, it's rather weak - there are no project management capabilities within Office 365, nor any sales or client management tools, like CRM and billing.

Any time you want tools that are outside document management, like videoconferencing (Lync) or intranet (SharePoint) or social network (Yammer), you are forced to pay extra and upgrade your plan. Another serious Office 365 disadvantage is the fact that while every tool in the package (MS Office, SharePoint, MS Exchange, Lync, etc) is available both in cloud and on-premise, once you start using Office 365 in cloud, migrating your existing cloud instance to your own server is next impossible and very expensive.

If you are looking for a free Microsoft Office 365 alternative, especially the one that is available both in cloud and on-premise, that comes with sales tools, Bitrix24 makes a perfect choice.