title: Is Microsoft's Office add-in program free for all publishers?
body: <p>I have a service where I charge customers for data. I want them to be able to get that data via Excel, but the old VBA addins, which you could distribute with an XLA file, are increasingly being replaced by &quot;<a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/overview/office-add-ins" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Office Addins</a>&quot;.</p>
  <p>The best way of <a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/publish/publish" rel="nofollow noreferrer">distributing</a> these appears to be through Microsoft's addins store built into Office. However there is no obvious information in any of Microsoft's <a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">online documentation</a> about costs (if any).</p>
  <ul>
  <li>Does Microsoft charge money for free apps on the addins store?</li>
  <li>Does it take commission for apps with in-app subscriptions?</li>
  <li>If yes for the latter, is one able to publish a free addin but charge
  clients externally (as I am currently already doing), thereby avoiding paying any addin store commission?</li>
  </ul>