Use of own domain name with Office 365 Home/Premium

@szymonBis

Are you sure thath only the name server from your domain has to be actif on Godaddy. My domain stays with my original provider and i would make a "DNS off site zone" on Godaddy. If i start running the outlook wizard for adding personal domains to my mail it gives remark " No such domain exist by Godaddy".

Wil it only work after i changed the name server to godaddy , even if i made the DNS zone in front.

Yes, I'm sure of that. I've got such configuration already running. I presume you didn't wait for propagating NS record changes . It may take even 24-48 hours. In my case it took about one hour. Just check NS records against some public DNS server (other than GoDaddy's and your legacy domain registrar's).

Since my previous post a little change has been made by MS. Now I'm able to set personalized email addresses to other members of my O365 subscription.

For others maybe it is worth to mention that this new feature is available for me at Outlook beta web interface only (try the beta switch near top right corner).

Keep us posted if you still have any issues with that.

Regards,

Ad.1) 

no. It isn't. A domain have to only be parked at / delegated to GoDaddy DNS servers. It means you may buy/ have got one from another registrar and the only things have be set up are 

1. create new GoDaddy user account or have got one
2. Create new DNS zone in GoDaddy for your domain
3. migrate DNS records from legacy service to GoDaddy
4. in your registrar service change name servers (NS) (delegate) of your domain from legacy registrar NS servers to GoDaddy ones.

Then you may start using your own domain in Office 365

@szymonBis

Are you sure thath only the name server from your domain has to be actif on Godaddy. My domain stays with my original provider and i would make a "DNS off site zone" on Godaddy. If i start running the outlook wizard for adding personal domains to my mail it gives remark " No such domain exist by Godaddy".

Wil it only work after i changed the name server to godaddy , even if i made the DNS zone in front.

I hope this does come to fruition for 'Office 365 Home' subscriptions!

I see that aliases can be created.

But would you be able create standalone users (up to 5) for the family, this would be ideal?

Right now what you can do is to connect your own O365 account to your external Domain = your account allows _you_ to create ONE address within _your_ account. There is right now no function to let _other_ office account holders (= your family that you share your O365 home plan with) to also get a mail address in that domain. 

BUT: The FAQsays: "If you have an Office 365 Home subscription and a domain connected to Outlook.com, the other people that you have shared the subscription with can set up their own personalized email addresses using your domain."

So that should be coming sooner or later.

Result: one mail address per User. 

BUT: No aliases (yet).

The problem with "aliases"is that MS isn't really clear in their own definitions - an "alias" in outlook.com/Office 365 home is TWO different things:

• a login name to log in to your O365 home account
• an email address to receive mail within that account/Mailbox

For the second to work, it is necessary that the MS Exchange server is configured to accept email for that address. With that not done, you will be able to login with that address, but not receive email.

The current process to create an alias (FAQ here) doesn't (yet) allow you to create an email address within your own domain, just ******@outlook.com

"The second option ("Add an existing email address as a Microsoft account alias") is (up to now) actually NOT setting the Exchange to accept email for that address. It is only allowing you to log in using that name. 

So even if you could verify an address in your personal domain (which you could do by pointing your domain to your own MX before configuring it for O365 MX use), emails to there would probably end up bouncing.

Also: the current beta config interface for "personalized email address" does not indicate wether or not MS plans to allow you to manually create additional aliases (in the "premium" config menu). And note that they call this "personalized email address", not "...addressES".

So I would argue: until we see such a feature to pop up, I doubt that we will get this.

Of course that is a major limitation: 

On your family domain, you could not have *any* more addresses than exactly 1 per user = Office license holder. 

No secondary address for newsletter signup or SPAM (as alias into your own mailbox), no catch-all.

And no way to create extra seperate accounts for the kids that don't have Office licenses (or in my case: for the printer).

I would argue that would make this unattractive to about 50% of the target audience of this feature. (I mean, if you have your own domain, usually you do abit more than just 1 address per person).

But this is still beta, a lot can happen, let's see what we get.

This is already a major step forward, let's hope they go all the way.

I hope this does come to fruition for 'Office 365 Home' subscriptions!

I have been using the free GSuite for a decade, its been great, but i'm ready to jump ship and pay for the privilege, I would like to merge custom domain email, cloudstorage and Office licensing all under the one umbrella.

If they can do that at the 'Office 365 Home' price point then they have me and probably a lot of others, but any more and the price is deterring me and Google may end up with my money for $10/mth.

Forcing home/families onto the 'Office 365 Business Premium' sub is just a $tretch too far.

I see that aliases can be created.

But would you be able create standalone users (up to 5) for the family, this would be ideal?

Recently I've also found very nice mail routing managed service - mailgun.com.

You may configure mail routing thru their servers. 10000 emails per month is free of charge.

For incoming emails you may set up routing rules to redirect emails, e.g. email sent to username@userdomain.example can be redirected to  ******@outlook.com mailbox (or/ and any other).

For outgoing emails you may set mailgun SMTP server as send-only account in Outlook. Hence your email won't be sent from outlook.com domain any more. Instead, they will originate from your own domain.

You may set up as many aliases as you want. Using routing rules you are able to define how to handle redirections to your familly members email accounts.  

To wrap up you need only three things: 1) your domain; 2) properly configured mailgun account; 3) outlook.com account (even free one) or any other email service which can send emails by external SMTP servers.

I hope you find this interesting as alternative for managing personalized email address in Outlook.

Enjoy! :)