It was nice knowing ya! More than a year ago there was talk that Redmond was considering killing off the Microsoft store for Business and Education, with the retirement process to be initiated in June 2020.
That report surfaced prior to the pandemic, which is why Microsoft never followed through with these plans or even officially announce anything.
But that may be changing soon.
The software titan has announced that it will soon be restricting users from purchasing paid apps from the Microsoft Store for Business and Education.
A notice put on the dedicated webpage for Microsoft Store for Business and Education reads:
“Starting April 14, 2021, all apps that charge a base price above free will no longer be available to buy in the Microsoft Store for Business and Education. If you’ve already bought a paid app, you can still use it, but no new purchases will be possible from businessstore.microsoft.com or educationstore.microsoft.com. Also, you won’t be able to buy additional licenses for apps you already bought. You can still assign and reassign licenses for apps that you already own and use the private store. Apps with a base price of “free” will still be available. This change doesn’t impact apps in the Microsoft Store on Windows 10.
Also starting April 14, 2021, you must sign in with your Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) account before you browse Microsoft Store for Business and Education.”
Sounds like the end, alright.
Customers of these two application repositories have also started to receive notifications that they will not be allowed to purchase paid apps from the portals after April 14 — they will only be able to download free apps.
That said, applications already purchased will continue to work and receive updates.
In case you were not aware, Microsoft Store for Business and Education were slightly altered versions of the vanilla Microsoft Store in that they allowed administrators to tailor what apps can be downloaded by users within an organization.
Redmond intended for these to be able to distribute certain apps only meant for businesses.
