Windows Live Custom Domains in 2024
How does this grandfathered product fare in 2024?
Introduction
Many, many years ago (around 2012 it turns out) Microsoft made it possible to bring your own domain to Hotmail and have your email serviced by them. Free of charge! I’d had this domain a little while and was fed up of the overhead of spam filtering, mailboxes, etc. In short - I wanted something that worked without becoming a mail admin. I ran with this happy for many years until Microsoft discontinued the service some years ago. Fortunately they kept it running for existing users and their mailboxes and I continue to be happy with this service to the present day.
How does it work?
Simples. You setup your MX records to point to Hotmail (mine points to 1440429857.pamx1.hotmail.com) an SPF record (_v=spf1 include:hotmail.com -all) and then there was an admin centre where you created mailboxes - long since closed. Lucky there’s only me here! Mail flowed in, you had spam protection from Microsoft, and the usual Microsoft Account too.
Third-party mail clients
Many third-party products (BlueMail, Edison and others) don’t understand the setup - they check your email address and see it’s Hotmail, but the domain name doesn’t match. It’s an edge case for sure.
My solution to this is to have an alias (following instructions here) and using the alias to sign in. Then, reconfigure the client to use your custom domain as the reply-to and from address. You’ll probably have to use an app password to for good measure.
Premium mailbox
I also purchase Microsoft 365 subscription to use Office because let’s face it - who doesn’t use Office nowadays? What was unexpected is that Microsoft have left the plumbing in place such that my Windows Live Custom Domain mailbox also receives the ad-free treatment and increased mailbox size. Neat!
Grandfathered
It’s no longer supported and you can’t set this up any more, nor can you add any existing mailboxes if you have it setup. What I did find was that if you had ever set this up, Microsoft left all the settings in place. I switched to GMail for a couple years, then back, to find everything was as I had left it - even after Microsoft had killed it as a product.