If subscription fatigue has you eyeing the exit from Microsoft 365, PCWorld is highlighting a deal that takes the opposite approach: a Microsoft Office Professional 2021 lifetime license for Windows at $27.97, marked down from a list price of $219.99.

The package covers the core productivity suite — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and more — as a one-time purchase rather than a recurring bill. That's the central trade-off versus Microsoft 365, which charges on an ongoing basis in exchange for continuous updates, cloud storage, and multi-device flexibility. A perpetual 2021 license freezes you at that feature set, but for users whose needs are mostly documents and spreadsheets, that's often plenty.

The usual caveats for deep-discount lifetime licenses apply: this is the 2021 release, not the current cloud-connected product, and it's Windows-only. Feature updates won't arrive the way they do on a subscription, and Microsoft's long-term support windows for perpetual Office versions are finite. Still, at under $30 against hundreds of dollars in cumulative subscription fees over a few years, the math is straightforward for anyone who just wants Office to be software they own rather than a service they rent.