Traditionally, StarOffice licenses sold for around US$70, but in 2004, Sun planned to offer subscription-based licenses to Japanese customers for about ¥1,980 (US$17) per year (Becker, 2004). P. Ulander, a desktop products manager for Sun, acknowledged that Sun planned to expand subscription-based licenses to other countries as well. As of January 2009 Sun's website offered StarOffice for US$34.95.
Sun used a per-person license for StarOffice, compared to the per-device licenses used for most other proprietary software. An individual purchaser gains the right to install the software on up to five computers. For example, a small-business owner can have the software on laptop, office and home computers, or a user with a computer running Microsoft Windows, and another running Linux, can install StarOffice on both computers.
As of 2010, StarOffice 9 Software is no longer offered at no-charge to education customers. Education users can use OpenOffice.org 3.0, which has the same functionality as StarOffice 9 Software, or continue using StarOffice 8 Software, which remains no-charge. Sun also offered free web-based training and an online tutorial for students and teachers, free support services for teachers (including educational templates for StarOffice) and significantly discounted technical support for schools.
From August 2007 to November 2008, Google offered StarOffice 8 as part of its free downloadable Google Pack application.
Users of the Solaris 11 Express Community Edition receive StarOffice 9 for free along with the operating system. OpenSolaris users who register their OS with Sun have the ability to download the Express Community Edition for free.
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