Outlook and Thunderbird New Account Creation Flow

julianc — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 18:02:48 GMT

The new Account Hub experiment is a great uplift to the old UI. However, it asks me to either use a POP3 setup or use a paid add-on like Owl when it's not necessary.

My email address looks something like this: john.doe01@login.cuny.edu, a Microsoft 365 account.

With the new account creation flow experiment, I: 1) Enter name and email. 2) See server options with a suggestion for a paid third-party add-on. Claims POP3 is the only option without add-ons.

With the old account creation flow, I: 1) Enter name and details. 2) Manually configure the IMAP server with details found in my mail webapp settings. 3) Success.

I appreciate cleaning up clunky UI, but I think it's important to keep a clear way to skip any autodetection and configure the server manually. It can help avoid suggesting third-party add-ons—more software to worry about—especially paid ones! Nothing against Owl, just that I don't need it, but the experimental (on by default) Account Hub made it seem like I did.

I think this is more about the experiment and not a bug from not recognizing the server settings for this domain.

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Outlook and Thunderbird New Account Creation Flow