What is an MSDN Subscription?

An MSDN Subscription acts as a life-line for software developers, testers, architects, IT professional, database engineers, and others, providing priority access to new and old versions of Microsoft products, including developer tools, operating systems, server software, and productivity applications. As a subscriber you can use the software to design, develop, test, and demonstrate your applications on as many devices as you need—saving you a bundle on software license costs during development.

Plus, you also get many other benefits - including Technical support, Windows Store and Windows Phone developer accounts, Windows Azure, e-learning and more!

Here’s a summary of the great benefits that come with an MSDN subscription. Or check out the comprehensive list.

Extensive Software Collection

MSDN Subscribers say that the most important benefit of their MSDN Subscription is easy access to Microsoft’s extensive software collection. There are literally thousands of downloads, covering different products, versions, and languages, plus tools, development kits, and other resources. The latest Microsoft products are available for download, often with early previews during the beta. There is support for previous versions software titles as well, for those of you working in environments that do not always use the latest releases.

Software licensing is easy too, it’s licensed per user. An MSDN Subscription entitles you to install and use the software as much as you need in your development projects. You just need to get a subscription for each person on your team so they can use the software too and enjoy all the benefits.

Support

MSDN Subscribers have access to a number of different types of support for those tricky technical problems that we all encounter from time to time. First, the forums where you can post questions to be answered by a Microsoft engineer if the community doesn’t give you the answer first. Naturally you can participate too and provide answers to help others.

You also get Technical Support Incidents, which entitle you to receive professional technical support for up to four incidents depending on your subscription level. These support incidents can be used for assistance with technical break-fix issues in non-production environments though Microsoft Technical Support. You never know when you’ll need to use this, but the help is there when you do.

As an MSDN Subscriber, you can also use Online Chat. Online Chat is a one-to-one web-based chat service for all subscribers so you can get answers to non-technical questions about navigating the MSDN site, finding Knowledge Base (KB) articles, and using Subscriber Downloads. MSDN Online Chat is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Team Foundation Service

Managing your application’s lifecycle to meet delivery deadlines is already time-intensive enough. Why risk missing deadlines by spending countless, unproductive hours managing your development infrastructure? With Team Foundation Service¹, you get an end-to-end, cloud-based ALM solution that handles everything from version control and code reviews to agile planning and automated builds.

Office 365 Developer Subscription

As an MSDN subscriber, you're eligible for a one-time 12-month, single-user Office 365 Developer Subscription.¹

Use your Office 365 Developer Site as a development and testing environment for creating apps for Office and SharePoint. Shorten your setup time and start creating, testing, and deploying your apps today.

Best of all, signing up for an Office 365 Developer Subscription enables you to publish your apps to the Office Store. Make your free and paid apps available to the hundreds of millions of Office and SharePoint users worldwide.

Developer Accounts

As an MSDN subscriber, you’ll receive one-time 12 month Windows Store and Windows Phone Marketplace developer accounts.¹ Get what you need to create and post great apps for the world to see, try, and buy!

Windows Azure

Quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters with your Windows Azure benefit.¹ You can build applications using any operating system, language or tool. Windows Azure delivers a flexible cloud platform that can satisfy any application need.

MSDN Magazine

MSDN Magazine is the publication to read for up-to-the-minute, comprehensive coverage of Microsoft technologies for the desktop, the Internet, and devices on the go. As part of the indispensable MSDN family of developer resources, MSDN Magazine brings you solutions to the real-world problems you face every day. Whether you're building Web Services, integrating legacy data stores, or mastering .NET, MSDN Magazine has it covered.

How to Get It

Interested? Subscribe now, either directly from Microsoft or through a software reseller.