Office 365 Should Be a Superset of Outlook.com Premium (Updated)

Office 365 Should Be a Superset of Outlook.com Premium

UPDATE: Microsoft has explained why this page exists. See below. –Paul

A reader forwarded me a Microsoft web page that claims that Office 365 Personal and Home include “everything in Outlook.com Premium.” They don’t. But they should.

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You can view this page now on the Outlook.com website. The three product offerings—Outlook.com Premium, Office 365 Personal, and Office 365 Home are essentially presented as each being supersets of each other. Which, again, they are not.

But it makes sense.

Outlook.com Premium provides an ad-free inbox, personalized email addresses for up to five users, and family-based calendar sharing for $50 per year (though there’s an ongoing promotion that delivers the first year for just $20.)

Office 365 Home, the site claims (incorrectly), provides “everything in Outlook.com Premium and adds “the latest, fully-installed versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook 2016,” and 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage for each user. Like Outlook.com Premium, Office 365 Home supports five users, and it costs $100 per year.

Office 365 Personal, as I’m sure you know, is like Office 365 Home, but for one person only. That makes the claim that it provides “everything in Outlook.com Premium” all the harder to explain, given that Outlook.com Premium supports five users, not one. I guess only one of those users would get access to the Office 365 Personal benefits. Anyway, Office 365 Personal is $70 per year.

So.

Does this page mean that Microsoft is changing Office 365 Personal and Home to include Outlook.com Premium? Or is it just a mistake?

I don’t know. But it is very obvious to me that Outlook.com Premium functionality—the ad-free inbox, at the least—should be included in the price one pays for Office 365. Making these products supersets of each other makes even more sense.

So while I don’t know whether this is real or not, I hope Microsoft makes it happen. This is the right thing to do.

Thanks to Martin G. for the tip.

Update: Microsoft explains

Here’s Microsoft’s explanation for what we’re seeing here.

We continually explore ways to improve our product offerings. As part of this we are running a promotion over the next few weeks designed to help us identify which premium email features to include in Office 365 consumer subscriptions. As part of this promotion, Outlook.com users in English-speaking markets who click the “Upgrade to Premium” button in the bottom left corner of their Outlook.com inboxes are directed to a special version of the web page highlighted in your article. People who purchase Office 365 through that process will indeed get the benefits mentioned. We don’t have anything to announce today, but we are always looking for ways to bring new value to Office 365 Home and Personal subscribers.

So there you go.

 

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Conversation 25 comments

  • helix2301

    Premium Member
    05 September, 2017 - 7:56 am

    <p>So with office 365 personal you can get email with your own domain I don't think so</p>

    • Stokkolm

      05 September, 2017 - 8:23 am

      <blockquote><a href="#171987"><em>In reply to helix2301:</em></a>Well, if this is real then it may mean that you will soon be able to get that with an O365 subscription.</blockquote><p><br></p>

      • Gedisoft

        Premium Member
        11 September, 2017 - 3:01 pm

        <blockquote><a href="#171990"><em>In reply to Stokkolm: </em></a></blockquote><p>It is real ! I know serval people (including me!) who will subscribe to O365 home as soon as you can use your own owned (mail)domain. But it seems, for the moment at least, that using your own domain is reserved for the (small) business O365 subscriptions.</p>

  • Orin

    05 September, 2017 - 7:57 am

    <p>I thought about this last week while using the Outlook.com web app. I'm an Office 365 Home subscriber. I'm not about to pay $20 a year to not see ads in Outlook.com. But since I already pay $100 a year, I would expect the ad-free aspect of Office Premium to be included. Apparently Microsoft's own marketing materials think the same way I do :-)</p>

    • SvenJ

      05 September, 2017 - 9:57 am

      <blockquote><a href="#171988"><em>In reply to Orin:</em></a> There is more to it than just the ad free aspect. That is essentially for 5 people incidentally. If you elect @thesmiths.com you and 4 others can use that domain, and everyone gets the ad free web experience. May not matter to you, but it is a feature. </blockquote><p><br></p>

  • Waethorn

    05 September, 2017 - 8:22 am

    <p>Sue for false advertising.</p>

  • Curtmcgirt

    05 September, 2017 - 8:36 am

    <p>Did I miss the part of the article that explains which part(s) of outlook.com premium are not included in office 365 home? </p>

    • CaedenV

      05 September, 2017 - 8:58 am

      <blockquote><a href="#171991"><em>In reply to Curtmcgirt:</em></a></blockquote><p>I have o365 and when I log into Outlook.com I get the thing saying that I need to sign up for Outlook Premium to make the advert side-bar to go away. Also, no way that I am aware of to add a custom address (though that would be pretty awesome!). So I am assuming those are the missing features… which is pretty much all of Outlook.com premium.</p>

    • Simard57

      05 September, 2017 - 9:02 am

      <blockquote><a href="#171991"><em>In reply to Curtmcgirt:</em></a></blockquote><p>he mentioned ad-free outlook as one "But it is very obvious to me that Outlook.com Premium functionality—the ad-free inbox, at the least—should be included in the price one pays for Office 365.&nbsp;"</p><p><br></p><p>we can also add that Office 365 does not provide personalized email addresses</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      05 September, 2017 - 9:07 am

      <blockquote><a href="#171991"><em>In reply to Curtmcgirt:</em></a></blockquote><p>Currently, none of it is included. Unless something changed.</p>

      • Orin

        05 September, 2017 - 9:12 am

        <blockquote><a href="#172014"><em>In reply to paul-thurrott:</em></a></blockquote><p>My wife and I use our Office 365 Home accounts for calendar sharing. They claim that calendar sharing is part of Premium, but I'm able to use this feature. I think I was able to use it with our basic Outlook.com accounts even before subscribing to Home. So I'm not sure why they highlight calendar sharing as a Premium feature.</p>

        • SvenJ

          05 September, 2017 - 9:52 am

          <blockquote><a href="#172016"><em>In reply to Orin:</em></a> You have always been able to share Outlook.com calendars. Premium creates a unique shared calendar based on your 'vanity' domain, such as theSmiths calendar if you use @thesmiths.com. You can put family share things on that without sharing your entire personal calendar. </blockquote><blockquote>There is also a shared OneDrive folder for thesmiths, but it doesn't work as I would expect. It is a folder in the primary account OneDrive, and shared to everyone else in the family. That does not allow it to be seen in File Explorer which would make it easy for everyone to drop files into. MS needs to figure out how to have that folder appear in every OneDrive.</blockquote><blockquote>I agree though, that Office365 should include Outlook Premium. It might even increase the retention to keep the ad free and vanity domain aspect.</blockquote><p><br></p>

  • gregsedwards

    Premium Member
    05 September, 2017 - 8:44 am

    <p>Outlook.com Premium frankly also needs to give users more control over the custom domain they procured as part of the process. I found out AFTER I used Microsoft to get my preferred domain that there's basically nothing I can do with it except use it as an email alias. Technically, Microsoft owns the domain. If I'd brought my own, then I could've pointed it at my personal site, etc. That would've been nice to know up front. I'm also a little unclear about how to transition to owning the domain myself next year…do I need to let my Outlook.com Premium subscription lapse and then wait some amount of time for Microsoft to give up the domain so I can buy it myself and try again? Do I go ahead and buy another domain, and then switch it out when I renew my subscription? Do I just keep going with it and hope they add more ownership features down the road? </p><p><br></p><p>Microsoft, please don't make it hard for your customers to give you their money.</p>

  • DaddyBrownJr

    05 September, 2017 - 8:50 am

    <p>I have Office 365 Home, and have had ad-free Outlook.com and the custom domain email address for quite some time. I don't understand what you are saying is incorrect here.</p>

  • Simard57

    05 September, 2017 - 9:00 am

    <p>I missed where I get custom domain name for email in Office Home!</p>

  • mattbg

    Premium Member
    05 September, 2017 - 9:30 am

    <p>It'd be great if they did make this happen. I have Office 365 Home but also a single Exchange account for personal domain-based e-mail via Exchange Online (which is part of the Office 365 business line… and seems similar in price to Outlook.com Premium, except that you only get one mailbox and not the four suggested by this ad)</p><p><br></p><p>I have to manage each of these separately because it doesn't seem like you can manage Home and Business products together from one UI from a consumer-oriented Microsoft ID like @outlook.com.</p><p><br></p><p>I also have ad-free Hotmail… which is an older product and a bit redundant but these three things would merge nicely together if they all became a subset of Office 365 Home.</p>

  • drbohner

    05 September, 2017 - 10:23 am

    <p>Maybe, like Cable and ISP(s) – they are just doing the 'this is only for new customers' thing….&nbsp; OH, and I hat that!</p><p><br></p><p>(db)</p>

  • Jerry Murray

    05 September, 2017 - 2:03 pm

    <p>T<img src="">hey appear to have changed the page already as that language is removed in what I see when I click on it from my outlook.com account.</p>

  • Matt Goldman

    05 September, 2017 - 4:28 pm

    <p>I'm a long-time Office 365 Home subscriber, and long-time Outlook.com (standard) user. I've recently registered a new domain and am considering my options for email hosting – hey MS how about you throw me a frickin bone here and give me this particular Outlook.com premium feature seeing as I already have the service you purport it to be included in?</p>

  • prettyconfusd

    05 September, 2017 - 5:08 pm

    <p>They need to do a lot of work on the custom domains to bring it back to the level of Windows Live Domains from circa 2011 at least, but absolutely these features should be part of Office 365. That they haven't just done this already is silly.</p><p><br></p><p>But at least they're "looking into it"… ;)</p>

  • Lauren Glenn

    05 September, 2017 - 6:03 pm

    <p>Well, I guess that explains why I get ads in my Outlook.com email account trying to hook me up with Asians or grow a bigger penis. As a straight woman, I'll pass, thank you Microsoft. $20/yr might be worth avoiding those kinds of emails but I kind of wish Outlook sent me more relevant ads. :)</p>

  • jmeiii75

    Premium Member
    06 September, 2017 - 3:14 pm

    <p>So, nothing for us long-time Office 365 Home Premium subscribers. That's unfortunate.</p>

  • SherlockHolmes

    Premium Member
    08 September, 2017 - 11:28 am

    <p>There is a way how to get Outlook.com outside english speaking countries: Simply subscripe to ad free outlook. Then navigate to premium.outlook.com. Outlook notices you have already an adfree subscription. Fron that on simple follow the order through and you are good to go. </p>

  • Jim Vernon

    Premium Member
    15 September, 2017 - 2:41 pm

    <p>"People who purchase Office 365 through that process will indeed get the benefits mentioned."</p><p><br></p><p>Yeah, not so much. I went ahead and purchased O365 Home through the offer page that I was linked to from a button in my Inbox, and I still have no Outlook Premium features.</p>

  • Luis_Sohal

    24 November, 2017 - 3:10 am

    <p>Call on &amp;&amp;**866).(877).(9859)__++</p><p>#Outlook Support Number</p><p>#Micrsosoft Support Number</p><p>#Outlook Password&nbsp;</p><p>#OutlookSupport&nbsp;</p><p>#HotmailPasswordRecovery</p><p>#OutlookandMicrosoft Support Phone Number</p><p>Call ***866).(877).(9859&gt;&gt;&gt;</p><p>outlooksupport.net</p><p><br></p>

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