Earlier I had showed you how to get a free Google Apps account for your new domain. If all you want is a branded email address with someone else hosting your emails, then you can give Microsoft Outlook a try.
Setup Outlook Email On a Domain
Go to domains.live.com and sign-in with your existing Microsoft account. Then, click on Get started link to add your custom web domain that you would like to use with Outlook.
On the next screen, choose the active Microsoft account as the administrator and accept the agreement.
Once you associate the account with the domain, you’ll be provided with a list of DNS records that you will have to add to your domain. These are used to prove your domain ownership and manage incoming/outgoing mails.
Example records:
- MX record: This is used to set up mail and prove ownership of this domain
MX server: 123xyz.pamx1.hotmail.com
- TXT record: This is used to authenticate outgoing emails so that your mails not marked as junk mail.
Value: v=spf1 include:hotmail.com ~all
Once you have created all the necessary DNS records for your domain, wait for about an hour for the DNS changes to propagate through the Internet. You can use any of these methods to verify DNS propagation:
- DNSsy: http://www.dnssy.com
- MXToolBox: http://mxtoolbox.com/DNSLookup.aspx
- Command Prompt:
Type in following commands:
nslookup -type=mx yourdomain.com nslookup -type=txt yourdomain.com
When you see the entries updated, go back to the Windows Live Domains site and verify DNS records there.
That’s it. You have enabled Outlook mail service on your personal domain.
Now to add a new user, click on Member Accounts in the admin page and fill in their details. Once added users will be able to log-in in from Outlook.com page.
You can create a maximum of 500 users and, as of now, there’s no storage limitation too.
Setup Outlook Email on a Sub-domain
To setup Outlook Mail as sub-domain, for instance mail.yourdomain.com, on your website you just have to add a new CNAME record.
For instance, for the above address, just add a CNAME record called “mail” and set its value as “go.domains.live.com.“.
With this added, your users can directly go to mail.yourdomain.com to sign-in.