Are you looking to set up a professional branded email address with Outlook.com? Microsoft’s Outlook premium allows you to use your own domain name to create a business email address. In this article, we will show you how to setup your custom branded email address with Outlook.com.
What is a Professional Branded Email Address?
A professional email is the one that has your business name in it. For example, support@yourdomain.com is a professional email address. Whereas yourdomain@yahoo.com is not a professional email address.
There are many ways you can create a professional email address. You can use the built-in mail server that comes with most WordPress hosting company. See our article on how to create a free business email address in five minutes.
This would work for most starter websites on a shoestring budget. However, it lacks several critical features like better spam and antivirus protection, enhanced security, easy account management, and more.
If you want the powerful features mentioned above, then you’ll need a professional business email service that works with your existing business name (aka domain name).
What is Outlook.com?
Outlook is an email service offered by Microsoft. You can create a free yourname@outlook.com account to use the service. However, if you want to create a professional branded email address with Outlook.com, then you will need to sign up for Office 365.
It is a paid service starting from $12.50 per user / month. It includes 1 TB of OneDrive storage, latest Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for your PC or Mac.
At WPBeginner, we use and recommend G Suite by Google for business email addresses because it’s more cost effective (starts at $5 / month). Also we prefer the Google Cloud since our team is familiar with Gmail and other Google Apps.
For more details, you can see our comparison of G Suite vs Office 365 to learn how it stacks up against Outlook.com.
That being said, let’s take a look at how to create a custom branded email address with Outlook.com.
Signing up for Outlook Premium with Office 365
First, you need to visit Office 365 website and sign up for their Business Premium subscription. It is the only subscription that includes support for custom domains.
You will be asked to provide personal information. After that, click on the next button to continue and enter your payment information.
After signing up, you will land on the Office 365 admin panel. From here you need to visit Setup » Domains page to add your custom domain.
This will bring you to the domains settings page. Go ahead and click on the ‘Add domain’ button to continue.
On the next screen, you will be asked to enter the domain name you want to setup. After entering the domain name, click on the next button to continue.
Office 365 will now look up your domain name and then ask you to verify ownership by adding information to your domain’s DNS settings.
To do this, you will need to switch back to your domain’s settings page. Depending on your domain registrar, this page will be located under your account. You need to find the DNS settings option.
If your domain is registered by your WordPress hosting company, then you will find the domain’s setting under your cPanel dashboard labeled as ‘Zone Editor’ or ‘DNS Zone Editor’.
Note: Above screenshot is from Bluehost. Your hosting screenshot may look slightly different.
When adding a DNS record, make sure that the information you enter matches the information displayed by Office 365.
Once you have pasted the DNS record, click on the ‘Add DNS record’ button to save your changes.
Next, you need to switch back to Microsoft Office 365 admin portal and click on the verify button.
Office 365 will now check for DNS record to verify that you own the domain name. DNS verification can take 5 – 10 minutes because sometimes your DNS is not updated right away.
After verification, you will be asked to manage your online services.
You will get two options here: the first is to automatically allow Office 365 to make required changes to your DNS settings, and the second option is to manually manage your DNS records.
If your domain is registered with GoDaddy, then you can select the first option and Office 365 will take care of the rest.
Otherwise, choose the second option to manually manage your DNS records.
Once you have made the selection, click on the next button to continue.
Office 365 will now ask you which service you want to configure. Right now we just want to setup Exchange to use the business email address service.
Click on the next button to continue.
Exchange needs three DNS records to work. You will be able to see them on the next screen.
Once again, you will need to go to your domain’s DNS settings page and add these records individually.
Here is what each of these DNS records does.
First, you have an MX record, which provides instruction on where to deliver the email messages. After that, you have a TXT record, which helps prevent someone from spoofing your email to send spam. Lastly, you have a CNAME record which let’s software like Outlook discover and connect to an email service.
Now if your website already had an MX record, then it would be replaced with this one. This makes sure that you can use Outlook’s mail servers to send and receive emails from your custom domain email address.
Once you have entered all DNS records, click on the verify button. Office 365 will now check your domain DNS settings. If everything is in the order, then you will be redirected back to the domains page.
You have successfully setup your domain name to work with Outlook.
You are now ready to create your custom domain email address using Outlook.com.
Adding Custom Branded Email Address in Outlook.com
From your Office 365 dashboard, go to Users » Active Users and then click on Add a user button.
On the next screen, you need to provide the user’s personal information and then choose an email address for them.
Next, click on the add button to save your settings.
You can now login using the email address and password you created in the earlier step to use your new professional branded email with Outlook.com.
You can also install Office 365 apps on your Mac and PC including Outlook. This will allow you to use your branded business email address with offline access via Outlook app.
We hope this article helped you learn how to set up a professional branded email address with Outlook. You may also want to see our article on how to how to set up a professional email address with G Suite and Gmail.
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I have a Professional Branded Email Address hosted by gmail. I’d like to switch it over to be hosted by outlook. is this possible?
I don’t want my emails interrupted for any length of time, and I’d like to keep my history if possible.
Any advice?
Once you change the DNS settings for your domain it would swap from Gmail to Outlook for you with the main possible downtime being any caching active which you should be able to clear.
Thank you for the guidance.. It does work.
You’re welcome, glad our guide was helpful
Gsuite actually charges $12 per month for business accounts and is unlimited storage space. I have it. So, just to clarify price on that if you are looking for budget purposes.
Thanks for letting us know about that section needing to be updated
I need a catch-all alias to be sure to receive all the email addresses How do I set up with a live domains
hi i already purchased a domain with is it possible to use that domain to setup an email with Outlook or do i need to purchase another one?
To add to my earlier query, I would like to have my own domain name. Can help to create it and have it linked to my website?
Esther
Hi, I like to create a business email address. Can you please advise?
Thereafter, I would like to create a webpage/website for the business..
Please advise. Thank you.
Esther
Hi Esther,
Please take a look at our guide on how to set up professional email address with Google Apps and Gmail.
how much does it cost?
i want to create bussiness mail id plz help me
For bussiness e mail address I have to pay?
I do not work for over year . It’s hart for me to generate any money at all ..
I’m over sixty eight I have chance to get a contract only if I will have my company e-mail address.
I have no extra money to pay for e-mail .
I have only money for the rent not even for the food..
please to understand me.
Jan.
You can also get a business email address with Gmail. They are offering one month free trial that you can use.
What is the maximum email capacity which we can send through this service?
Hi, is this for free?
I have already my own domain name and want to create email id for my organization, needs technical support
Yes you can but both outlook and gmail now require a small fee to use your own domain name.
office 365 ain’t free?
i own a domain name but have not built a website yet. Can I still create a business email address using my domain name? Can I use OUTLOOK or GMAIL for this ?
Hi Syed,
Me too want to know the details about the below screenshot. Is this will be problem to us with the existing emails and email IDs.
Pls help us, as we are newbies and can’t understand Microsoft’s technical explanations.
Thanks
Janarthanan
it doesn’t offer the free service anymore ☹
UPDATE: Microsoft is no more offering this service.
Microsoft has pulled the plug on this.
I’ve setup a petition to Microsoft to allow us to keep our accounts as is without migrating them to Office 365.
https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/microsoft-keep-current-outlook-com-custom-domains-as-is-without-forced-migration-to-premium-office-365-subscription
Thank you for this information. It was very helpful!
Thank you so much!! This is such a great guide to setting up a custom email. You helped me and my family’s Company to add a professional touch to our email services! I only have one problem and that is when I entered the new MX Record I was not aware that you would have to delete any existing Records in that area otherwise it will interfere with the activation of the account. Other than that I’m totally happy!
I need to know the screen shot. it will help us more.
How can I increase the mail ids limit from 50 to 500 for free?
Was looking for this! Perfect!
Hello, thanks for this tutorial, please where do I need to add this
v=spf1 include:hotmail.com ~all
its more than 72 hrs of changing my dns. but now also it is showing “You need to prove ownership of this domain by creating a DNS record. Use the settings below.”
This probably means your DNS records are not correctly set.
hey! nice article…thank you
Hi,
I set up the account following your instructions.Thanks
But I have this problem , i am not receiving any mails in my inbox. when i send mails from other accounts to this mail it is bounced.
i checked the microsoft support. looks like it is some internal problem and not a settings problem. people are reporting other issues with accounts.Microsoft says they resolved the issue. But doesnt look like so.
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/oemail-osend/my-outlookcom-email-account-is-not-receiving-any/02581144-c02b-4cdc-9132-98a8e0531ab1?msgId=2fd9d76f-6dfa-45bc-9a46-81e11265a7a1&page=1
R
Hi,
I am trying to setup emails for my domain. This tutorial is really helping me since I am a non technical person. I have set up my live account and I am getting a message ‘You need to prove ownership of this domain by creating a DNS record. Use the settings below’.
When contacted a person where I have hosted my site, he is saying that the settings displayed here are for CPANEL and my sited is on DreamHost. DreamHost has its own CPANEL and that doesn’t support entries like ‘Priority: 10 (or High priority)’ etc.
Can you please guide us to take this forward.
Thanks,
Ankush
Ankush dreamhost does support A records and Max records. For records ask the person managing your account to go to Mail » Custom MX in Dreamhost Panel. As for A or TXT records go to Domains and then click on DNS.
I don’t suppose you’d still be able to use this email for Google+ and YouTube account though, eh…. Better than nothing, I guess.
Thanks for the alternative!
Hi I set up my domain via Godaddy.com..and I already have my live mail set up. My question is: When I tried replying to the email my replies bounces back. what could be the problem?
seems like you have not correctly configured your site to use Outlook’s mail servers.
Hi- I did a setup of outlook.com with my domain. All seems to be working fine except i am not able to get emails from MS Outlook. If it is possible to access email via MS Outlook app please let me know.
Great article thanks.
We run a mail server and batch import mail into a sql server database. Would it be viable/possible to switch our mx to outlook.com and forward all inbound and outbound email to our mail server so that we can still import mail into sql?
Sounds doable. But make sure before you implement it.
Hi, I just created an outlook email admin account with my own domain name. i create 2 users. Will I be able to see the emails sent to the users I created? If so, how do I enable that feature? Thank you
Great article by the way. Thanks.
Now showing it
You can create up to 50 accounts in your domain.
How to create 500 accounts
Contact outlook support for more accounts.
If you want users to use mail.yourdomain.com to sign in for email address, then you can create a CNAME record in your domain’s custom DNS settings or in cpanel’s Simple DNS Editor. Enter Mail in the Name field, and enter subdomain in CNAME field, e.g. mail.example.com.
this is not well explained. Could you please…
Using a subdomain will allow users to sign in to their accounts by typing in your domain name instead of outlook.com.
please how can i create the sub domain
If you want users to use mail.yourdomain.com to sign in for email address, then you can create a CNAME record in your domain’s custom DNS settings or in cpanel’s Simple DNS Editor. Enter Mail in the Name field, and enter subdomain in CNAME field, e.g. mail.example.com
…..Please can you provide a guide on how to create this? cos am using ipage and they said its not possible for me to have mail.businessname.com
thank you
Hi, thanks for your tutorial.
So after a week of waiting for the service to become active it is now saying that “Your service is suspended. Please make the required DNS changes.” Can somebody please help?
I’m having the same problem
Currently outlook allows 50 free Email addresses. If I need more Account then what is the procedure ?
Contact outlook support and they will extend your user account limit.
Very good article!!! It save me a lot of time
Thank you!
Hi I have a question, I bought my domain name off Godaddy, but I built the site and its being hosted by wix.com, I want to use my own domain with outlook so who do I update my mx and txt with godaddy or wix?
Hope to hear from you soon
Phil
Go Daddy if your domain is controlled by GoDaddy.
Thank you. I also got good email service.
Awesome post! Very user-friendly. This was almost effortless. I was up and running after about 10 minutes! Thanks.
Hi Syed, as said earlier I’ve done setting of my domains mails on outlook.com. Let me know how to configure this on blackberry and iPhone devices.
Thanks – Janarthanan
I want to view my old mails from my previous employers where we were using Outlook server. I have those .pst data files in my external hard disk. But don’t know how to configure them in Outlook 2013. Could any one please help me on the step by step guide. thanks.
Guys the New UI of outlook is tooooo slow. While loading it makes my PC also slow. Outllook can compete Gmail but will loss badly only due to his loading speed.
Check your computer. Due to the new Gmail compose debacle, I have been testing Outlook.com for the past few months in case Google makes the change permanent and mandatory. The only reason I don’t make the switch now is six years of company emails in twenty accounts. Not to mention everything that lives in Google Drive.
The Outlook UI is vastly superior to Gmail even without consideration of the new compose.
I already have an email account on Google Apps, if I were to move to Outlook, what would happen to emails that I already have in my existing accounts on changing the MX record ? Do I have to transfer my emails from google apps to outlook?
Thank you. I have successfully setup my professional email.
But can I go to mail.mydomain.com to check mail or must I go to outlook.com every time?
Hi,
I followed the steps and everything went fine. But when I started using the email, I can send emails, but not receive them. Any idea what can be the issues?
Thanks!
I have the exact same problem. help
Hi Ana,
Have you got the solution, did your mail work fine on both send & receive ways!
If you got the solution pls let me know.
Thanks
Hi Ana,
Did you get solution to your problem? Are you able to send/receive from your new email account. Please guide us as well.
Thanks,
Ankush
Hi! I finally finally got to the last part.. I had to login using my old @live.com account, I never saw the DNS options when trying to signup using just my domain name http://hempconnection.net
Anyways I was able to create an info@ email for my domain, but now where do I go to login? I tried mail.mydomain.net and I just see the last page I was on showing the emails I created, but not able to actually access my new email
Screw this, Outlook and Microsoft sucks… I’ve been trying for 3 hours.. this is freaking ridiculous
Me too, I’ve been trying for 3 days using chrome, maybe I should try using I.E.
Hi Syed,
I have my website already set up at windows live admin center and the emails are already in use by users.
But now i planned to migrating my domain from godaddy to a Blue Host (i came to know about the cheapest and best service of this host by reading your site), what should i do so the emails will not be deleted and users can continue using the same mails.
Pls give me clarification thru email or on you blog. It will be very helpful for me and all others.
Thanks in advance
Janarthanan
In your bluehost account setup the MX records. Then do the transfer, and it will work.
Hi Buddy, Thanks for the info. But i’ve a doubt, before transfering a domain from Godaddy how can i setup MX records in Bluehost for the same domain. PLs explain as i was a newbie on this field.
Thanks
In the DNS settings in your Bluehost cPanel, you can specify MX records. Bluehost support will be able to help you with this.
Hi Syed,
Thanks for your info, i followed your tuts, also as per your comment i get details from Blue Host too. Now i successfully transferred my domain. And all my emails associated to it (functions on outlook.com) work fine.
Thanks once again for your great tuts.
Janarthanan
Hi I set up my professional mail on outlook.com, it’s work fine for about a month but now when I send email to client it alway have hotmail_77425feceaf13aa1@live.com on behalf of my email, pls advise how to remove (hotmail_77425feceaf13aa1@live.com on behalf of my email)
hope to hear soon
all the best
Please contact outlook support, they would be able to help you better.
Guys,
Be careful when trying to create a “professional” email account that uses your domain; particularly when using Microsoft Outlook/Live/Hotmail…. It will send your email to the recipient, on receipt of your email the recipient will see “hotmail [a random number]@live.com ON BEHALF OF yourname@yourdomain,com”. This is not professional at all. Its actually less embarrassing than using a regular free @hotmail.com.
O, and Microsoft has no plans to correct this! I’ve tried several forums and made multiple requests.
All the best.
This isn’t true as far as I can tell. I have a couple of domains that use Outlook.com and all of them send as the actual sender. No ‘On Behalf Of’ appears anywhere – either in From: or even hidden in the message headers.
Now that Google isn’t offering a free version of Google Apps, Outlook.com is still your best bet for setting up a free, non-pop, e-mail system that can use your own domain.
Ed
Are u sure about this, does yourname@yourdomain.com not appear in the recipient mail?
Thanks for posting this Mohamed. There is no way I plan on using this now.
If you follow the directions and confirm that your DNS is configured properly and you are not sending your email through your live account as an alias of your professional domain, then this does not happen. I have mine setup and it works just fine. I have seen similar issues on Google Apps as well, but it is always due to mis-configuration.