Microsoft is offering a free subscription plan which gives you access to most of their services and other third-party services for free. and it doesn’t require entering Credit Card details nor filling of lengthy forms.
Times like these whereby schools have been closed down, working from home is no alternative, I wish to disclose this subscription I have enjoyed for a while now. it is rather unfortunate that most people don’t know about this but as long as it’s free and legal let’s enjoy it.
Before getting into the process of subscribing it’s better to know what you will get after the subscription. Nothing can explain this than the screenshot below
from the screenshot above: you can tell a whole lot. Upon counting, twenty-one (21) freebies from Microsoft including products from third parties like Pluralsight and LinkedIn learning and many others
What you get after subscribing
- Xamarin Controls – 6-month Subscription and 145+ controls like DataGrid, Charts, and ListView for building Xamarin apps.
- Visual Studio Community -Free for individuals, open-source, or small teams. Create apps for Windows, iOS, Android & more.
- Visual Studio for Mac: Develop apps and games for iOS, Android, and web using .NET on macOS.
- Azure DevOps(Basic Level): Free Git repos, Agile planning tools, and hosted builds, for any language – it’s the perfect complement to your IDE.
- Azure Free Account + $200: Combine $200 free credit along with the 12-month free services to experiment in your own personal sandbox for dev/test
- Visual Studio Code: A powerful, streamlined code editor for your favorite platform – Linux, macOS, and Windows.
- Visual Studio App Center: that the app cycle manager -Build, test, deploy, and monitor your iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS apps.
- Syncfusion Big Data Edition: 6-month subscription: Process billions of data points with Syncfusion Big Data and Dashboard Platforms.
- PowerApps: Build business apps and workflows with a free environment for individual use. Connect to multiple data sources at the same time, and use Common Data Service to store the data.
- Azure App Service(Free Plan).: Everything you need to quickly and easily build web and mobile apps for any platform or device. Be our guest for up to an hour of Azure App Service experience with no Azure subscription,
- SyncFusion Essential JS 2 (6 Months Subscription): Comprehensive JavaScript UI controls library with over 60 controls including grid, chart and scheduler. Complete support for Angular, React, and Vue frameworks.
- Application Insights (Free plan): Gain deep insight into the health and performance of your web app no matter where it’s hosted.
- Universal Windows Platform VM: 60-day trial VM to help you get started developing on Windows hassle-free. Comes with Windows 10 Evaluation, Visual Studio Community, Project Islandwood and more,
- Power BI (Free Plan): Transform your data into rich visuals for you to collect and organize. Note: work/school account is required.
- Office Online (Free Plan): Work on Office files with anyone, anywhere, in real-time – for free.
- Plural sight free for 1 month: Advance your skills with the full Pluralsight catalog. Get expert-authored courses, learning paths, adaptive skill measurement, and more.
- DataCamp (2-month subscription): Master R, Python, Machine Learning, and more from the comfort of your browser.
- CODE Magazine: Leading independent software developer magazine covering dev technologies across all platforms.
- LinkedIn Learning 1 month Premium subscription: Unlock the power of LinkedIn with access to the people, insights, and skills you need to advance your career.
- Azure Community: Get help directly from the Azure team within these select forums.
- Developer Community: Post questions, find answers, and share your knowledge in the Developer Community forums.
My Personal Recommendation
Making choice out of 21 elements is really difficult that why I personally wish to recommend some, Below are some of the free services I think you need to take good advantage of:
- For Online Learning purposes:
- The LinkedIn Learning offer: It is an online portal that contains thousands of courses ranging from Business to normal daily activities. not to forget science, programming, and the like. and you will gain one month’s access to the catalog.
- DataCamp; which gives you two months’ access to Master R, Python, Machine Learning, and more from the comfort of your browser.
- Plural sight free for 1 month: similar to LinkedIn gives you access to learning resources.
Not to overwrite the rest are mostly beneficial to Microsoft programmers and its self explanatory. now lets delve into how to access this subscription.
How to Subscribe
- Visit Microsoft Dev Essentials page .
- Click on the Join or Access now button.
- And Fill the forms.
- if you dont have a Microsoft Account kindly create one in order to proceed.
- And Just that you have access to all this free tiers.
- Remember you can visit Microsoft plans page to see your subscription.
Hope you are able to create your free subscription.. enjoy and Lets know your feedback in the comments.
