Use of own domain name with Office 365 Home/Premium

Yes, the business plan is far too expensive for a family, and not a realistic option. At the moment I rent a whole server which can handle thousands of email addresses for a lot less than the extra cost of switching to the business plan.

This is frustrating that Microsoft has not added the option to have your own domain with the Office 365 Home versions.  I have Office 365 Home and then an Office 365 Business account just for email. 

Here is what I currently do as a work around and it costs me $4 extra a month.

1. Purchase Office 365 Home then log out.
2. Log into Office 365 Admin here https://portal.office.com I am not for sure what you need to do to get a login for 365 Admin. It is possible you might need to purchase a regular business plan first as that is what I originally did and then cancelled it.
3. It has been awhile since I setup my account so I am not sure if you need to add a user or if your user will be listed in Active Users. Check to make sure your user is there.
4. Go to Setup, Domains and add your custom domain.  It will walk you through setting up DNS which you want to do so you have the MX and other records.  I use Cloudflare for DNS which is free and works just fine for this. I added 6 domains I had.
5. Go to Subscriptions and then click +Add subscriptions. There are several Exchange plans but I picked Exchange Online (Plan 1) which is $4 a month.  Note this is per mailbox but you can have as many aliases as you want.
6. Go back to Active users and click your user account.
7. Click edit on Product licenses and make sure Exchange Online (Plan 1) or whichever you purchased is assigned to your user.
8. Click Edit on Username/Email and add any email addresses or aliases you want.  You can set any of these as your primary.
9. Now when you setup an email client just use the primary email address.  As long as your DNS is all correct your email should work great!

Some steps might be a little off but this should get you close.  Let me know if you have any questions and I will do my best to help.

-Scott

It is still ridiculous that they don't offer this feature. I want to use Microsoft for all my online and offline activities but they make it very difficult. 

So for now I am using GSuite, and to be honest its pretty good. It allows me to have one sign on and still have access to all the consumer features I need. The only downside is that I use Onedrive for sync and storing everything from my windows PC's as I like how it can have almost any file type and it doesn't change the format that its in like google does. 

MICROSOFT - Where are you on this matter, even some type of yes or no if its coming would be nice. Then I can make plans to either stay or switch. 

Simon

It is still ridiculous that they don't offer this feature. I want to use Microsoft for all my online and offline activities but they make it very difficult. 

So for now I am using GSuite, and to be honest its pretty good. It allows me to have one sign on and still have access to all the consumer features I need. The only downside is that I use Onedrive for sync and storing everything from my windows PC's as I like how it can have almost any file type and it doesn't change the format that its in like google does. 

MICROSOFT - Where are you on this matter, even some type of yes or no if its coming would be nice. Then I can make plans to either stay or switch. 

Simon

Oh I am 100% with you!  Thankfully my brother is a systems admin and Exchange is one of his things otherwise I would not have figured it out.

This is frustrating that Microsoft has not added the option to have your own domain with the Office 365 Home versions.  I have Office 365 Home and then an Office 365 Business account just for email. 

Here is what I currently do as a work around and it costs me $4 extra a month.

1. Purchase Office 365 Home then log out.
2. Log into Office 365 Admin

[ ...]

Click edit on Product licenses and make sure Exchange Online (Plan 1) or whichever you purchased is assigned to your user.

So basically you have a O365 home subscription and seperate from that also an Exchange online Plan

Of course you can do that.

"Exchange online" is simply a "hosted Exchange" plan.

Cheapest way to do this that I know of would probably be the OVH Exchange plans as they start from ~3,50 EUR/month on yearly contracts - slightly cheaper than MS themselves offer this.

One tick better value for money might be an "O365 business essentials" plan - slightly more expensive, but with more feastures.

But again all of these options come down to be two seperate plans that do not integrate properly with each other.

Which is the whole point of this thread here.

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On the other hand, I had a more in-depth look into the email offering as it is included in the O365 home right now and find it pretty lightweight: Even though O365 home is a plan that is intended to be used for a family (up to 5 users), there is no way to share adress books or contacts between the accounts.

This is not, as I expected, a "family-version" of Exchange.

This is a simple mailbox, slightly beefed up with address book and calendar *within a single account only*.

In light of this, I tend to change my verdict:

Even *if* MS would start to include "custom domain"; if would still leave a lot to be desired to use it as a family.

I mean, I was hoping for a version of "hosted exchange" that integrates into O365 but also allows "family-required features", that are not possible in Exchange.

Example: even in 2018, you still can not properly share calendars and addressbooks between users on mobile devices in Exchange.

That said, the O365 private - plans would not work for me even *if* the "custom domain" would be possible.

So bottom line: If you are a heavvy using family, your are better off if you go for a OpenXchange based email-hoster anyway (because there sharing contacts works better).   mailbox.org does that, also allowing custom domains. 

So I would say: MS: if you want to capture the "heavvy users private" market, you still have quite a mile to go.