Microsoft Debuts E-Mail Hosting Service
Free Web mail with massive storage may be all the rage, but Microsoft is taking a different approach with a new Windows Live service: bring your own domain. Users can point their own domain name at Microsoft and take advantage of the company's infrastructure and online e-mail interface.
As services like Hotmail, Gmail and others fill up with millions of users, it becomes increasingly more difficult to find available usernames. Microsoft's service, called Custom Domains, aims to free users from this Big Brother-like requirement by letting them pick their own domain.
Explaining how the idea was created, Microsoft's Custom Domains Team remarked, "Why not allow our great e-mail infrastructure be used for any user in any domain. Furthermore, why should a user have to buy from us or transfer their domain to us for us to run their e-mail. Out of this Custom Domains was born."
Setting up the service is a fairly straightforward process. Users create an administrator account and tell Microsoft which domain name to use. Custom Domains currently supports up to 20 250MB e-mail accounts, although this is a limitation of the configuration interface that will likely change.
Domain names must be purchased by the user beforehand, and the MX record of the DNS pointed to a Microsoft-supplied address.
The service does not currently take advantage of Microsoft's new "Kahuna" UI for Web mail, but it will migrate to the AJAX-enabled interface in the near future. Access to e-mail is enabled through the Web, although desktop e-mail clients are supported for a small subscription fee -- much like Hotmail.
Custom Domains is offered free of charge and will be supported via advertising like many of Microsoft's new Windows Live offerings. "Folks are asking what our plans are here so I'll state that this is the current model and we are sticking with it," the development team says.
Microsoft stresses this is the first version of the product, with many features and improvements slated to come. Integration with MSN Spaces is expected in a future update.