What is the difference between MSN, Hotmail, Outlook and Windows Live Mail?

What are the MSN, Hotmail, Outlook and Windows Live Mail?

MSN (acronym of The Microsoft Network) is a web portal and related collection of Internet services. It is apps for Windows and mobile devices, provided by Microsoft.

Hotmail was a free online e-mail service started by Jack Smith and Sabeer Bhatia in 1995 that was later acquired by Microsoft in December of 1997. It allowed users to read and send e-mail wherever there is Internet access.

Outlook is a program bundled with Microsoft Office. Is used to read and manage email, calendars, contacts, etc. on your computer. This is not an email service, it just a program to fetch email for you.

Outlook.com is a website that provides free webmail using your Microsoft Account. Offers email, calendar, and contact functions. This is not a program.

Windows Live Mail is a desktop email program Microsoft introduced to replace Outlook Express. It is part of the Windows Essentials suite, which includes several fine programs: Live Mail, Live Writer, Photo Gallery, MovieMaker and OneDrive. (It used to include Messenger, which was replaced by Skype.)

What is the difference between MSN, Hotmail, Outlook and Windows Live Mail?

Live Mail and Outlook.com is essentially the same thing.  If you log into http://mail.live.com/ or http://www.outlook.com/ using the same Microsoft ID, you should see the same mailbox, but possibly with a different user interface.

Over time, the Outlook.com will continue to improve and Microsoft will eventually want to provide the Outlook user experience to everyone including users with a @hotmail.com address.

You can try Outlook don't need a new account and don't changing your username/password – just use your @hotmail.com account to log into http://outlook.com.

It’s important, no matter when you upgrade, your @hotmail.com address will always work.

All Microsoft mailboxes for addresses ending in @outlook.com, @live.com, @hotmail.com, @msn.com have either been migrated or will soon migrate to the current Outlook.com platform hosted on the Office 365.

Microsoft has announced its email program will stop working with services including Hotmail, Live Mail and MSN Mail.

Microsoft suggests using either it’s free Mail app or Outlook, the email and personal information manager that is part of Microsoft Office. Outlook costs money, but Microsoft is offering Live Mail users a free subscription to Office 365 for one year.

After the first year, you’d be paying £59.99 per year for Office 365 Personal, though this does include full copies of Microsoft Office programs plus a 1TB free online storage. Alternatively, you could buy a standalone copy of Microsoft Office Home and Business 2016 (£164) or Microsoft Office Outlook 2016 instead. These don’t expire.

The Mail app is simpler but less powerful than Windows Live Mail: it has limited options for sorting emails, and it cannot send emails to groups. Outlook is far more powerful than Windows Live Mail and has more advanced features for emails, contacts, calendars and to-do lists. However, you may not need them, or you may already be using a range of apps instead.

Either way, it is a slightly awkward choice: you can upgrade to Outlook or downgrade to Mail, but you can’t stay at the same level.