We all know the sad story about Google Apps (Hey wait! You know about Posterous’s story too right?) and I can see so much of eager faces to know the best alternative for it. We are quite lucky to get support from none other than Microsoft and their awesome mail platform – OutLook.com. So if you need a custom email address like pradeep@hostlater.com, yes something like yourname@yourblog.com or any format you like, then you can easily do that with the help of OutLook. Here in this guide I’ll tell you how to proceed.
#1 Go to Windows Live Admin Center. Here you can manage and customise Microsoft Services, here we are going to use OutLook. After setting up your domain name, you can create user accounts, customise the look, and you can enjoy full features. Click the “Get Started” link to proceed.
#2 Now here you need to enter your domain name. For example, spradeep.com. Now choose the mail service for your domain name. Select the option “Set up OutLook.com for my domain” and click the button “Continue”.
#3 Now you need to assign a domain administrator. You can either sign in using your existing Microsoft Account or you can create one and sign in. Since I already have one I’m using that, if you don’t have one you can create it easily.
#4 In the next screenshot you can see this. After confirming the details, click on the button “I Accept”.
#5 Now that’s all. Things are perfect! Now what you need to do is, update some records in your DNS Manager. If your domain registrar allows DNS management, then you can do these there or else, you can do this in your hosting account. Just copy the things on the screen to be done, now send a request to your hosting account (Support team) to do them. Simple. It will be quite tedious for us to update these records one by one, you can request the support team to do these for you instead. 🙂
That’s it. Now you can go to your Account settings and create User accounts. Enjoy OutLook! Do let us know in comments if you face any issues. Thanks. 🙂
UPDATE – Microsoft Outlook Custom Domains Service Stopped
Official Update From Windows Live Admin Center,
Outlook.com no longer offers support for new custom domain sign ups. New customers looking to manage custom domains are encouraged to use Office 365, Microsoft’s premium online service, which also includes enterprise-class mail, collaboration and communication tools.
If you currently use custom domains with Outlook.com, we will continue to support the ability to log in to Outlook.com with your existing custom domain email address, but in the future, you will no longer be able to add or remove accounts in your domain.
Pradeep, now even Microsoft has stopped custom domain services. Check this: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2142724/microsoft-ends-free-custom-email-domain-support-for-outlook-com.html
Does IMAP work on this?
It should work. 🙂
Pingback: Branding Tip #1: Using A Custom Email Address
I have two different domains that are with 1and1.com and both of the websites are with wix.com. I would like to get away from 1and1 mail which is awful and use Outlook. Anyways, here is my question:
Can I use one admin email (e.g. myadminemail@live.com) to administer more than one domain? That is, once I go through the above steps to set up mydomain1.com with Outlook using myadinemail@live.com, can I then go through it again for mydomain2.com using myadminemail@live.com AGAIN. Two domains under one admin user account?
Hope that makes some sense. I’d really like to keep my businesses under one user admin if I can. At least I think I do. LOL! It’s been a long night of researching this stuff. I am thinking it would be nice to log in with one user admin email and be able from there to access all of my domain email accounts.
Thanks!
Yes, I think you can do it Dan. Just log into your “Windows Live Admin Center” and there you can find an option called “Add Domain”, you can proceed with that I believe. Cheers. 🙂
Thank you. I will give it a shot soon. I hope it works.
Outlook is the best alternative for Google Apps.. and I really like their clean layout which suits best for the mood of professional emails..
Awesome Feature by Outlook…much more than Google apss :p
Thanks 4 sharing bro….