Goodbye Hotmail, welcome Outlook.com

Hotmail replaced by Outlook.com

The pioneer of online email has met it’s end. Hotmail, launched in 1996 and acquired by Microsoft two years later for 400 million dollars, was the first web-based email service to gain traction and still has more than 300 million users.

I completed a post about going to www.outlook.com a few mins ago.
Best move I made jumping from GApps to www.outlook.com. Using custom domains.

Mike Smit - Is there a free option using www.outlook.com with custom domains. Where do I set this up?

Franna said:

Mike Smit - Is there a free option using www.outlook.com with custom domains. Where do I set this up?

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Setup your custom domain here: https://domains.live.com/
Once done, it will show you the MX record config you need to do. The first one is sufficient to get your email pushed through to your custom domain.
Add your users. You have to log that user in for the Inbox to become active.
Profit.

Just waiting for IMAP and aliases to come to www.outlook.com and we will have a clear winner. Goodbye Gapps.

EDIT: If you add a user to your custom domain that already has an MS Live account with the email you trying to add, it will tell you. Just choose "Import User" and that user will be associated with your domain.

Thanks for the detailed instructions. With IMAP support it should support 2-way syncing of contacts and calendars.

Franna said:

Thanks for the detailed instructions. With IMAP support it should support 2-way syncing of contacts and calendars.

Click to expand...

Correct. As well as folders.
If you setup your outlook.com account to pull your gmail data using POP3 you only get Inbox and Sent Items which is not enough.
I use folders a lot so this did not work.

I ended up using Outlook 2010 (Outlook 2013 won't do this. Gives error).
Had both my new outlook.com account hooked up and my Gmail GApps account via Google Sync (ActiveSync). Simply copy pasted contacts and emails (including folders) into my Outlook.com account. Took a day or two to sync and had all my stuff at outlook.com. Stopped using Gapps now.
I never bothered with calendar as there is not much there. Easier to just add the few items.