Setting Up a Shared Office 365 Alternative Using Office 2024 and Cloud Storage

Microsoft 365 Business plans can cost anywhere from €9.99 to €22 per user per month. For a team of ten, that is up to €2,640 per year — every year. Many small businesses and teams pay this recurring cost largely because they assume collaboration requires a subscription. It does not. With Office 2024 Professional Plus and the right cloud storage setup, you can build a collaborative document environment that handles the core workflows most teams actually use, at a fraction of the ongoing cost.

This guide walks through exactly how to set up a practical shared working environment using perpetual Office licences and free or low-cost cloud storage services. It is not a perfect substitute for Microsoft 365 in every scenario, but for a large number of small businesses, it is more than adequate — and the savings are real.

Understanding What Microsoft 365 Actually Provides

Before building an alternative, it is worth being honest about what Microsoft 365 offers that perpetual licences do not. The subscription includes:

• Co-authoring in real time — Multiple people editing the same document simultaneously, with changes appearing live
• OneDrive storage — 1TB per user included
• Microsoft Teams — Integrated chat, video calls, and file sharing
• Exchange Online — Enterprise-grade hosted email
• SharePoint — Centralised document management with permissions and versioning
• Always-current software — New features pushed continuously

A perpetual Office 2024 licence, by contrast, gives you the full desktop applications without the cloud services. The key insight is that the cloud services — storage, sharing, email — can be sourced separately, often at lower cost or even for free.

Choosing Your Cloud Storage Platform

The foundation of your collaborative setup is cloud storage. Office 2024 integrates natively with OneDrive, but it also works with other cloud storage providers that sync a local folder. The main options are:

OneDrive (Microsoft) — The best-integrated option. Office 2024 has deep OneDrive integration built in: autosave works automatically, version history is accessible from within the application, and sharing links can be generated directly from the File menu. OneDrive offers 5GB free per account, with Microsoft 365 Basic providing 100GB for €1.99/month. Even if you avoid a full Microsoft 365 subscription, OneDrive storage alone is inexpensive and provides the best Office integration.

Google Drive — Free up to 15GB per account, with Google One plans from €1.59/month for 100GB. Google Drive works well as a sync folder for Office files. The caveat is that Office documents stored on Google Drive open in Google Docs format in a browser by default, but if your team always opens files in their desktop Office applications rather than through the browser, this is not an issue. The Google Drive desktop app syncs files locally, and Office opens them from the synced folder.

Dropbox — Free plan offers 2GB (quite limited), with paid plans from €9.99/month for 2TB. Dropbox has excellent Office integration through its official Office plugin, and its smart sync feature means files do not all need to be stored locally. It is particularly good for teams that work with large files like CAD drawings or high-resolution images alongside Office documents.

SharePoint (standalone) — If you want SharePoint’s document library features and permissions without a full Microsoft 365 Business subscription, Microsoft SharePoint Plan 1 costs €4.20 per user per month. This gives you SharePoint’s versioning, metadata, and permission features, and Office 2024 integrates with it directly. For teams that need structured document management, this is worth considering.

Setting Up OneDrive for Team Collaboration with Office 2024

The most practical setup for most small teams uses OneDrive for Business storage alongside Office 2024 desktop applications. Here is how to configure it properly:

Step 1: Set up a shared OneDrive structure. One person in the team creates a folder structure in their OneDrive and shares it with others. In OneDrive for Business (or via SharePoint), you can share folders with specific people or groups and set permissions (view only, or edit). Everyone who is shared on the folder will see it appear in their own OneDrive, accessible from File Explorer on Windows.

Step 2: Configure Office 2024 to use OneDrive as the default save location. In any Office 2024 application, go to File > Options > Save and set the default file location to your OneDrive folder. This ensures new documents are saved to the shared location automatically rather than to the local drive.

Step 3: Enable AutoSave. In Office 2024, AutoSave is available when a file is stored on OneDrive or SharePoint. Toggle it on in the top-left corner of any application. This means changes are saved continuously to the cloud, reducing the risk of lost work.

Step 4: Use the Version History feature. Right-click any Office file in OneDrive and select “Version history” to see all previous saves. This is a powerful safety net when reviewing changes or recovering from errors, and it works automatically once AutoSave is enabled.

Step 5: Set up co-authoring where needed. Co-authoring — multiple people editing simultaneously — does work in Office 2024 when files are stored on OneDrive or SharePoint. It is not quite as seamless as in Microsoft 365 (you may need to save and refresh to see others’ changes rather than seeing them live), but for most team workflows, this is perfectly adequate.

Email: Replacing Exchange Online

Microsoft 365 subscriptions include Exchange Online, which provides hosted business email. If you are going the perpetual licence route, you need an email solution separately. The main options are:

Google Workspace — Business Starter plan is €4.60 per user per month, providing custom domain email (@yourbusiness.co.uk) through Gmail, plus 30GB of storage and Meet for video calls. Outlook 2024 connects to Google Workspace email via IMAP or, with the Google Workspace Sync plugin, with full calendar and contacts synchronisation.

Zoho Mail — Business email starting from free (for up to 5 users with limited storage) or €1 per user per month for the Mail Lite plan with 5GB per user. Outlook 2024 connects via IMAP. Zoho Mail is a strong option for very small businesses that need professional email at minimal cost.

Microsoft 365 Business Basic — If you specifically want Exchange Online for email, Microsoft 365 Business Basic costs €4.60 per user per month and includes Exchange Online, Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive — just without desktop Office applications. Combined with Office 2024 desktop applications purchased separately, this covers all the collaboration infrastructure at roughly half the cost of a full Microsoft 365 Business Standard subscription.

Video Calls and Team Communication

Microsoft Teams is included in most Microsoft 365 plans, but it is also available free as a standalone application. The free version of Teams supports unlimited messages, video calls for up to 60 minutes, and 5GB of file storage — which is sufficient for many small teams. Teams can be installed on any Windows PC with Office 2024 and integrates with Outlook for calendar events and meetings.

Alternatively, Zoom’s free plan supports 40-minute group calls and unlimited one-to-one calls. Google Meet (free with a Google account) supports 60-minute group calls. For teams that primarily work asynchronously, Slack’s free plan offers message history and integrations alongside file sharing.

Total Cost Comparison

Let us compare costs for a team of five over three years:

Microsoft 365 Business Standard (includes desktop apps + cloud services):
€12.50 per user per month × 5 users × 36 months = €2,250

Office 2024 Professional Plus + cloud services:
Office 2024 licences: 5 × €34.99 = €149.95 (one-time)
OneDrive/SharePoint storage: €4.20 per user per month × 5 × 36 months = €756
Google Workspace email: €4.60 per user per month × 5 × 36 months = €828
Total over 3 years: approximately €1,734

The saving is roughly €516 over three years for a team of five — and larger teams will see proportionally greater savings. The perpetual model also provides cost certainty: your Office software cost does not increase when Microsoft raises subscription prices.

Office 2024 Professional Plus for Windows is available for €34.99 per licence at GetRenewedTech, giving each team member the full suite of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, and Publisher for a single payment.

Limitations to Be Aware Of

Honesty requires acknowledging where this setup falls short of a full Microsoft 365 deployment:

Real-time co-authoring is less polished. While it works, the experience is not as seamless as in Microsoft 365. If your team frequently has multiple people editing the same document simultaneously, the subscription may be worth the cost.

Mobile applications are limited. Microsoft 365 subscriptions include full-featured mobile Office apps. The mobile apps work with perpetual licences for viewing and basic editing on devices with screens smaller than 10.1 inches, but editing on tablets and larger devices requires a Microsoft 365 account.

No Power Automate or Power Apps. If your team uses or plans to use Microsoft’s automation and low-code application tools, these require Microsoft 365.

IT management is more complex. Microsoft 365’s centralised admin console makes managing users, devices, and security policies straightforward. With a perpetual licence setup, you manage each installation individually.

Who This Setup Works Best For

The perpetual licence plus cloud storage approach works exceptionally well for:

• Small businesses of 2–10 people who primarily work on separate documents rather than co-editing simultaneously
• Freelancers and sole traders who need Office applications but not enterprise cloud services
• Organisations with fluctuating team sizes where paying per-user subscriptions would be costly
• Budget-conscious businesses willing to invest a small amount of setup time in return for lower ongoing costs
• Teams that already use Google Workspace for email and collaboration but prefer Microsoft Office’s desktop applications for document creation

Getting Started

The first step is purchasing Office 2024 Professional Plus licences for each team member. At €34.99 per licence from GetRenewedTech, this is a significantly lower upfront cost than many alternatives. Once installed, connect each installation to OneDrive (free storage or a low-cost plan), configure shared folders, and set up AutoSave on shared files. Add a business email provider to handle professional communications, and use free Teams or an alternative for video calls.

The result is a collaborative working environment that handles the document-centric workflows of most small businesses — without the monthly subscription drain. For teams willing to invest a bit of initial setup time, it is a genuinely viable alternative to Microsoft 365.