Microsoft Tests Ad-Free Outlook.com Premium At £2.81

Microsoft is reportedly looking to charge users $3.99 (£2.81) a month for a premium Outlook.com service that provides users with up to five personalised email addresses, removes adverts and offers enhanced calendar sharing.

Outlook.com premium was first documented earlier this year, but a leaked landing page detailing the planned monthly fee is the first details of a potential price point.

It is possible that the fee could change during and after testing as Microsoft experiments, while the service could be offered for free as part of an Office 365 subscription.

Office.com premium

Microsoft already offers an advert-free version of Outlook.com, which costs £14.99 a month and also provides 10GB of storage and an exemption from any account expiration policies. It is unclear whether Outlook.com premium would replace or run parallel with this option.

TechWeekEurope has contacted Microsoft but had not received a response at the time of publication, but a premium version of Outlook.com would represent a new way for the company to monetise its popular webmail service, which completed its rebrand from Hotmail in 2013.

An upgraded version of Outlook.com might appeal to those who like using it for their personal email, but don’t want to have the associated ‘hotmail.com’ or ‘outlook.com’ domain.

Microsoft has added a number of features to Outlook.com in recent years, such as Skype integration, in a bid to attract and retain users amid fierce competition from Gmail and other webmail providers.

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