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How to Setup a Custom Branded Email Address with Outlook (Office365)

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Are you looking to set up a professional branded email address with Outlook?

The Microsoft 365 Business Premium plan allows you to use your domain name to create a business email address using Outlook. It provides a more professional look when sending emails, and you get powerful features like spam protection and better security.

In this article, we will show you how to set up a custom branded email address with Outlook.

How to add Branded Email with Outlook

What Is a Professional Branded Email Address?

A professional email has your business name in it. For example, ‘support@yourdomain.com’ is a professional email address. By contrast, ‘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 companies.

This will 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 or 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 professionally branded email address with Outlook.com, then you will need to sign up for a Microsoft 365 Business Premium account.

It is a paid service starting from $6.00 per user/month. It includes 1 TB of OneDrive storage and the latest versions of Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for your PC or Mac.

At WPBeginner, we use and recommend Workspace or G Suite by Google for business email addresses because they are more cost-effective. We also prefer 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 Microsoft 365

First, you need to visit the Microsoft 365 website and sign up for the ‘Microsoft 365 Business Premium’ subscription.

It is the only subscription that includes support for custom domains. To start, simply click the ‘Buy Now’ button.

Select the Microsoft 365 business premium account

You will have to enter your email address in the next step. This could be your existing work or school email.

Once you’ve entered the email, click the ‘Next’ button.

Enter your email address

It will then check if the address is already associated with a Microsoft account or if you need to create a new one.

Next, you will be asked to provide personal information, like your name, business phone number, company name, company size, and country.

After entering these details, go ahead and click the ‘Next’ button.

Enter your personal details

On the next screen, you’ll need to verify your business phone number.

You can select to receive a text message or receive a phone call to get the verification code.

Get verification code

After verification, you will be asked to enter a password and domain name.

You can click the ‘Next’ button when you’re done.

Enter password and domain name

From here, you’ll need to select the number of Microsoft 365 Business Premium accounts you want.

After that, click the ‘Add payment method’ to continue.

Add payment details

Microsoft will now ask you to select a payment method, like a credit card.

Go ahead and enter the payment details to complete the signup process.

Add a payment method

After that, you will land on the Office 365 dashboard.

Setting Up Outlook Email with Custom Domain

In the dashboard, you’ll see different tools and apps offered by Microsoft under the Office 365 suite.

The left-hand sidebar is filled with shortcuts to the various services and apps that you get access to with your subscription.

Office 365 portal

Next, you can click the ‘Apps’ option from the sidebar menu.

More tools will now appear under Apps. Go ahead and select the ‘Admin’ option.

Select apps and go to admin

Next, you will see the ‘Microsoft 365 admin center’ at the top of the page.

From here, you can select the ‘Set up email with a custom domain’ option.

Set up email with custom domain

After that, a popup window will open where you’ll be asked to use an existing domain or buy a new one.

Simply click on the ‘Use a domain you already own’ button.

Select use a domain you already own

After that, a setup wizard will open to help you configure a custom domain with Outlook.

The first step will give you an overview of the steps you need to follow. Go ahead and click the ‘Continue’ button at the bottom.

Continue from the overview page

On the next screen, you will be asked to enter the domain name you want to set up.

After entering the domain name, click on the ‘Continue’ button.

Enter your domain name

Microsoft will now look up your domain name.

After that, it will ask you to verify ownership by adding information to your domain’s DNS settings.

Verify ownership of your domain

To do this, you need to open a new tab or window in the browser and go to your domain’s settings page. Depending on your domain registrar, this page will be located in 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 in your cPanel dashboard labeled as ‘Zone Editor’ or ‘DNS Zone Editor.’

Note: If you are a SiteGround user, you will not have cPanel. You will find this in the Domain section of your Site Tools dashboard.

For this tutorial, we will be using the Bluehost dashboard. To begin, you can go to Domains » My Domains from the menu on your left. Then click the ‘Manage’ dropdown menu and select ‘DNS.’

Open DNS settings in Bluehost

Next, you will have to scroll down to the ‘TXT’ section in the DNS settings.

Go ahead and click the ‘Add Record’ button.

Add a TXT record

From here, you’ll need to enter the TXT details. These include the host record, TXT value, and TTL time.

You can easily find this information in the Microsoft Office 365 tab.

Once you’ve added the details, click the ‘Save’ button.

Enter TXT details

When adding a DNS record, make sure that the information you enter matches the information displayed by Office 365.

Next, you need to switch back to the Microsoft Office 365 admin portal and click on the verify button.

Verify your domain

Office 365 will now check for DNS records to verify that you own the domain name. DNS verification can take 5 – 10 minutes because, sometimes, your DNS settings will not be updated right away.

After verification, you will be asked to set your new branded email address. Once that’s done, simply click the ‘Update and sign out’ button.

Enter your branded email address

Next, you’ll need to sign in again using the new branded email address you just added.

Once logged in, you’ll see more records to add to your domain and connect to Outlook email.

The email exchange needs three DNS records to work with, including an MX record, a CNAME record, and a TXT record.

Add more records to your domain

Once again, you will need to go to your domain’s DNS settings page and add these records individually.

First, you have an MX record, which provides instructions on where to deliver the email messages. In Bluehost, go to your website’s DNS settings and add a new MX record.

Add MX record in Bluehost

If your website already had an MX record, then it will be replaced with this one. This ensures that you can use Outlook’s mail servers to send and receive emails from your custom domain email address.

After that, you have a TXT record, which helps prevent someone from spoofing your email to send spam.

Add a new TXT record

Lastly, you have a CNAME record, which lets software like Outlook discover and connect to email service.

Simply add a new CNAME record in Bluehost and enter the details from the Microsoft dashboard.

Add CNAME record

Once you have entered all DNS records, you can go back to the Microsoft Office 365 tab and click the ‘Connect email’ button.

Office 365 will now check your domain DNS settings. Note that it could take 24 – 48 hours for TXT records to be verified.

Add more records to your domain

Once everything checks out, you’ll reach the end of the setup.

In the last step, you’ll see a summary of your configuration. Go ahead and close the setup wizard.

That’s it! You have successfully set up your domain name to work with Outlook.

Adding Custom Branded Email Address in Outlook

You are now ready to create custom domain email addresses using Outlook.

From your Office 365 dashboard, go to Users » Active Users.

Add a new user

Next, you’ll see a list of your active users.

Go ahead and click the ‘Add a user’ option.

Add a new user to active users

On the next screen, you need to provide the user’s personal information and then choose an email address.

After entering the details, simply click the ‘Next’ button.

Enter user details to create an account

Then, you’ll need to select a geographic location for your user and assign a product license.

In the Microsoft 365 Business Premium plan, you can assign up to 25 licenses. When you are done, simply click the ‘Next’ button.

Assign product licenses

Microsoft also offers additional settings for new user profiles.

For instance, you can select a user role and grant access to the Admin Center. There is also an option to add profile information, like job title, department, office, and more.

Choose optional settings for new users

These are optional settings, and you can leave them blank as well. When you’re done, simply click the ‘Next’ button.

Lastly, you’ll see a summary of the new user you just added. You can review the details, make necessary changes, and then click the ‘Finish adding’ button.

Review and finish adding the user

You’ve successfully added a new user and created a branded email address in Outlook.

You can now log in using the email address and password you created in the earlier step to use your new professionally branded email with Outlook.

Use outlook with branded email

You can also install Office 365 apps on your Mac and PC, including Outlook. This will allow you to use your branded Microsoft Outlook business email address with offline access via the 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 the best SMTP providers with high email deliverability and how to start a WordPress blog.

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Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi with over 16 years of experience in WordPress, Web Hosting, eCommerce, SEO, and Marketing. Started in 2009, WPBeginner is now the largest free WordPress resource site in the industry and is often referred to as the Wikipedia for WordPress.

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Reader Interactions

122 CommentsLeave a Reply

  1. Syed Balkhi says

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  2. shayne says

    i notice that some of the email i received came from contact@domainname .com or support@domainname . com , how can i create, use and send just like that? or they just put contact or support as the name of there email, like myname@mydomainname .com, did they just put contact or support on “myname” ?

    • WPBeginner Support says

      You can put the username as what you want the email to be as we show under the ‘Adding Custom Branded Email Address in Outlook.com’ section or there are tools for allowing multiple users to answer emails from the same email address.

      Admin

  3. Andrew says

    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?

    • WPBeginner Support says

      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.

      Admin

  4. Olivia says

    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.

  5. kelli stark says

    I need a catch-all alias to be sure to receive all the email addresses How do I set up with a live domains

  6. Refentse says

    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?

  7. Esther says

    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

  8. Esther says

    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

  9. Jan Oniszczuk says

    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.

  10. Abhijeet Waibhaw says

    I have already my own domain name and want to create email id for my organization, needs technical support

  11. pze100@gmail.com says

    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 ?

  12. Janarthanan says

    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

  13. Katie says

    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!

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