There’s a rare deal right now to get Microsoft Office Home & Business 2021 for Mac for just $59.97, marked way down from a usual $219—about 72% off—for a lifetime license. Cool standalone software Is this setup right up your alley? If you’re a Mac user who appreciates making a one-time payment and owning your tools, this is a great no-subscription way to get your hands on the Office apps the pros use day in and day out.
Why this is important for Mac users
Apple’s own Pages, Numbers and Keynote are better, but the lingua franca in business still defaults to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Research companies such as Gartner and IDC often proclaim Microsoft Office as the leading productivity suite in the enterprise and SMB space, primarily based on file-format compatibility and entrenched workflows.
Office 2021 for Mac, which will run natively on Apple silicon, should operate even more smoothly on M1-, M2- and M3-based systems. If you’ve opened a giant spreadsheet, worked with complex slides or searched for something in a huge inbox, all of those optimizations really add up to help give you day-to-day responsiveness.
What is included Office Home & Business 2021
This version includes Word, Excel,PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote for one Mac. It’s a lifetime license — again, once activated, that version of the product is yours to use for the life of the license, with security and stability updates but not feature upgrades to new versions.
Excel 2021 introduces contemporary functions such as XLOOKUP, dynamic arrays and LET, which help cut down the complexity of a model and reduce formula sprawl. PowerPoint has also received an upgrade with additions like enhanced media and Morph transitions for a more professional slide deck. Outlook provides faster, more reliable search and an integrated experience with calendar and contacts. Weighing down, but still light on, is OneNote, a versatile, syncing scrapbook of a capture tool.
For Mac users: Access and Publisher are both Windows-only. Microsoft Teams is offered as a standalone app on macOS, not bundled with the perpetual Office 2021 license.
One time purchase vs. Microsoft 365: The cost
If you’re at $59.97, you get your money back quickly versus if you have a subscription. A regular annual pricing of Microsoft 365 Personal is about $69.99. Over five years, that’s about $349.95 (that price is phrased as “or pay $69.99 a year” on Microsoft’s site) before taxes, versus a single $59.97 payment for Office 2021 — or roughly a $290 delta in your favor if you don’t care about ongoing new features or bundled cloud services.
For team plans, Microsoft 365 Business amounts to real-time collaboration, 1TB of OneDrive storage per user, and always-on feature updates—all useful in many environments. But not every freelancer, sole proprietor or family iMac owner requires those extras. Microsoft says tens of millions of consumers subscribe to Microsoft 365, but many prefer the one-and-done license for predictable costs.
Compatibility, licensing, and caveats
Office 2021 for Mac is compatible with the most recent versions of macOS, and is also fully optimized for Apple silicon and Intel-based Macs. This Home & Business license is typically for use on one mac. According to Microsoft’s retail terms, perpetual licenses are linked to the device to which it is originally installed; the transfer to a replacement machine may be acceptable in some circumstances upon the deactivation of the original installation.
What you’re not getting: the 1TB of OneDrive storage, shared family seats or AI perks like Copilot included with some Microsoft 365 subscriptions. Feature updates in perpetuity are also subscription-only; Office 2021 gets new version-level features — it is instead serviced with security fixes and stability patches.
File compatibility is excellent. DOCX, XLSX and PPTX made in Office 2021 can easily be shared with others that have the most recent MS 365 apps. If you depend on advanced cloud co-authoring features or granular enterprise controls, a subscription may still be right for you, otherwise the perpetual license has you covered for many professional needs without monthly overhead.
Who should get it
The ones with the most upside are probably independent creators, consultants and students who predominantly work on a single Mac. Even for small businesses making only occasional Office use (drafting proposals, invoicing in Excel, creating client presentations, managing email in Outlook), investment now for a stable toolset can mean a fraction of the ongoing subscription cost.
Heavy cloud collaboration shops, fast-growing teams or firms standardizing on Copilot and advanced security controls should stick with Microsoft 365. For everyone else, a lifetime license for $59.97 is a practical, budget-friendly path to the apps your regular users are requesting — and a peaceful exit from renewal reminders.
The bottom line: If you need the flagship Office experience on Mac without paying every 30 days, this 72% discount is a no-brainer. As with any sale, availability and pricing is subject to change, so order quickly if its a good fit for your setup.