
Using Outlook.com with your own Web Domain - arihant
http://www.labnol.org/internet/setup-outlook-on-custom-domain/24699/
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georgemcbay
Pretty much everyone I know who is using the free Google Apps is using it just
for webmail and according to this outlook.com allows you to have 500 users per
domain instead of free Google App's 10 users.

While I'm still grandfathered in to the old Google Apps free tier on a couple
of domains, I'm going to try switching one of them over to outlook.com and see
how it goes.

I never would have bothered paying attention to this if Google hadn't killed
their free tier, hopefully whatever gain they get from that was worth the
potential loss of users (even though they offer it for free, they still
benefit from my data and showing me ads in mail, now it is likely they won't).

~~~
dkuntz2
Google got rid of the free Google Apps today, except for those grandfathered
in.

~~~
georgemcbay
As kayoone said, I already acknowledged that in the post you're responding to.

While I think it is at least somewhat nice that Google did grandfather in
existing users, a big part of the appeal for free Google Apps for me is that
whenever I had a domain that needed mail but not too much and not worth paying
for (because the domain was not a profit maker) I could spin up a free Google
Apps easily and know was I was getting because I was used to it. Also I could
recommend doing the same to friends in the same situation.

Without that ability in the future, I feel it is in my best interest to start
migrating off the platform even on my existing domains, especially when this
alternate option (which I was previously unaware of) is available.

I don't pretend to know what Google's cost and benefits were with regard to
free Google Apps, or whether this move makes sense in the large, but I can
tell you that in my specific case they've begun pushing me away from their
email infrastructure altogether with it.

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vidyesh
I been using Outlook.com / Live Domain Services for a while now. Here are some
issues I face

\- Catch-all address is not supported.

\- If you want to connect one email to multiple accounts, (for easy switching
between your domain emails) you have a limit of 5 accounts linked together.

\- No IMAP support, but Push works well. Add as an exchange account to iPhone
and sync all the folders.

\- Only Office365 ( Premium service ) has good MS support, the free service
has a community based support at Microsoft Answers which is well, pathetic.

\- At times ( quite a few times ) it forgets, you have created a new email and
has 100s of mail in the your Inbox as you been using it from months and it
gives you the first-time setup page. Don't panic, just log out,clear cache and
try again. Everything would be fine and back to normal.

One suggestion, if you switch and create an email account and for some reason
want to reconfigure everything again. Make sure you delete all the email
addresses you created. If you do not do that, after reconfiguring live
services won't let your create that email for like forever ( 3 months wait
time till its gets cleared from the system )Yes, even if its your verified
domain.

~~~
pycassa
some one please explain what IMAP support means.. every time someone mentions
outlook they mention lack of IMAP as its disadvantage. and also why it is such
an important feature?

~~~
vidyesh
IMAP - Internet Message Access Protocol.

Consider IMAP as being the cloud email service. All the emails are pulled on
your device/web/client whenever you want or whenever they arrive. Its like the
standard protocol for all possible clients/interfaces to pull the mails for
you.

Soon after IMAP was created, Microsoft introduced its own protocol called MAPI
( Messaging Application Programming Interface ) which practically is IMAP for
hotmail/outlook. MAPI is now commonly known as Exchange as it runs on their
Exchange Servers.

Practically all email services ( apart from outlook/hotmail) support IMAP now
as its accepted almost everywhere and used on all web/device/clients.

As Exchange/MAPI are Microsoft products, only companies that have their own
Exchange mail servers or use Windows Live Hotmail/Outlook servers will be able
to use MAPI/Exchange.

~~~
chmars
Exchange/MAPI on the other hand always seems to support push mail. IMAP IDLE
exists but many clients do not provide support for it, for example Mail.app
for iOS. And if you use Gmail on a few devices via IMAP, you easily run into
the annoying 'too many simultaneous connections' issue.

(I use IMAP nevertheless since Exchange/MAPI has some annoying issues on iOS
if used with Gmail and Exchange/MAP is not supported by Mail.app on OS X.)

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charleshaanel
This look interesting. I was one of the rare few who paid for hotmail premium
($20/mo it used to be) - back in the day.

For sentiment sake, (largely), I held my original email address for so long
(~14 years) and I didn't want to let it go.

It's always a surprise to have people you haven't heard from in 5+ years
contact you!

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eatsleepdrink
it seems like a great alternative but what kills it for me is a lack of IMAP
support.

~~~
replax
they offer MS exhange support instead. which is really nice. esp. also due to
push support.

~~~
shy_coder
I'm currently testing this, took me a second to figure out the setting for
android/exchange

user: \user@domain.com password: password server: m.hotmail.com

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tomflack
Be careful, I had my domain with outlook.com's predecessor, then when moving
to a hosted exchange option made the mistake of trying to close the account
instead of simply moving my domain records and leaving be.

I can never, ever, use me@mydomain.com as a Microsoft account ever again.

~~~
vidyesh
I faced that issue when reconfiguring it on outlook and it is very annoying.
The only thing we can do is wait 3 months ( they flush off the account, as
they say ) or just make sure you delete all accounts first and then close that
account if you hadn't.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4890741>

------
arihant
One distinct advantage: Outlook is supported for Push mail on iOS mail client.

~~~
kondro
So is Google Apps since 2009:
[http://googlemobile.blogspot.com.au/2009/09/google-sync-
now-...](http://googlemobile.blogspot.com.au/2009/09/google-sync-now-with-
push-gmail-support.html)

~~~
arihant
This is not the same. Google Sync has nothing to do with built in iOS mail
client - which only supports 15 min fetch from Gmail.

Correction: It actually is. Gmail is accessible via Exchange on iOS which
supports push.

~~~
nickbarnwell
Yes, it is. [1]

[1]:
[http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe...](http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=138740)

------
obilgic
Also new outlook.com support multiple accounts/mails very well

Edit: Basically you can create as many accounts as you want then link them
together and you get n * 7gb skdrive space

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facorreia
I didn't know you could use your own domain with Outlook.com. That's very nice
and it's an interesting option.

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larrys
Not specific to these instructions but because of (potential) caching, when
you need to verify dns it normally pays to use a third party server (or two)
such as these instead of your local machine:

<http://www.zoneedit.com/lookup.html>

<http://www.kloth.net/services/dig.php>

<http://www.zonecut.net/dns/>

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jfreak53
It's much much cheaper to just purchase a VPS or ATOM Dedi and install
iRedMail and SOGo. You don't get Docs of course but 80% of the customer's I
know don't use Docs, only email and Calendar.

I can't say I will ever switch over to Outlook though since Microsoft is
notorious for charging for everything sooner or later and ruining a lot of
things. They botched up Skype now that they have it also.

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marban
After giving it a shot for a few weeks I can say that MS's spam filter just
can't compete with Google.

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IanDrake
Been doing this for the last 5 months and has worked very well. Like others
have said, push is great.

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hybrid11
If only I could use GChat with Outlook.com, I would switch in a heartbeat.

~~~
ComputerGuru
GChat is pretty much just plain jane XMPP. You can host it for free with any
of the online services w/ your own domain.

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camus
until it's becomes a paid service too...

~~~
mynameisvlad
Microsoft has Office 365 as the business paid service. I don't really see them
switching Live Domains to a paid service anytime soon, except for a Hotmail
Plus-like experience as an addon (no ads, etc).

They're definitely pushing the new Office 365 subscriptions with Office 2013,
so I don't think they'll be too keen to offer a competitor to O365 anytime
soon since they're pushing it so much.

