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What is the difference between Office Live Premium Email and Hotmail Plus?

Last post 09-19-2008 12:32 PM by Anonymous. 6 replies.
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08-10-2008 11:52 PM
What is the difference between Office Live Premium Email and Hotmail Plus?

There is something I could really use clarification on that I cannot find information anywhere concerning, even after talking with Office Live Technical Support, and it seems it should be a fairly simple, straight forward question to answer. I’d appreciate if someone, possibly even from the Office Live development team, would please reply?

My question is; “What is the difference between Office Live Premium Email and Hotmail Plus, or is it the same thing purchased through different avenues?”

It is confusing because there is nothing documented (that I could find) concerning the difference between the two optional upgrades and even the benefits and costs seem to be much the same. But, through a trial and error and costly experience, I found out later there is a definite difference. So in my confusion, I also requested to the Office Live Tech Support that more information be posted stating the clear details of what you get in Office Live Premium email and a comparison with Hotmail Plus, (SR# 1075615140).  In addition I have taken the time to write the following blog entry: What’s the difference between “Premium Email” and “Hotmail Plus”?, describing my confusion over the two offerings and my experience, including screen shots, and of discovering at least one of the differences as it concerns Windows Live Spaces.

Although neither one describes details I have found to be true, and this is only given after you sign up, I discovered the most documentation anywhere, in my accounts records and it reads as follows.

Microsoft Office Live Small Business - advertising free email add-on

 

“You have signed up for Premium E-mail from Microsoft Office Live Small Business. With Premium E-mail, your e-mail environment is advertisement free and you also get an additional 10 GB of e-mail storage. Premium E-mail won’t expire due to inactivity while your Office Live Small Business account is still active. The cost of this service is $19.95 (plus applicable taxes) per year. You will see a charge of $19.95 (plus taxes) at the start of your next regular credit card billing cycle. You can cancel this service at any time by signing in to your account and clicking ‘Add/Manage Services’ in the left navigation bar. Office Live Small Business is unable to offer pro-rated refunds upon cancellation.”

 

Windows Live Hotmail Plus

 

“The Windows Live Hotmail Plus yearly subscription of $19.95 plus tax includes 10 Gigabytes of total Windows Live Hotmail account space, the ability to send larger attachments, and exemption from the account expiration policy. No third party advertising. Just feature tips and product info from Microsoft. Refund only available if cancelled within one month from purchase and automatically renews yearly unless cancelled. You will receive a renewal letter 30 days prior to the renewal date.

 

Furthermore, to make it even more confusing, while talking with tech support they inform me of the many benefits of getting Office Live Premium Email (although there is nothing documented); such as the ability to transfer emails outside of the hotmail account. But when I asked where this was written, they told me when you choose that option it will tell you need to upgrade.  I assured them that I was using the transfer without an upgrade way back during Office Live 1.0.

 

So, my questions are; where can someone find the details, and what are the true differences between these two products? And, is there somewhere this is discussed in more detail so we can make better, more educated decisions as to what upgrade to use?

 

08-11-2008 12:43 AM In reply to
royster Joined on 02-12-2008 Posts 1,478
Re: What is the difference between Office Live Premium Email and Hotmail Plus?

Treebreeze,

That's an excellent question. I have asked Filiberto, the community manager about this, about 3 weeks ago, and still have not received any response from him.

If you have gone through the old threads, there was one where a member purchased Premium email and said that it was the same as Hotmail Plus. But soon afterwards, there was another thread saying that Premium email did not include POP access. So, yes, no one really knows and cannot give you a straight answer about this very simple question, and a very good revenue generator for Windows Live/Office Live. 

Royster 

08-12-2008 4:04 PM In reply to
izlude Joined on 08-12-2008 Posts 7
Re: What is the difference between Office Live Premium Email and Hotmail Plus?

 

 

 the features that Office Live offer with the premium email would be the ability to forward to non msn based accounts (example: yahoo.com aol.com)

ad free emails (no ads at the bottom of emails that are being sent)

and the ability to keep a copy of the forwarded mail in the original inbox.

Unfortunately also since hotmail plus is not one of the office live products, we really don't know much about the product.

 Unfortunately even us at office live have not been provided much detail, and a lot of the how-to's and help features have not been finished. We have not been provided an e.t.a on when this will be done. However, now that brian has brought this to my attention, i will make a point of bringing this information to the attention of the people that can do something about this

as always it's a pleasure brian

 

- Reid

Microsoft Office Live Customer Support Representative

p.s. we actually don't provide pop access with any of our accounts. all of it runs via http for the office live services.

HOWEVER. if hotmail email services offer pop settings, you can try to use those settings. as to whether or not it works, I wouldn't know for sure. in theory it should.

08-12-2008 8:30 PM In reply to
royster Joined on 02-12-2008 Posts 1,478
Re: What is the difference between Office Live Premium Email and Hotmail Plus?

Reid,

Could you find someone at Microsoft to tell you whether there is POP access with Premium email or not? Someone must have done the configuration for this on your servers, so someone at Microsoft must know whether it is enabled or not!If customers are going to pay $19.95 a year for Premium email, I think they deserve to get a definitive answer to this question before making a purchasing decision.

Royster

09-03-2008 1:25 PM In reply to
Fergus Joined on 06-14-2008 London Posts 153
Re: What is the difference between Office Live Premium Email and Hotmail Plus?

Did anyone get an answer to this? Can I upgrade and get POP access?

Many thanks,

Fergus

09-03-2008 6:44 PM In reply to
RxDave Joined on 02-07-2008 Western Washington State, USA Posts 1,367
Re: What is the difference between Office Live Premium Email and Hotmail Plus?

Fergus, check Treebreeze's blog (http://treebreeze.spaces.live.com).  It's the August 10 posting.  He seems to have it figured out the best of any of us.  Basically, it seems, even Microsoft doesn't know the exact answer.


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09-19-2008 12:32 PM In reply to
Re: What is the difference between Office Live Premium Email and Hotmail Plus?

My apologies Fergus that I have not found the time to get back to you concerning this until now ,and you probably have found this out already but in case you haven't, about two or three weeks ago POP access has begun to be offered to those paying for the Premium email upgrade that Office Live offers.  To answer your more general question, no one has truly addressed the original question that this thread asked but at least I can report that your question about pop access does in fact exist now.  So call 1-866-591-5483 and ask for the premium email upgrade and then ask for the details concerning pop access. If they seem to know nothing about it, you may need to speak to a supervisor :).

Thanks Reid for chiming in on this thread and also to you Dave for the kind response, but really I still do not know much about this and am stilling asking others at Microsoft to help us understand the difference, maybe sometime soon we will all get a more direct answer.

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