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November 25, 2005

Windows Live Email Service

Michael Arrington

27 comments »

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.

Thanks Robert and Brian for the tip.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Friday, November 25th, 2005 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Kyle

    November 25th, 2005 at 6:32 pm

    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.

  2. Michael Arrington

    November 25th, 2005 at 6:50 pm

    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.

  3. Alex

    November 25th, 2005 at 8:15 pm

    “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.mail.yahoo.com/bm/Upgrades

  4. Leo F

    November 25th, 2005 at 9:27 pm

    I wonder when Google will let us use Gmail with our own domain. But Microsoft is clearly ahead in this battle.

    regards,
    Leo

  5. root

    November 26th, 2005 at 2:39 am

    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.

  6. Bill V

    November 26th, 2005 at 4:22 am

    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.

  7. Pat

    November 26th, 2005 at 8:09 am

    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.

  8. Tom

    November 26th, 2005 at 8:14 am

    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.

  9. pqs

    November 26th, 2005 at 8:49 am

    With Gmail you can send e-mail from any adress, you only have to redirect e-mail. It’s perfect.

  10. Damian

    November 26th, 2005 at 12:17 pm

    I just tried it with a domain I had lying around - it doesn’t use Kahuna.

  11. Pete

    November 26th, 2005 at 12:58 pm

    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.

  12. JT

    November 27th, 2005 at 5:10 pm

    I would LOVE to see something like this from the GMail team. GMail interface, functionality and storage w/ my own domain name. killer!

  13. Niki Scevak

    November 29th, 2005 at 10:07 am

    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.

  14. Paul

    November 29th, 2005 at 12:48 pm

    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.

  15. Roger

    November 29th, 2005 at 4:12 pm

    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.

  16. lucas

    March 16th, 2006 at 7:54 am

    the live messenger is engine for my life, eheheheheh

  17. Andres Miguel Luyo Cama

    May 7th, 2006 at 1:18 pm

    Quiero utizar messenger live email como para mayor capacidad de almacenamiento.

  18. emmzy

    June 23rd, 2006 at 5:27 am

    i love this site

  19. ericsson

    June 24th, 2006 at 10:43 am

    por que demora tanto para mim reçeber o windows live mail

  20. sid

    June 26th, 2006 at 9:50 am

    Hi,

    I am using the hotmail live service. but what i am hunting is for POP which hotmail is not providing.
    Since with Pop i can use my email on blackberry or push email services.
    Also Outlook n all

    Any one has clues of it can post here…
    Cheers

  21. Dave H

    August 6th, 2006 at 2:19 am

    I have been using this “Live Mail” since they started, a week ago I stopped being able to display my message content, to explain, all appears normal at the inbox level, new messages, old etc, but when I try to open a message, none of the content of the message displays, just a blank page. I have used the feedback and nobody takes any interest, not that I could read any reply. I have tried to opt out but that doesn’t work, I am now forced after a week to start redirecting my mail to a competent e-mail client!
    Steer well clear of this Live Mail crap

  22. lizetth virginia Roldàn Soto

    August 9th, 2006 at 12:39 pm

    no puedo habrir mi correo ho sea mi email , siempre aparesen un cuadro con unas letras y se copean las letras y sige el cuadro , no lo kiere habrir
    atte lizetth virginia

  23. Smit

    February 24th, 2007 at 11:34 am

    Oh o ho! very nice site!l

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