I wonder how with such a big market alternatives have never become popular
Is it too much to hope for a Blender-like foundation to run an open source project that is actually competitive?
Is it too much to hope for a Blender-like foundation to run an open source project that is actually competitive?
But IMO the real moat in M365 is that it also bundles Microsoft Entra ID (formerly AAD) licenses and it's strongly integrated to it + SharePoint.
This way you can have "basic IT stuff" you expect in a company like company users, groups, shared folders, file permissions, etc...
Alternatives did exist, who remembers Lotus Notes, Word Perfect, Open Office, Apple Pages, ..., but to use them today would be akin to deploying a new fangled AI web app as a Flash application.
You can get a 365 licence (Teams, OneDrive/Sharepoint, Powerpoint, Excel, Word, Outlook & hosted exchange) for $12.50/month.
It's only really Google that's competing at this price point (Broadly both their 'standard' packages are approx. the same price).
Plus I've not come across a product that's better than being Excel than Excel is (and your analyst and finance teams will hate you if you take Excel away!).