Third-party one-time Microsoft Office licenses?

I use stacksocial dot com. In the past, I have purchased the following from them with no regrets and substantial discounts on the licenses:

• Windows 11 Pro (2)
• Office 2021 Professional Plus (1), single-purchase for Windows
• Office 2021 for Mac Home & Business (2), single-purchase
• Office 2024 Home (2)
  • Mac single purchase on macOS Tahoe 26.5.2
  • Windows single purchase on Windows 11 Pro (ARM)

One must have an existing Microsoft account as the order process for the above will automatically enter the product into the Microsoft account as a licensed product. The actual activation key is sent via email and this has never failed for me. Their site has proficient instructions on the ordering process.

I am running Parallels Desktop Pro 26.4.* with a Windows 11 Pro guest and Office 2024 for Windows on an M4 Mac Mini Pro. Also, using the free VMware Fusion 26.0, I have a Windows 11 Pro guest on my 2020 Core i7 iMac.

Note: I have no business/financial relationship with stacksocial and only mention them here as a satisfied customer.

Second VikingOSX's suggestion. If I hadn't already purchased Master PDF Editor, I would have gotten a cheap license for Acrobat Pro there instead.

If you're wondering how they do this kind of pricing, these are considered sort of gray market sales. Microsoft and other vendors seems to be okay with them since they've never made any attempt to shut such sales down.

Where all of these cheap licenses come from are large corporations that routinely replace hundreds, or thousands of workstations every three years or so. They already have a site license for all of the software they use, so all of those new computers have valid product codes on them that will never be used. That is, an OS or other bundled software that was paid for as part of the cost of the computer, but never activated.

They give, or sell all of these otherwise wasted codes to places like Stack Social.

You know the old saying, “If it sounds too good to be true..."

Kurt Lang wrote:

Second VikingOSX's suggestion. If I hadn't already purchased Master PDF Editor, I would have gotten a cheap license for Acrobat Pro there instead.

If you're wondering how they do this kind of pricing, these are considered sort of gray market sales. Microsoft and other vendors seems to be okay with them since they've never made any attempt to shut such sales down.

Where all of these cheap licenses come from are large corporations that routinely replace hundreds, or thousands of workstations every three years or so. They already have a site license for all of the software they use, so all of those new computers have valid product codes on them that will never be used. That is, an OS or other bundled software that was paid for as part of the cost of the computer, but never activated.

They give, or sell all of these otherwise wasted codes to places like Stack Social.

You could have used PDFgear, which is free and sells no data.

I tested many paid and free PDF editors before purchasing Master PDF Editor.

The problem with those I didn't choose were:

1. Like Acrobat Pro, they were also subscription. Which was an automatic "NO".
2. They don't actually edit anything. Just simple annotations like you can do in Preview. Which is nothing more than the digital equivalent of a Post-It note. The data underneath is still there.
3. They are very limited in what they can edit.
4. They are online only. I will not put my personal data on anyone else's server to use their product.

And yes, PDFgear was one of those I tested. Trying it again now, it has changed a LOT from a couple of years ago. True editing is clumsy, but at least it's there.

I did look when you pointed it out sometime back, but I had already paid for the next upgrade to MPE, or I would have jumped on that. Nothing at Stack Social at this time. But as you know, it all depends on what licenses they have at the moment.

Yeah, you missed that three-year Adobe Acrobat Pro license for $99 instead of the $324 that Adobe charges. 🫨