Back in January, Microsoft announced that it is increasing the price of its cloud services for organizations in Europe to align closer with global pricing as well as the U.S. dollar exchange rate with other currencies. This price change will kick into effect in less than a week, on April 1, 2023.
Sweden will see a significant price hike of 15% while Denmark, Norway, and other countries in the Eurozone will receive an increase of 11%. The UK will have the least hike in price, but it will still come in at 9%.
Microsoft further noted that moving forward, it will review local currency pricing and exchange rate fluctuations with the U.S. dollar twice a year and adjust the price tags of its cloud services accordingly. The company emphasized that this will increase transparency and predictability for customers as they follow a global pricing structure instead of a localized one.
Microsoft stated that:
The Microsoft Cloud continues to be priced competitively, and Microsoft remains deeply committed to the success of its customers and partners. We will continue to invest to enable customers to innovate, consolidate and eliminate operating costs, optimize business performance and efficiency and provide the foundation for a strong security strategy that customers around the world have come to rely on.
News outlet Dr. Windows says that Microsoft 365 Personal and Family are not affected by this price hike for now. This makes sense as Microsoft Cloud is the umbrella term for technologies that power enterprises through software and services such as Azure, Power BI, GitHub, Teams, Windows 365, and more.