Office 365 ProPlus is a version of Office that's available through Office 365. It includes all of the office applications, Access, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, Skype for Business, and Word. You can use these applications to connect with Office 365 services such as SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Skype for Business Online. Office 365 ProPlus is available as a standalone offering, or as part of other Office 365 plans, such as Office 365 Enterprise E3.
ProPlus is very similar to Office 365 Business, in that it includes the familiar Office applications, and does not include Exchange email, only a local Outlook client. However, there are some significant differences in terms of the deployment and licensing of ProPlus, which we have provided an overview of below.
What's different about Office 365 ProPlus?
Even though Office 365 ProPlus is a lot like other versions of Office, there are differences, including Deployment differences and Licensing differences. The most significant difference is that Office 365 ProPlus is updated regularly, as often as monthly, with new features, unlike non-subscription versions of Office. For a list of new features, see What's new in Office 365.
Deployment differences
By default, Office 365 ProPlus installs as one package. This means that all Office programs are installed on the user's computer. But, you can configure the deployment to Exclude or remove Office 365 ProPlus products from client computers, such as Access.
Because Office 365 ProPlus uses a different installation technology, called Click-to-Run, there's a different way to apply software updates, such as security updates. By default, Office 365 ProPlus is configured to automatically install updates from the Office Content Delivery Network (CDN) on the Internet. But, you can configure Office 365 ProPlus to install updates from a location within your own network or you can Manage updates to Office 365 ProPlus with System Center Configuration Manager.
Office 365 ProPlus also provides the ability to control how often users receive feature updates. For example, users can get new features to Office 365 ProPlus as soon as they are available. Or, if you have line-of-business applications, add-ins, or macros that you want to test with the new features, you can provide users with new features less frequently. For more information, see Overview of update channels for Office 365 ProPlus.
Office 365 provides a web-based portal where users can install Office 365 ProPlus themselves. Keep in mind that users have to be local administrators on their computers to install Office 365 ProPlus. If users aren't local administrators, you'll have to install Office 365 ProPlus for them. Also, if you don't want your users to install from the portal, you can prevent that. For more information, see Choose how to deploy Office 365 ProPlus.
Licensing differences
Users can install Office 365 ProPlus on up to five different computers with a single Office 365 license. For example, a user can have Office 365 ProPlus installed on a computer in the office, on a laptop to use when traveling, and on a home computer. Users can also install on up to 5 tablets and 5 phones.
Office 365 ProPlus is offered as a subscription. If you cancel your subscription, Office 365 ProPlus goes into reduced functionality mode. In reduced functionality mode, users can open and view existing Office files, but users can't use most of the other features of Office 365 ProPlus. For more information, see Overview of licensing and activation in Office 365 ProPlus.
To use Office 365 ProPlus, a user must have an Office 365 account and have been assigned a license. If the user's license or account is removed, the user's installations of Office 365 ProPlus go into reduced functionality mode.
Even though users don't need to be connected to the Internet all the time to use Office 365 ProPlus, users must connect to the Internet at least once every 30 days. This is so that the status of their Office 365 subscriptions can be checked. If users don't connect within 30 days, Office 365 ProPlus goes into reduced functionality mode. After users connect to the Internet and their subscription status is verified, all the features of Office 365 ProPlus are available again.
For a more in depth understanding of the Government offerings associated with the Office 365 ProPlus product, and overall view of the GCC features available to your organization please review the following document: