There’s probably no one that doesn’t know Microsoft Outlook: at the very least, everyone has heard its name, and most of us have come across this infamous email client, once in our lifetime. But many things have changed since its initial release, twenty years ago: now Microsoft’s betting heavily on the cloud, and it’s transitioning some of its well-known products to a SaaS way of life. (This betting has begun since before Satya Nadella’s designation as CEO in 2014, but with his appointment has become a top priority.)
Microsoft Outlook 2016 integrates many cloud features: you can add many different accounts, not only Microsoft ones but Gmail’s, iCloud’s and linking your cloud storage profile, like Box, Dropbox, Google Drive – and of course, OneDrive. If you have to attach a document stored in OneDrive or saved on Office365, Microsoft Outlook will insert the link to the file instead, which we find as a great example of synergy and integration. Inspired by many latest generation email clients, Microsoft Outlook 2016 lets you manage your messages: they even added a “Focused Inbox” in their mobile app, where you can find the most important emails you received. The software infers which message goes into this Focused Inbox according to your habits and your answers to people.
As always, you can trust Microsoft Outlook seamlessly to integrate your messages, your calendars, your address book and even your to-do list. Unfortunately, and: as always, this features-complete comes at a high clutter cost. And if it’s not the clutter, the issue lies somewhere else: for example, in using Word as default text editor for emails. Guess we don’t need to tell you what this means for HTML rendering, do we? On the other hand, Microsoft claims they enhanced Outlook’s search feature, now it should be faster and trustier.
Unfortunately, Microsoft Outlook 2016 is still chained to Office general look and feel. Although in the last few years they turned their software designs into a mainstream minimalistic interface, software like Outlook remains complex and messy.
Conclusion
But still, Microsoft Outlook is one of the most complete professional email client. If you can pass over its intricacy and you need every feature, it has, grab a copy – pardon, a subscription.
Usability: 8 /10 | Speed: 7.5 /10 | Features: 9.5 /10 | Support: 9 /10 | Pricing: 8.5 /10 |
I like the way Outlook works better than Gmail, but recently, Outlook quit automatically sending emails from my contacts to my inbox; instead, most emails from my contacts are going to my Junk folder. Very annoying! The only way to fix it is to add all my contacts to my Safe Senders list, which is tedious. And even then, they sometimes still go to Junk! This is the dumbest idea I’ve ever seen.
Poor product quality. The very first time to use this caused me to miss an important meeting. First time opening this, it took the software 30 minutes to sync up with and update current inbox. Meeting schedule was not shown on calendar 30 minutes later after the software took it time to digest and came to live. Does not work well with SKYPE meeting. Excessive security where it does not need and poor security where it is needed.
Usability
3
Speed
7
Features
8
Support
5
Pricing
7.5
I constantly lose emails, or they wont send so my assignments wont go in on time. I do not like how I have to pay the price for this system not to work. I’m done with this email and have switched to Gmail.
Usability
0
Speed
0
Features
0
Support
0
Pricing
0
This is the absolute worst software. The staff for the company cant even figure out how to fix their own glitches and also horrible customer service. I was transferred to 8 different people and had to repeat the same thing over and over just to hang up because they still couldn’t figure out who could help me.
It has been years since Microsoft’s first launch of Outlook. Now, it is Outlook 2016, and Microsoft still does not integrate CalDAV, CardDAV, Due to this known fact, synchronizing contact, calendar and task can only happen between Exchange server and Outlook itself. This is considered an disappointment by many of others who stay with CalDAV and CardDAV services such as iCloud, Yahoo or Google up to certain degree. Before 8/1/2014, I was happy with Google Calendar Sync for which I shall say it was a tweak for me to work with. Then, Google discontinued this software and I had a tough time not until I found EVO Collaborator for Outlook. It is quite useful to sync my Google Calendar, contacts and tasks with Outlook. Yet, I got reminding “ding” sound when new mail arrives at my Gmail mailbox. It is like a push mail mechanism by Gmail push notification.I guess you can give it a try.