So I got really excited earlier today when one of my assistants pointed me at something: ad-free outlook.com. For various reasons, it looked really lucrative and in fact I went ahead and signed up. I want to quickly show you what itâs about and why ultimately Iâm still a little disappointed but thereâs hope, I guess.
Iâve got a question outstanding to Microsoft to see if we canât clear something up. Letâs have a look at the sales page for it. So the page talks about ad-free outlook.com, what you get for basically $20/year. The thing, the most obvious thing from its name of course is that you get no ads. The ad panel thatâs normally to the right of the screen as youâre looking at email in your account is just gone.
Itâs actually kinda cool. The other thing, one of the other things that you get is what they call âno account expirationâ; so that means that as long as you keep paying your $20/year, even if you donât log in to the account, the account wonât be deleted.
Thereâs also some talk about some additional space Iâve seen in a couple of different places but outlook.com is already very bad about showing you exactly how much space youâre using so itâs one of those things where that one doesnât really excite me that much anyway.
And to be honest, you know, logging into your account, if youâre paying to keep it up, you should be logging into it periodically anyway. Every three months, every couple of months, whatever it is, you really ought to be logging into the account but thatâs none of what got me excited and to be fair, for may people, that $20/year to get rid of the ads in their outlook.com experience, that might make it worth it right there.
The thing got me excited, though, was this little thing down at the bottom that talks about technical support. âIf you have a problem with your account, weâll be there to help with technical support at no additional charge.â Fantastic, I thought! This is one of those scenarios where outlook.comâs technical support, like all free email accounts is slim to non-existent depending on exactly which route you are going on.
And there are definitely continued instances of people getting say, locked out of their account especially when traveling and it seemed like a great opportunity to have maybe something more direct. So, I went in and signed up. My actual Hotmail account, the one that Iâve had, gosh, probably close to 20 years now, is now an ad-free outlook.com account!
Like I said, itâs kind of cool. Thereâs no ads but I went looking for the technical support. And hereâs the problem. The instructions that appear after I signed up for ad-free outlook.com said for technical support go to support.live.com and then look for essentially the Hotmail plus link. So there are two problems with those instructions.
One is support.live.com doesnât really exist anymore. It does redirect to a support option for Microsoft but itâs not live.com anymore and the other, of course, is that ad-free outlook.com used to be called Hotmail plus but it hasnât been for quite some time.
The real problem is that on the resulting page, support.live.com, there is no place to click on that says that anything about Hotmail plus or outlook.com â ad free or anything else that would indicate that thereâs an option that I should now have access to by virtue of having paid my $20.
So I give this to you for a couple of different reasons:Â one is if youâre really interested in not having advertisements in your outlook.com experience. If itâs worth $20/year. to you, great. Thatâs a great way to get rid of it, free up some screen real estate and not have to deal with the advertisements.
Personally, ads donât bother me that much. Iâm kind of used to them; Iâm kind of âad blindâ in many ways but like I said, a lot of people feel strongly about it and if they feel strongly enough, maybe itâs worth $20.
Like I said earlier, the âno account expirationâ â you know thatâs neither here nor there. Like I said, I donât think itâs something you really should be relying on. I honestly believe that the right thing to do is to log into the account every so often and keep it active that way but this is another benefit.
If youâre looking for technical support, if youâre looking for some kind of âleg upâ on technical support, I gotta say that this is really misleading right now and from what I can tell this option really doesnât exist.
What Iâve done is I have submitted a request in the Microsoft Support Forums, itâs the community forum, where occasionally, Outlook or Microsoft representatives will respond to things with the hopes that there will be a response, that somebody will tell me whatâs up with this.
Maybe Iâm looking in the wrong place, maybe Iâm overlooking something, it could happen. So, maybe Iâll get a response. If I do, I will absolutely update you in the notes below this article on askleo.com. But, one of the other reasons I wanted to give you this example or show you about this, besides you know, warning you off if youâre really looking for technical support. So far it looks like your $20 isnât going to get it. [Update: it apparently gets you something. See the notes below.]
This is an example of what Iâll call, I donât know, evolution of a software service. The problem here, I think, is that Hotmail, Microsoftâs email system is very old. Itâs been around, well, probably for over 20 years now. And of course Microsoft has been changing and improving the service over the years. Theyâve also renamed it a few times. It was Hotmail and then it was MSN Hotmail, then it was Windows Live Hotmail and now, of course itâs Outlook.com.
Unfortunately, along the way, they havenât really cleaned up all the remnants and they havenât really updated everything that really should be updated. As you can see, the fact that they are talking about support may or may not still be part of what you are getting for your $20. Hopefully weâll find out. Regardless, I mean if it is part of what we should be getting then they shouldnât be directing you to support.live.com and they certainly shouldnât be calling it Hotmail plus anymore. That product is long gone.
This happens. This kind of stuff happens all the time and it actually requires a certain amount of flexibility on our part as consumers to understand that something as old and as changing over time as Hotmail has been, itâs going to have these kind of warts. And warts they are; they are definitely problems that need to be corrected but they havenât been corrected yet.
Who knows when or if they will be? Itâs something to be aware of; something if you can, keep an open mind about as you navigate various online services including those that have been around for a while. Like I said, I will update you to any response I get on the forum post.
In fact, hereâs a link to the forum post [now goes to the update below] so I think you should be able to see it yourself to see if I get a response directly. Otherwise, what Iâm really interested in from you is it worth $20? Is it worth $20 to get rid of the ads but more importantly, letâs assume for a minute that the technical support option really does exist â that Iâm supposed to be getting some kind of increased level of technical support for the $20/monthyear. that Iâm paying.
Is it worth it to you? Is it something that you would potentially pay the money for in order to get that higher level of support? I know that itâs going to be an option for some especially if youâre backed into a corner and youâve got a problem you may consider paying the $20 to be nothing if it will get you a faster or more reliable answer to your question.
But Iâm really interested in how many people would be willing to go down that path. So, let me know. As always, hereâs the link to this article on askleo.com. Thatâs where youâll find not only this video but the transcript to this video, updates as I promised and of course your comments that I read all of them, moderated of course so we donât have to deal with the usual riff-raff out on YouTube and hopefully weâll get an answer and weâll find out.
But like I said, Iâm really curious as to how valuable you find or you might find something like this.
So, until next time, Iâm Leo Notenboom for askleo.com. As always, remember stay safe, have fun and donât forget to back up. Take care.
Add Free is worth it ,, been meaning to sign up but just lazy or Busy mostly ,, I really donât like Advertisement or News Clips about stuff Iâm not interested in filling up the âright side of MY brainâ ,, As for the support, Welllll ,, maybe MS will give in, and they are just âramping upâ website still under construction or creating the human resources for that at this time !! It would be nice to see
Hi Leo,
I canât see much benefit to me in paying $20 a year for ad free email. I just download my email to Outlook on my computer. If I didnât have Outlook, I would download my email to another email client.
Maybe the support might be worth it if I ever had a problem, but in all the years I have had a hotmail/outlook account I have never had a problem, and apparently the support is non-existent for now, so I will definitely pass on this.
Martha
Not only that, downloading your email gives you an opportunity to keep your email backed up.
I simply automatically forward messages from Outlook.com to Gmail, with Gmail then serving as the backup.
If you saw all the questions we get on Hotmail problems, you might reconsider the value of having support available. For me, itâs not so much a question of losing my emails. I have them backed up in several places, but if I somehow get locked out or hacked, Iâd like to still keep the account. Iâve been paying medical insurance for years and have never been sick enough to use it yet, but I still consider it a necessity.
Certainly not worth spending money on âOutlookâ. It is too complicated and unreliable.
Outlook is likely overkill for home users, but for businesses users itâs absolutely the best option. In fact, nothing else comes close.
AdBlockPlus works for me.
Is there an ISP that doesnât give at least one, if not more, free email accounts?
Why not use the free client mail included in your OS, from XP, thru 10?
Configure it and not bother with another one of Microsoftâs obscure âservicesâ?
And since you are paying your ISP for monthly Internet Service, they will help you with your configuration.
A serious problem with ISP supplied email addresses is that when you switch ISPs, youâll lose your email account in most cases. That was the big selling point for free email services. They advertised themselves as email addresses for life. I still have my original Yahoo and Hotmail accounts I opened almost 20 years ago and my more recent GMail account from over 10 years ago. Iâve switched ISPs several times in that period, but I still have those email accounts.
The problem with ISP-based email accounts is that your email address is on that ISPâs domain (somethingorother âatâ comcast.net for example). If you ever move and need to switch ISPs, you lose your email address.
Because âOutlook Expressâ was dropped a long time ago. If you want âofficialâ Microsoft email, you either use the mail.live.com *OUTLOOK.COMâ webmail, get the actual Ourlook app/program or use the Mail app in 10. Otherwise there is no real mail program in Windows itself from 7 to 8.1
Outlook Express was ancient and like driving a NASCAR racer with loose lug nuts in this day and age.
Although I still have a âHotmailâ account (and a Yahoo.com account) Iâm currently very happy using Google Chrome and running âAdblockerâ whilst surfing.
Like many people, Iâm very jaundiced with regard to Microsoftâs offerings â Iâve yet to dare to upgrade anything to Windows 10 as those who have, appear to lose their âOfficeâ facilities and have to purchase again.
Iâm wondering if the disc version of Office 2003 I possess will run in Windows 10.
It seems to me that all Microsoft are interested in is picking your pocket â againâŠand again.
âIt seems to me that all Microsoft are interested in is picking your pocket â againâŠand again.â â Comments such as this always strike me as a little peculiar. Office likely cost you between $100 and $500 depending on the version you bought â and that equates to between $0.20 and $1.00 per week over the 10-or-so years that it was supported. To my mind, thatâs really not bad value â especially as itâs something that you probably use pretty much every day. Iâd actually be quite pleased if all my tech purchases were to last a decade or more.
Hi Leo,
I have the Microsoft Hotmail account almost as long as you may be 17 -18 years, now itâs called Live mail but I
donât recall having Ads on it ever , not that Iâm complaining ..
The only problem I had with the account is that somebody in Europe had the same e-mail address and I had some Notification
coming from Microsoft that I new did not belong to me, and it messed up my Skype account , so I had to close it.
So I donât see any benefit to sign up for this new ad-free Outlook especially until they straighten out all the mess.
Rarely any issues with Hotmail/Live/Outlook.com
Iâve had the same address for some 18 years, maybe more, and have my account as secured as the free one can be.
I might consider $20 a year just to better retain âownershipâ.
I also have both a Yahoo account (filled with endless spam), and a Gmail that I use more professionally.
Outlook.com works by far the best with clients in iOS or in Windows (Office/Outlook 2013). Outlook still have serious issues with syncing IMAP folders with Gmail. Even after restoring the profile several times. Known Outlook issue⊠:-(
But with e-mail accounts (secure/safe ones) really a necessity these days essentially to just live, a $20 annual fee to better retain access and ownership is peanuts.
Well, ever since Outlook.com started I have tried several times to pay for the ad free upgrade, but without fail every time it simply tells me it âcannot log me on that this timeâ, and I can go no further. I like the service as it stands at present, especially now that they have brought the calendar function up to speed, but alas, some time ago, exasperated with my inability to pay MS for what I wanted I made the decision to go the Google way. Now I use Google Drove, Google Docs, and Gmail and calendar. I invested in a Chromebook to supplement my Windows desktop, and MS donât give a hoot about their Outlook.com service since I was never able to even pay them for the ad free version.
For the record I am a computer hobbiest and user for over 20 years, and my main machine is a bog standard Windows desktop PC running Windows 8.1 Pro. I live in New Zealand and have an excellent VDSL connection.
Regards, Peter
I just completed by first year of âAd Free Outlookâ but did not renew. I donât really care for the ads, but I am good at ignoring them.
There arenât so many ads as there are links to the MSN featured videos and page, which sometimes is informative but usually a rehash of old news you already saw and ânews-buzzâ. My only problem with that is that sometime it holds the rest up from getting going..
As for ad blockers, they only made loading some of my favorite forums sites much slower and I really didnât care about the benefits on anything but Yahoo! On principle I would rather let THEM fix it as Iâm usually certain itâs them and not me.
I donât care much for web-based e-mail readers, period. The interfaces of desktop e-mail clients are far cleaner.
I prefer to maintain tight control over my 2 relevant email accounts, so I manage them via an email client on my work PC and home PC, with home configured to delete them from the IMAP server automatically once downloaded. Personal email runs through my own domain, so I have control of it. Both Work & Personal accounts permit accessing via webpage if necessary also. Work email is only germane so long as Iâm working. In a couple of years, things get a LOT simpler!
I donât see gmail asking for money, and that gmail account has never been blocked. Iâve had plenty of problems with the Microsoft hotmail account though. And seen other people get into trouble with them. Maybe itâs because everybody and their uncle has such an account, and the burden on Microsoft is unbelievable. I get that. And they probably donât have the revenue stream enjoyed by Google (and their Android platform) to pay for such infrastucture. Okay.
There is one problem I saw a friend of mine go through, and itâs because of Microsoftâs way of imposing the use of a Microsoft Account on users of Windows 8 or 10 as a login account. She found out it can backfire in a bad way. My friend had a âusername@live.caâ account, sheâd been using that for years, then woke up one morning and found out that Microsoft had upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10 essentially behind her back (so to speak). Windows 10 didnât ask for any info, it simply picked one of her Microsoft email accounts (and not the one she would have used) and used it as an identifier for logging in to Windows. However, she recently got told that âlive.caâ was going away. Problem is, she was away for a while and when she had time to deal with it, it kinda blew up in her face as she could not log in to her laptop, everything locked up pretty solid. I find that I donât see this sort of behavior with the other two platforms I mentionned. Maybe Microsoft needs a bit more experience dealing with human customers to understand how to make this work smoothly. I donât know. But to stay safe on my PC, Iâve created local admin accounts for myself and my wife, so if the Microsoft Account goes south, I can still get into my laptop. And personnally, as part of the user experience for Windows 10, getting blocked from using your computer because your email got deprecated or blocked simply is bad. For most folks, catastrophic even. And since the problem got created by Microsoftâs way of doing things, it would be ethical that they fix it at no cost. Thatâs just my opinion.
I think another advantage of âADD FREEâ Outlook is this ,, I notice the âMemory Usageâ on my ACER ES 14 with Intel Celeron Quad Core Processor, is quite High when looking at my E-Mail and those adds are running ,, I always âClose the Hotmailâ before I open another window ,, Like F/B and start scrolling and clicking ,, I think my Note Book would get a âHangâ or unresponsive program alert from Google ,, âAww Snapâ,, I dont know what the i3 or i5 processor will do !!
Thatâs the reason why I cancelled my Yahoo plus mail account. I was paying 19.00$/year and there is no technical support. Another way to put it, I am more interested in having the technical support side of the deal than the add-free side. Bottom line, there is no way I know of to contact Yahoo and it is very aggravating. Needless to say that the same thing goes to outlook.com.
Guys,
Whether you have an ISP, Google, or Hotmail email.
In Outlook email client you can create an archive to have your email back up. So letâs say you are using your ISP email now if when you switch to another ISP you still have your emails from your previous ISP.
I hope I made sense, just trying to help as well.
To be clear, archiving does NOT create a backup. Thatâs not its purpose. Outlook keeps all mails anyway and, whether youâve archived them or not, theyâll still there after you switch ISP. So, why bother archiving? Well, as you accumulate more and more email, your Outlook Data File gets bigger and bigger â and as that file keeps on getting bigger and bigger, Outlook needs to use more and more of your computerâs resources in order to load it. What archiving does is move emails from the main Outlook Data File â the one thatâs automatically load when you start Outlook â to a different Outlook Data File that isnât automatically loaded. In other words, archiving is simply a way to stop Outlook slowing down.
I thought having Office 365 wouldnât require having to purchase the ad free option, but it looks like outlook.com still has ads. Maybe itâs because I have the student version of Office 365; however, it doesnât really matter. I just configured Outlook itself for that account. I donât need to purchase it anyway, because I have POP3 access. I had a bunch of e-mail that I havenât checked in a year and more. Oh, well.
I donât know if people before mentioned anything about having Office 365, so I thought I would give my two cents. Of course, I didnât read all the comments.
Office365 and Outlook.com are unrelated to one another.
âI thought having Office 365 wouldnât require having to purchase the ad free option.â You bought the Office apps; the email service â Outlook.com â was not part of the purchase.
Iâm in the UK, how come everytime I try to upgrade to adfree it takes me to the usa site and therefore, I cannot make payment. can you share a link for the UK payment for upgrading to adfree? thanks.
I was talking about upgrading to adfree outlook.
Hi. is it possible to get Microsoft support to check If you have been hacked in the past? like, If they find strange ip adress. If they just can say If it was hacked. I donât want ip adress list. I just want to know If I have been hacked 3 years ago. it is imortant.
Perhaps if you get a lawyer to force them to, AND if they even happen to still have that information.
Leo how can I remove from outlook the pop-up âad-free outlookâ Itâs take space same as 365 ad
Elizabeth
Iâm assuming you are talking about Outlook.comâs advertisement to encourage you to upgrade to the âAd-free outlook.â The only way to remove it is to upgrade. In other words, to buy one of their subscription products.
That ad is the cost of âfreeâ. Bugging you into paying to get rid of the ad is the reason for that ad.
I have an ad blocker but Outlook keeps using up space telling me I can save space by signing up for Ad free Outlook. No way â what nerve they have using up space to ADVERTISE their product that will save me space.
If it isnât that ad, youâd get another ad. Thatâs the price of free.
Nerve? I call it the âcostâ of free email.
i donât want upgrade anything just want the dam ad be removed, it is taken a lot space on my screen,I use HOT MAIL LIVE
i contact support with no avail, I donât know how to remove it, I am an very old person , with same difficult in that area, and poor vision
Itâs the ads which pay for the âfreeâ email account. Microsoft is simply giving you the option to pay for the account yourself instead of receiving the ads. There is something to the old saying âThereâs no such thing as a free lunchâ.