The demise of Ecco Pro was blamed by many (including the publishers of Ecco Pro themselves) on Microsoft's decision to bundle Outlook with Office at no extra charge. And while that was undoubtedly part of the problem, Ecco Pro also failed by marketing itself as merely a fancy PIM to lawyers and others then lacking technological sophistication sufficient to permit them to appreciate that the value and functionality of the product went so far beyond that of supposedly "free" Outlook that the two might as well have originated on different planets.

Those were a few of the problems that could have brought down Ecco Pro. In the end, however, it was one massive problem: There was a company down the street that was developing a product that would make Ecco Pro obsolete. Microsoft would release Office ’97 on November 19th, 1996. Among the many components of the new suite of products was a personal information manager called Outlook. Eight months later, NetManage would release its last update of Ecco Pro, version 4.01. Development of the software effectively ceased after that.