Microsoft Outlook.com's Premium Service Ditches Preview, Now Available to Users in US

Microsoft started testing its Outlook Premium service, the ad-free premium version of Outlook.com, with a limited number of users earlier last year and then made the service available as a preview for public later. Even though Microsoft has not made any announcement, the service has now ditched its 'preview' tag and become available to all users in the US.

Notably, the company is still offering the same offer price as it did with the preview, i.e. $19.95 (roughly Rs. 1,350) for a year, and a price of $50 (roughly Rs. 3,350) per year after that, as pointed out in a report by Thurrott. For the custom domain, users need to pay $10 (roughly Rs. 670) but custom domain subscriptions are not available on a stand-alone basis; a concurrent Outlook.com Premium subscription is required, the company says on its website.

The offer price will be available till March this year after which users will need to pay regular price of $50 per year. The service has still been kept exclusive to the US customers and company hasn't provided any details if it plans to roll it out to other countries.

Outlook Premium, apart from ad-free inbox, also provides better calendar sharing, among other premium features. Most notably, it brings support for up to five new custom domain accounts, a feature which was removed by the company in 2014 from Outlook.com. The subscription for the premium version will auto-renew annually at "then current prices" and there will be an additional charge for the custom domain, the company has mentioned on its website's FAQ (frequently asked questions) page.

The company has already clarified that the premium version will only support up to five custom domains, and users who are interested in more can instead opt for Office 365 Business Essentials. Further, the custom domains will be cancelled as soon as the users cancel their subscription to Outlook Premium.