Windows Live Mail
A defunct email client software by Microsoft.
Windows Live Mail is a discontinued freeware email client from Microsoft. It is the successor to Windows Mail on Windows Vista, which was the successor to Outlook Express on Windows XP. It is designed to run on Windows 7.
The first version of Windows Live Mail was released on 6 November 2007. The Windows Live Mail version numbering starts at 12 because this application is an advancement of Windows Mail, not an entirely new application. Windows Live Mail is developed by the same team that wrote Windows Mail.
Microsoft announced that Outlook.com was discontinuing support for Windows Live Mail during 2016 by dropping support for the DeltaSync protocol. Microsoft has positioned the Mail software as a replacement for it. Although DeltaSync has been discontinued as of 30 June 2016, Microsoft's Windows Live Mail 2011 and 2012 continue to work with Hotmail e-mail accounts by using IMAP (or, less effectively, POP) in place of DeltaSync. Gmail and other service providers still support DeltaSync as of 2018 so users can still use Windows Live Mail with non-Microsoft email accounts.
Windows Essentials 2012, including Windows Live Mail 2012, reached end of support on 10 January 2017, and is no longer available for download from Microsoft.