How To Permanently Delete Your Hotmail Account

Jessie Richardson Read more June 1, 2019

For almost half a century, emails have been changing the way we communicate with each other. They are fast and reliable, and are not likely to ever fail to get delivered, as long as the destination address exists.

How To Permanently Delete Your Hotmail Account

There are many webmail services, but few managed to survive the test of time, as well as the competition against each other. Microsoft’s Outlook.com is one of those. It was founded as Hotmail in 1996 and has gone through multiple major changes. It’s been around for so long that some of us might have been in our teenage years when we created a Hotmail account with an email address that ends in “@hotmail.com”.

Maybe this is the exact reason why you’d want to delete your Hotmail or Outlook account for good? Maybe you’ve just created another email account on another webmail service and no longer have a need for this one? Whatever the reason, we’re here to show you how exactly you can delete your Hotmail account.

Before we dive deeper into the process, let’s take a moment to compare Outlook.com with its largest competitor, Gmail.

Outlook Versus Gmail: Spot the Difference

Besides Outlook.com and Gmail, there isn’t any other wildly popular webmail service in existence. If you’re thinking about deleting your Outlook (or Hotmail) account to focus on Gmail, take a few moments with us to examine the differences between the two.

Outlook does have some advantages over Gmail, which you might’ve missed since the latter is more popular. It has improved Microsoft Office, Skype and Facebook support and is much more current, having received a revamp in 2013. It’s also considered a slightly better service for private use.

On the flipside, Gmail receives constant updates and is a slightly better office solution due to its multitude of tools.

For the most part, the two are quite similar. Outlook comes with 15GB of free storage space, and so does Gmail. Both are very simple and intuitive, so there is no real difference in the end. You may want to consider sticking to Outlook unless your reason for a change is business-related. If you’re still certain that you want to create another mail account, here’s how you should proceed.

Say Goodbye

The first step is to initiate the deletion process. There are multiple ways to get to this step, but we thought we could spare you the trouble and give you a direct link. Therefore:

Open this link and take a good look. If you’ve used your Hotmail account extensively, pay attention and read about what exactly you’ll be losing by closing your account.
When you reach the part of the page called “To close your account”, just click the “Close your account” link.
Microsoft will inform you what to do before you decide to close your account. The text is somewhat similar to the one that appears in the first step, but it’s worth a read nevertheless. Click “Next” when ready.
You have to check all the boxes in this step. That’s Microsoft’s way of making sure you’re fully aware of the account closure effects.
Note: Microsoft tells you that you have 60 days to change your mind. What this means is that if you don’t log in by that time, your account will be deleted. If you do, it won’t be deleted, and you’ll have to go over the whole deletion process again the next time you decide to delete your account.
After checking all the boxes, the only thing you need to do on this page before proceeding is to answer why you are deleting your account. Conveniently, you can just select your reason isn’t listed and click “Mark account for closure”.
That’s it! The next message gives you the exact date before which you need to log in to prevent your account’s closure. As soon as you click “Done”, Outlook will log you out and take you back to the login screen, which also marks the start of the 60-day countdown.

To Delete or Not to Delete?

As said before, when it comes to webmail services, it all comes down to personal preferences. Gmail is considered a slightly better office solution because of Google Suite. Outlook is newer and possibly simpler for personal use. Having that said, we hope you’ve thought through everything before deleting your account.

Forgive us for asking a very personal question; it’s not your age or weight but something close. What is your reason for deleting your Hotmail account for good? Please share by commenting below. (It’s for world peace!)