Outlook.com Premium $20 per year until June 30

KeithP

Diamond Member
Jun 15, 2000
5,659
198
106
Originally it was set to expire at the end of March. Not a bad deal, 5 accounts with a custom domain and it renews at that price into the foreseeable future.

https://premium.outlook.com/?sl=1#/Offer

Get an ad-free inbox and more with Outlook.com Premium for the special price of $19.95/yr (regular $49.99/yr). Plus, enjoy a personalized email address like john@smithcrew.com that you can share among 5 people, free for the first year.

-KeithP
 

you2

Diamond Member
Apr 2, 2002
5,668
912
126
Does google have a better deal on ad free email ? I must be missing something - can someone explain to me why this is hot ?
 

IlllI

Diamond Member
Feb 12, 2002
4,927
10
81
Must be a replacement for the defunct free custom domains service Microsoft used to offer. I think it was called windows live domain or something.
 

Pulsar

Diamond Member
Mar 3, 2003
5,225
306
126
Why would I pay for email? Just for the domain name? Hardly seems worth it.
 

DaveSimmons

Elite Member
Aug 12, 2001
40,730
670
126
This can be a decent deal if you have a small business and are not happy with your hosted server email or have no hosted server at all. $20 first year and $30 after that is a lot cheaper than Google and Amazon's $4 per mailbox per month.

(And you don't want to settle for an @gmail account.)
 

harobikes333

Platinum Member
Sep 18, 2005
2,383
7
81
daily-page.com
This can be a decent deal if you have a small business and are not happy with your hosted server email or have no hosted server at all. $20 first year and $30 after that is a lot cheaper than Google and Amazon's $4 per mailbox per month.

(And you don't want to settle for an @gmail account.)
I feel the same. Definitely worth 20 Bucks a year if you're after the custom domain email. Outlook as come a long way over the years
 

Sonikku

Lifer
Jun 23, 2005
15,749
4,558
136
Outlook as come a long way over the years
Oh it sure has alright. My free email uses to be simple and worked. Now they put colored URLs in the text of emails I receive which is distracting. It used to be ad free. Now even with an ad blocker it still takes up a huge blank space on the right telling me to upgrade to "reclaim the space". Outlooks idea of giving you value is taking away something you originally got for free for years, then selling it back to you for a price.
 

harobikes333

Platinum Member
Sep 18, 2005
2,383
7
81
daily-page.com
Oh it sure has alright. My free email uses to be simple and worked. Now they put colored URLs in the text of emails I receive which is distracting. It used to be ad free. Now even with an ad blocker it still takes up a huge blank space on the right telling me to upgrade to "reclaim the space". Outlooks idea of giving you value is taking away something you originally got for free for years, then selling it back to you for a price.
There, there, Sonikku.... nothing is really "free" Google has been reading through your emails for years in lieu of traditional banner ads. While I agree it's unfortunate.... when it comes to Google / Outlook, etc... they've accepted your data in lieu of charging you for your email services.

Here's a "sorta" light hearted video, just for you!
https://youtu.be/5pFX2P7JLwA?list=PLuKg-WhduhkksJoqkj9aJEnN7v0mx8yxC
 

you2

Diamond Member
Apr 2, 2002
5,668
912
126
My understanding is google does not read through corporate (paid) mail boxes. They do read through the free boxes for generating ads.
 

Staples

Diamond Member
Oct 28, 2001
4,952
119
106
Pretty good if you need a custom domain. I think anyone who is anyone uses gmail now but I have always used hotmail and I think it is definitely comparable in features and reliability.

As for getting rid of ads, ad blockers will work but you still have the ad window on the right side of the screen, it just has no ad. Fine if you have anything higher than 800x600 monitor.

This sure beats the very very crappy email clients you get in cpanel.
 
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Samus

Golden Member
Jan 12, 2001
1,407
7
81
I wanted to chime in on a issue I've had with outlook premium. Two issues, in fact, but one quite severe.

In essence, this is a consumer version of hosted exchange via Exchange Online P1 ($4/mo) which is slowly being superceeded by Office 365 Small Business Essentials ($6/mo) to include 1TB of OneDrive as Microsoft tries to push that product into their ecosystem presumably to offload large attachments from Exchange.

Anyway, that said, Outlook.com premium is a great alternative for a SINGLE user, whether they desire their own domain or not, because it effectively gives them Outlook.com/Hotmail/MSN Exchange access like everyone else gets for free, but with 50GB or email, no ad's, and a mildly neutered Office365 corporate mail interface (outlook web access, some admin controls, etc.)

It does not give you powershell access (so no way to increase attachment limits to 150MB like on other hosted exchange plans) and it does not give you a true admin control panel. Everything is dumbed down.

The issue I want to bring up is CPU time. Without powershell access I can't check to see what actual processing power there is, but it is bad, and actually seems to get worse over time indicating throttling or allotted CPU cycles per week/month.

Where this becomes a problem is during an initial seed of your email. If you are moving from POP mail and have a decent sized PST file, say 10-20GB, it will seed at about 5 messages per minute or 50kb per minute. The initial seed moves fast and falls off after 1GB, indicating a grace period for burst uploading, but they clearly don't want people using this to seed a large email database. Which is unfortunate because it seems the natural candidate for this service would be someone switching over from some crap email service like Comcast or Yahoo who have built a large POP-based PST over the years and want hosted email.

Also unfortunately missing from Outlook.com Premium opposed to all other hosted exchange services like P1 all the way through E5, and all Office365 plans, is the ability to migrate from a variety of services within the admin control panel because the traditional admin interface is missing. The traditional hosted exchange admin control panel offered with every other hosted exchange plan I've ever seen from Microsoft has a migration tab that allows you to select gmail (where the interface logs into gmail, makes it a trusted app, and can migrate email, calendar and contacts automatically) and a variety of other services such as Yahoo, Hotmail/Outlook (if migrating from one outlook.com account to a new one!) and most importantly, a PST file! I can't tell you what an oversight it is they left this out. Making migration easy should have been the PRIMARY GOAL of Outlook.com Premium, but instead they didn't even include a way to do it, encouraging people to half ass it with a forwarding system from their old email address(s) and/or seed their OST via migrated PST.

Outlook.com Premium demonstrates how clueless Microsoft is with the consumer cloud computing segment. They are kinds in the corporate and enterprise sector, but for a mild discount, Outlook.com just isn't worth it even for $20 a year. For $48 a year, you get a real hosted exchange account with a real admin control panel and no neutering. The fact that migrating will be easier and faster will inevitably make it CHEAPER if you are paying someone to help you set it up. If you need a custom domain, go daddy sells them for $10 a year and is a Microsoft partner so you can actually purchase it directly through the Office365 or hosted exchange setup process.

Do not buy outlook.com Premium. There is a lot of little issues I left out because I could write a book on what a poor product it is but I'll leave you with one more:if you are using outlook 2007 or 2010, opposed to 2013 or 2016, any mail you send from Outlook 2007/2010 will not send from your custom domain even if selected from the "From" account. It will always default back to the initial Outlook.com address. iPhone and android don't have this issue, nor does the outlook web interface. The problem stems from Outlook 2007/2010 missing the address translation layer that Exchange 2016 uses and Microsoft has no plans to add it to Outlook 2007/2010 as they are legacy products no longer supported. Therefore Outlook 2007/2010 cannot take advantage of the secondary domain(s) linked to an email address on an Exchange 2016 server. This issue does NOT exist on a hosted exchange account using P1 up through E5 or any Office365 product because they give you an admin control panel allowing you to eliminate the onmicrosoft.com domain, hence making your custom domain the only domain, and therefore the primary domain. Setting the "reply to" domain account under Outlook.com Premium doesn't do the same thing, because Outlook.com will always be the primary domain to Outlook 2007/2010.

A real problem for legacy users who prefer Outlook's older interface predating "Metro UI"

But as I said, I could go on. Just too many problems with Outlook.com Premium and migration is at the forefront of them.
 

Sonikku

Lifer
Jun 23, 2005
15,749
4,558
136
Thanks for the heads up.

I think I miss Hotmail. Its brilliance was in the simplicity.
 

DaveSimmons

Elite Member
Aug 12, 2001
40,730
670
126
How is Outlook.com's spam filtering?

I'm trying to choose between them at $20 or perhaps Gmail or Amazon at $48 for one mailbox with my own domain.
 

Samus

Golden Member
Jan 12, 2001
1,407
7
81
How is Outlook.com's spam filtering?

I'm trying to choose between them at $20 or perhaps Gmail or Amazon at $48 for one mailbox with my own domain.

That's a complicated answer. Microsoft has one of the best spam filtering engines, thanks to their purchase of Frontbridge over a decade ago and their associated algorithms, which I think are more robust at adapting to spam threats than Postini's (who google purchased to create gmail's spam filtering algorithms.)

But Google's also seem more lax by default, which by definition is good. I would always accept more spam over losing a potentially important email, and by more spam, I mean negligible.

For that reason alone I always dial down exchanges junk filter to low.

The main advantage of Microsoft products is Exchange and the inherited activesync platform. It's just better and more capable that gmail's push mail, especially when moving beyond mail/calendar/contacts, and for users using Outlook desktop (which only accesses gmail and pretty much any other non-activesync service with POP (yuck) or IMAP (double yuck)

The real insult is google charging $50 a year for gmail business, when Microsoft charges $48 a year for exchange P1.

As for integrated products, OneDrive is finally "better" than google drive, but I still prefer google calendar and contacts (which use caldav and carddav for syncing, on par with activesync functionality) and obviously google maps and google search are the best in their class.

Nobody is perfect, but Microsoft and Google are more perfect than everyone else.
 
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Homerboy

Lifer
Mar 1, 2000
30,856
4,973
126
Wife has a small business and we have the domain for it. Want to ditch the actual website that is hosted (it's useless and never used/updated -- facebook page/Etsy good enough)
I assume this deal would work for that? I can use her already existing domain name?
 

Samus

Golden Member
Jan 12, 2001
1,407
7
81
Yes, you can use an existing domain. The real benefit of this deal is Microsoft registers one for free for you in the $20/year price, integrating the MX and record management. I don't think any of that is going to roll into a domain you already own, but what does it cost you $10/year to keep it registered? Not a big deal.

I would still consider Office 365 business essentials for $5/month over this, though. That includes full enterprise admin control panel, full priority hosting, 1TB Onedrive and a share point team site, skype for business with 60 minutes a month, and so on. If on a budget and just need good email, enterprise exchange E1 is where it's at.

I'm just not sold on Outlook.com Premium over the business-focused exchange offerings, even if it's half the price.
 

Conroe

Senior member
Mar 12, 2006
324
32
91
I think they are messing up outlook.com to get people to switch to this. I hate the new add that looks just like a email and the new focused and other inbox's.
 

Staples

Diamond Member
Oct 28, 2001
4,952
119
106
I don't think focused inbox is new. Either they have just reintroduced it or it was in Windows mail and only now made it to outlook.com.
Either way, I turn it off.