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Microsoft Launches Outlook.com Premium Email Service, Costs $20 Per Year (thurrott.com)
Outlook.com Premium email service, which Microsoft began testing in October, is now available to all. You get the following features with this paid service, via a report: Outlook.com Premium provides a number of useful features: (1) Custom domain support for five users.
(2) Information sharing: Outlook Premium helps you easily share calendars, contacts, and documents (via OneDrive) between those five users.
(3) Ad-free inbox: Like Ad-Free Outlook.com, Outlook Premium offers no "banner ads" for a "distraction-free view of your email, photos, and documents."
(2) Information sharing: Outlook Premium helps you easily share calendars, contacts, and documents (via OneDrive) between those five users.
(3) Ad-free inbox: Like Ad-Free Outlook.com, Outlook Premium offers no "banner ads" for a "distraction-free view of your email, photos, and documents."
So, when you hear the Ad people talk it's "we add value by presenting opportunities for consumers" and the deep data mining is justified with "we use data to target unique ads that will delight our users"... ... and now we have a payment plan to not have ads. Admitting "yeah, ads suck so much people will pay us not to show them" Not that MS still won't datamine the crap out of you in other contexts though.
I waited for quite a while for this service to become available.
I really wanted the multi-domain support without having to buy a business edition O365 plan which would then come with all the business versions of the apps.
Instead, I found fastmail.com and I haven't looked back. I am super pleased with those guys and I am glad I didn't wait.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
No mention of how much storage space. Doesn't clarify if you have to pay the fee for each mailbox on a custom domain or if that yearly fee gives you all 5 mailboxes. No real information anywhere.
I did read in the comments below the article that if you buy a domain through them, Microsoft owns it and you can not transfer it out.
"(1) Custom domain support for five users.
(2) Information sharing: Outlook Premium helps you easily share calendars, contacts, and documents (via OneDrive) between those five users.
(3) Ad-free inbox: Like Ad-Free Outlook.com, Outlook Premium offers no "banner ads" for a "distraction-free view of your email, photos, and documents."
1) Lol, custom domain support, whoop-de-fuckin'-do. Just get your own domain and have as many users as you want.
2) "Information sharing", Oh yeah, I'll bet there'll be "information sharing", just not the kind you expected. We'll scan all your email for data to mine and sell, and why? Because FUCK YOU, that's why.
3) Ad-free inbox: You mean like when I use an ad-blocker? Because that works pretty well for me.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I'd only be interested if they didn't scan emails for data mining. Scanning for malware would be ok.
... or use an e-mail client (desktop, mobile) instead of their web based mail client? I'm not sure if Outlook supports plain old IMAP and SMTP, though.
Back when I used Gmail for a brief period, that's what I did.
Now I pay for e-mail through a service provider... though I'm working towards putting together an e-mail cluster of my own.
... do you get the right to some privacy, at least?
Seems like a solution using a problem.
No real sysadmin is going to use a $20 a year account just to (maybe) rely on onedrive. You're either rolling your own exchange server or renting email from google or office 365.
TBH, in a small enough operation you can skip even that... a simple Postfix/Dovecot/Spamassassin rig with IMAP enabled will do the job just as quickly, and for far less money (the entire thing can be parked on an old cast-off *nix server with a decent amount of disk space, or on a small AWS instance if that's how your small business rolls.)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Why?
One is an expert at domains while the other is an expert at emails. I've never had trouble with dealing with separate domain and web/email providers. The setup is so simple that someone with little domain knowledge can set it up.
>> thing can be parked on an old cast-off *nix serve
Unless email's just for fun at your business, you'd probably want a little more reliability than that.
>> small AWS instance
By the time you consider that, you're probably >$20/month for <=5 users.
Trust me - the people setting cloud pricing know about alternative solutions, and $250/year for reliable small-business email is essentially market price right now.
Oh shut up. If you don't want it dont pay for it but don't whine like a fucking bitch about it. FFS
Would've been nice to add that little tidbit in the summary.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Outlook as bad as Gmail. Besides privacy issues, outlook always blocks my email. I live in China, use VPN, Outlook und Gmail always block my Thunderbird IMAP access. If you have bad luck with Gmail, it can happen that you never can access your account again. Try calling google. Good luck! Get email in Switzerland (Non EU, Non US jurisdiction) with your own domain here: infomaniak.ch or use gandi.net (Email included)
Mom and pops that know they need/want email that's more robust than something they could do themselves with their lack of technical know how, and don't have a geek to help them out (and not talking about Geek Squid), will probably be interested in something like this. Not everyone is smart enough to roll their own.
I have seen a lot of mobile UIs in my time, but it is the worst. The interface fails to load half the time. The time that it does, it takes multiple taps to get it to do something. Multiselect is an exercise in futility, you'll get about 3 selected, then on the next select, it'll drop the previous ones, meaning you never select more than one reliably.
And they want to charge for it?
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Just like when I use it in Thunderbird.
Seems like a solution using a problem.
No real sysadmin is going to use a $20 a year account just to (maybe) rely on onedrive. You're either rolling your own exchange server or renting email from google or office 365.
It's 1 domain, $20/year, 5 users. It's not for sysadmins at a small company. It's for a family. Or a small time single consultant. Or a tiny non-profit.
Ublock is great. I don't think it addresses calendar sharing, custom domain support, etc.
Or a nerd. I have my own domain because I like having it. There are two addresses on the domain. It's my permanent contact address. I'm grandfathered in on the free Google Apps plan, but if that ever ends, I'd pay MS $20 a year to do my mail hosting for sure.
Exactly what I was thinking. The current Google Apps is more than I'm willing to pay for it, but $20 per year is reasonable. I'm just glad I'm grandfathered.
Ads are something that detracts from the user experience, and we think you'll pay $20/year to be ad-free (at least on Outlook.com).
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
Why not just run your own?...Then you have fine-grained control of everything to make it exactly what your business needs.
Indeed, I find the same to be true with the gasoline I refine myself, or the cotton I grow to form into my own clothing. So much simpler! And I get any octane I like, though people look at me funny when I mention my sweaters are 98 octane.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"... is now available to all." To all? *eye twitch* It's US only! Why would they make this US only?! Why is my non-US money never good enough for them?
Be ad-free by getting back to POP3 and a local email client. The ads are there, because web mail is used. I pull 180+ mailboxes into Outlook on my Windows box and have been doing so without ads just fine for a long time. The domain is mine with email services provided along with its hosting. My iPhone is configured to use a few of these so that I have mail on the go, and I could add more. For those that must have the option of web mail as a client, use IMAP instead so that the mail remains on the server until deleted by a client. Perhaps I am the exception and that today's mainstream user has a real need to check email on many devices, and this is why web mail makes sense.
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