• by Jess Nelson , April 4, 2016

Microsoft has begun testing Outlook Premium, a new paid subscription email service. The technology company has launched an invite-only testing pilot program that grants customers five personalized email addresses, easier shared calendar capabilities and an email inbox experience without any banner ads.

Thanks to a partnership with GoDaddy, Microsoft is offering Outlook Premium users a customizable email domain instead of the traditional Outlook.com or Hotmail.com address.

The service will reportedly cost $3.99 per month, but Microsoft is offering the first year for free. Office365 customers will also be able to access Outlook Premium at no additional cost.

Microsoft confirmed it was piloting and evaluating interest for new email service earlier this year, and is obviously seeking alternative solutions to monetize its email service. The limited features available in Outlook Premium thus far may not justify a monthly fee, but Microsoft is likely planning to introduce additional features to the Premium service within the first year free trial period.

Outlook.com has 400 million active users according to Microsoft’s website, but it has steadily lost market share to competitors such as Google’s popular Gmail email service.

Outlook email opens dropped 27% overall in 2015, according to an end-of-year study by email testing company Litmus. 

Outlook dropped from the fourth-most popular email client in January 2015 with 9.5% of market share, to the sixth most popular service provider with 6.8% of email users by November 2015. The outlook.com desktop service also experienced a stark decline in users that year, dropping from the seventh to eight most popular email client and losing half of its users.