Loyal Hotmail and Outlook users face stark choice: pay up or Microsoft will delete your email

Recent reports suggest Microsoft could wallop long-term Outlook and Hotmail users with a bill to maintain their old emails or force them to delete their old messages.

Outlook and Hotmail users have received notice that they need to clear out emails or any old conversations, unless they’re willing to fork out for a premium subscription to increase storage and still be able to send and receive emails.

It’s an unforgiving ultimatum: many will now have to rifle through vast troves of emails, otherwise cough-up for a Microsoft 365 package. If you do sign-up, you will have cross-platform access to apps like Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, and Excel, with a 50GB email limit to boot. However, the sting of having to pay for a previously free service may be enough to make some users hop over to other emailing platforms. 

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For a long while, Microsoft used Hotmail addresses. This was the case until around 2013 before the tech giant made the shift to the Outlook suite. No repercussions came from the switch then; now, Microsoft is reportedly imposing a 15GB limit on its inbox, unless you want to shell out $69.99 / £59.99 / AU$99 for a Microsoft 365 subscription to increase capacity. 

Clearly, this has left loyal many Outlook and Hotmail customers disgruntled; one user, Jamzz, tweeted their discontent, complaining of a lack of regard for its users’ conversations. With reports of no prior warning before the announcement, freely allowing users to carry on filling up their inboxes, before issuing the stark notice.

It'll frustrate users who had seen Microsoft making leaps and bounds in user-awareness in some of its other products, including the integration of an essential tool that enabled users to more easily search for tabs in Microsoft Teams.

T3’s pick of the best laptops is a good place to bed in Microsoft 365 if you decide to join up; its subscription offers more advanced email security features: end-to-end encryption for communications, and a more user-friendly interface that is ad-free. And while social media is awash with critics of the new fee, it's likely that it'll be another sum that users have to swallow, simply to avoid the hassle of scouring through thousands of emails. 

Source: TechRadar