Domains.Live.com is a free new email service offered by Microsoft. It’s a simple but very useful tool. And, like Office Live, it is disruptive to the existing domain name registrar market (are they even paying attention?).
So the basic service is this: Microsoft will host email and instant messaging for you in a domain you own.
- Create up to 20 e-mail accounts within your domain
- Get a 250 MB inbox for each account
- Check your e-mail from any Web-enabled PC
- Junk e-mail filter protection using Microsoft SmartScreen technology
- Virus scanning and cleaning of e-mail
- Seamless access with MSN Messenger, MSN Spaces, etc.
More details on the Custom Domains blog.
Here are my thoughts:
First of all, this is great. Until now, generally only domain name registrars offered this kind of service, and it was both costly and had a very web 1.0 interface.
Second, when I look at services like this and Office Live, it seems to me that the industry that needs to be most concerned are the domain name registrars. Many of the services Microsoft is offereing for free are the types of things that reigstrars charge for today.
Microsoft is starting to create really impressive productity tools for the small business. And they aren’t charging for these tools. Competitors need to watch out.
Hey, thanks for the heads up, Michael. I don’t have time to go through all the sign and procedures necessary to set this up tonight. However, I’m curious, have you used the mail program yet? Is it based on Hotmail, or the newer Kahuna, or a completely separate email app?
And I agree that Google, Yahoo and others need to watch out what MS is doing here. If the new Office 12, and the videos of Kahuna are any indication, MS is really turning a corner the quality of the experience they’re delivering. I think Google is doing alright, but I Yahoo stands the biggest to lose to MS, as I just haven’t been all that impressed with the u/x Yahoo’s been delivering lately.
Kyle, no, I haven’t tested it out (and won’t be able to for a few days, I’ll be skiing). Let me know what you think if you get it set up. It seems as though Kahuna is separate from it right now, so I assume it will be a hotmail-like interface.
“Until now, generally only domain name registrars offered this kind of service, and it was both costly and had a very web 1.0 interface.”
Actually, Yahoo! Mail Personal Address was another major player in the field.
http://billing....com/bm/Upgrades
I wonder when Google will let us use Gmail with our own domain. But Microsoft is clearly ahead in this battle.
regards,
Leo
Right – so we shouldn’t use free open source software because it will lead to a loss of jobs.
Using their own logic, they shouldn’t be offering this service at all.
I’ve always wondered why a Gmail of the world hasn’t worked with hosting email for organizations before. University .edu webmails are typically crappy (I know ours at Miami U is…) and it seems like it would be easier for the university and a benefit to Google in the advertising to provide and host the ***.edu emails for a school. No fuss for the school, better webmail for the student, more ad-views for the service.
Mike,
Yes, the domain registrars *and* email providers are paying attention. Microsoft is someone we all watch closely. It will definitely be interesting to see where they head with this service – are they going to become a true service company? Do any of them want to be in the service business? Personally, I don’t think so, but we’ll see.
Leo F: Gmail already lets you add different addresses to be the from address. If you have a domain, just setup the catch-all forwarder to go to your gmail if you are so inclined.
Kyle: It uses kahuna as mentioned on the Custom Domains blog.
With Gmail you can send e-mail from any adress, you only have to redirect e-mail. It’s perfect.
I just tried it with a domain I had lying around – it doesn’t use Kahuna.
I would love to use this service, but there’s no way I’m going to use webmail (esp Hotmail), and there’s no way I’m going to pay MSFT $20/year for Hotmail Plus, which is required for POP access. Allow free Pop like Gmail and I’m there.
I would LOVE to see something like this from the GMail team. GMail interface, functionality and storage w/ my own domain name. killer!
It gives you a hotmail interface for now (with hotmail storage) but there is this in a recent post:
“Kahuna (the new AJAX e-mail UI)
Speaking of Kahuna, we are launching an invitation program to get people into the Beta. We are also working on getting all Domain adminstrators assigned a number of invites. Stay tuned for this. We’ll get this out to you as soon as we can.”
Might be a good way to get a first peak at Kahuna.
Re: Gmail. They let you send from any address but it has the annoying Address X on behalf of AddressY@gmail.com in the header, which looks a little unprofessional.
I tested this out and it took about 100 clicks to set everything up. In the end, I had two interfaces… domains.live.com where I can manage email accounts in my domain and hotmail.com where the accounts access their email.
I was never able to get more than 2mb of space per account, even though domains.live.com gives instructions to update each account’s msn profile to your home country in order to “receive the correct inbox size for their country”
This will be great for people who run organizations whose employees really love hotmail.com. ahem.
GoDaddy.com already gives you free email with each domain purchased. The disk space aint huge but most people are POPing it anyway. You also have webmail access, SPAM filters, etc. This isn’t overly impressive.
If MSFT also gave you some free hosting with it then things would be significant.
the live messenger is engine for my life, eheheheheh
u guys are creeps
I would like very much for some one to help me to receive my 160 e-mail from live .com Thank for teaching me to do same
I AM NOT HAPPY. I DID NOT KNOW I WOULD LOOSE MY OLD EMAIL ADDRESS AND NOW BECAUSE I CAN’T REMEMBER MY NEW ONE OR PASSWORD I CAN’T GET INTO MY EMAIL. I WANT MY OLD EMAIL BACK. PLEASE!
thelov na alaxo to email mou
Hello everyone my name is Dakota. I have a messenger but no friends please add me. Thank you.!!
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You have ma locked ou of my email mail and havent been able to get it for a week, nor can i grt my email address. I thought you would at lest snd my mail and contacts to my new hot amil address. so I just want to get all my mail and contacts from my mail acct. sent to my new email address at my hot mail, as am through and tired of your mail system, not working and locking me out of my own mail box.
Why wont and cant you help me get all my mail?