Do I need both Basic and Family subscriptions to 365?

Question

I have a 365 Basic subscription with cloud storage and also a subscription to 365 Family thru my daughter. Are the cloud storage items the same?

Answer 1

Hello,

No, you don't need Basic if you already have Microsoft 365 Family through your daughter. Basic gives you 100GB OneDrive storage only, nothing else. Family gives you 1TB, plus desktop version of Office apps.

Please go to https://account.live.com

Sign into your Microsoft account. Then go to Services. Click on Manage for the basic plan you want to cancel.

If you need refund, Open the "Get Help" app on your computer (just search for it in the Start menu). or go to https://support.microsoft.com/contactus, Type "Billing" and press Enter. On the next screen, click "Contact support" at the bottom of the page, then choose "Microsoft 365" > "Manage my subscription". You’ll then see the option to chat with a Microsoft support agent who has access to your account to help review the issue.

Answer 2

Microsoft 365 Basic and Microsoft 365 Family are separate subscriptions with different storage benefits; both are not needed for the same person.

Key points:

1. What Basic gives
   • Microsoft 365 Basic includes 100 GB of cloud storage in OneDrive and 100 GB mailbox storage for Outlook.com.
   • It does not include the desktop Office apps.
2. What Family gives
   • A Microsoft 365 Family subscription gives 1 TB of cloud storage per person who is part of the subscription.
   • Each person also gets the subscription benefits tied to their own Microsoft account.
3. Are the cloud storage items the same?
   • No. The storage from Basic and the storage from Family are different quotas tied to the same Microsoft account (if using the same sign‑in).
   • With Family, that account already gets 1 TB of OneDrive storage. Basic adds another, separate 100 GB plan, but Family alone usually provides more than enough storage.
4. Do both subscriptions need to be kept?
   • For most home users, only the Family subscription is needed for storage and Office apps.
   • The Basic subscription is generally redundant if the same person already has Family, because Family provides a larger OneDrive quota and mailbox benefits.

To see the exact quotas on the account, open the Microsoft storage area of the account dashboard using the “Open account dashboard” link in the storage quotas article.

---

References:

• Microsoft storage FAQs
• Microsoft storage quotas
• What's the difference between a paid Microsoft 365 subscription and the free web apps?