Ending months of speculation, Microsoft confirmed today that it will bring Outlook.com Premium features to Office 365 Home and Personal.

“Today, we began rolling out new benefits for Office 365 Home and Office 365 Personal subscribers who use Outlook.com,” the Outlook team explains. “These premium email features include an ad-free inbox, enhanced protection against malware and phishing, larger mailbox sizes, and premium customer support. In the coming months, we’ll be introducing additional premium Outlook.com features to make personal email and calendar experiences for Office 365 subscribers more powerful, productive, and secure.”

As you may recall, Microsoft launched Outlook.com Premium in February, offering custom domain support for up to five users, information sharing between accounts, and an ad-free inbox. But many users already paying for Office 365 wondered by they couldn’t have access to at least some of those features, especially the ad-free inbox. And in September, we learned that Microsoft was test-marketing the impact of bringing some Outlook.com Premium features to Office 365.

Well, now it’s happening.

To be clear, Microsoft is not making Outlook.com Premium part of Office 365 Home or Personal. But it is bringing some key features from that service over to Office 365. These include:

Ad-free inbox. Outlook.com will no longer display advertising if you pay for Office 365 Home or Personal. Which is how it should have always been, frankly.

Additional security features. Office 365 subscribers can now take advantage of additional email security features in Outlook.com, like attachment scanning and hyperlink checking.

More mailbox storage. Office 365 subscribers will now get 50 GB of email storage, up from the 15 GB allotted to non-paying Outlook.com customers. But here’s some good news for the freeloaders: Microsoft is also boosting storage limits to 50 GB for free Outlook.com users whose mailbox size is 12 GB or larger.

Premium support. Office 365 subscribers will now get free technical support for Outlook.com. “Whether you call us on the phone or reach out via in-app support, you get our highest levels of care and support,” the firm notes.

These changes are automatic, Microsoft says, and effective immediately. That said, it will take about one month for the changes to rollout to all accounts. “So if you don’t see them right away, don’t worry—they are on the way.”

You can learn more about these changes on the Office Support website.

Tagged with Office 365 Home, Office 365 Personal, Outlook Premium