[Windows] Moving from Outlook to separate applications

I’m helping a friend that is on Windows and MS365 Outlook.
I don’t understand how you can pay 89,- SEK per month (≈$9) for email, calendar, contacts and todos. On the other hand, I’m a Mac user that is used to get it all in the box…

So, he asked me to find a better solution. On Windows. :persevere:

So basically; If you want to split Email, Calender, Todos and Contacts in other applications on Windows, what do you want?
Can you still use Outlook (for free)?
I can get an email provider for $50/year and use Thunderbird, but I suck too much at Windows to know about the other apps. Hence I ask this great community!

Any ideas about this?

Do you mean pay for to use the Outlook desktop app? That is part of office subscription so yes it has to be paid. Windows 10 (11 soon) comes with built in Mail, cal, and contacts app that is free if that is enough? Not sure where they host their email but it works fine with any MS product, Gmail, or iCloud for mail, cal, contacts. It also supports imap for mail if that is all you want.

Office 365 also comes with 1TB storage, outlook.com premium etc. So even if your friend doesn’t use all that (maybe they should?) then to say they’re paying that much for a subset is a bit disingenous. (and you don’t get that all in the box :wink: )

(Over here I can pick up a family 365 for about £5 per month, Amazon often have it on sale)

You can use microsoft to do for free so that shouldn’t be an issue.

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If the aim is to get from ca. 108 USD per year - actually, the yearly subscription for the family plan is apt 90 USD (899 SEK) - to ca. 50 USD per year for email only, they might want to reconsider staying with Office365. Depending on what you want (and if you’re on Windows), it’s actually not so bad value for money:

To start with, the 89 SEK per month subscription is the family subscription, i.e. it provides all services for up to six people. If your friend only needs one account, the individual subscription will do, and it is 649 SEK per year. So already close to your 50 USD for email only.

Notably, there is 1TB of cloud storage included in that price, which elsewhere would cost around 5 USD per month. (And on the family account its 6 x 1 TB storage…)

Not to mention the license for the Microsoft Office apps, even though those can often be replaced by LibreOffice or so.

I’m using the Office suite on my Mac, and find Outlook works better than Mail. With OneNote, Excel, etc. if your friend can afford the subscription, I would just stick with that.
If the subscription price is an issue, Google might be the answer. Docs, Sheets, Slides, Gmail are all free.
Other than that, Thunderbird, Libre Office, maybe gmail as the provider.
But really, if there’s not a problem, I wouldn’t try to solve it.

VIA the Outlook website, yes! :slight_smile:

Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla Sunbird are options on Windows.

Thanks for your inputs.

To clarify; He has a company, and they have three accounts for $9/account/month = $324/yr instead of $50/yr. However, I have given him the info and they will probably stick with MS.