Microsoft’s Outlook.com Premium – What you need to know

A preview of Outlook.com Premium has been made available to anyone living in the U.S. giving you access to affordable custom email addresses, a modern Outlook inbox with plenty of shareable features.

Personalized emails and Domains

Upon registering for Outlook.com Premium, you will be provided an Outlook.com Premium account that can support up to five personalized emails addresses. The service will also allow you to choose a unique domain name for the email addresses.

For the first year, using a domain name created under Outlook.com Premium will be free. Once the first year expires, the domain name will cost you an additional USD10 per year to maintain, on top of the yearly subscription that Outlook.com Premium has.

If you have your own domain, Outlook.com Premium will allow you to use that domain with no additional charges added to your subscription.

Ad-free and Secure Inbox

Outlook.com Premium will give users access to a new, modern inbox that is powered by the new Outlook.com. This means enhanced security, privacy, reliability features, and most importantly, an ad-free inbox.

Content sharing between emails

If you have more than a single active email account on your Outlook.com Premium subscription, you will be able to share calendars, contacts, and documents with all e-mail accounts under the same Outlook.com Premium subscription.

Email addresses across a single domain will have their sharing relationships set up automatically upon sign up. The user can modify sharing relationships if they wish to restrict access to certain content at a later date.

Subscription Pricing

As it is a premium service, Outlook.com Premium comes with it a subscription model. The service goes by a yearly subscription model which costs USD49.99 per year. Those who register to Outlook.com Premium before the 31st of December will be able to get a subscription to the service for just USD19.95 per year. No word was given as to whether or not Outlook.com Premium will be available via a monthly subscription model.

Before you take the plunge and sign up for Outlook.com Premium, do note that the service is still in its preview stages, meaning that missing features and bugs are to be expected.

For example, Outlook.com Premium currently does not have auto-forwarding and group creation features.

Overall, the overall cost of Outlook.com Premium looks rather enticing. Assuming you sign up before the year ends, an Outlook.com Premium account plus a custom domain will cost you roughly USD30 per year. This special price will also apply to every subsequent year after the first. However, once the offer ends, the service plus a custom domain will cost you around USD60 per year.