Microsoft is (Almost) Killing Custom Domains For Outlook.com
- Laurent Giret
- Nov 04, 2022
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36
Microsoft is discontinuing the ability for Microsoft 365 subscribers to use the Outlook.com email service with a custom domain (e.g. [email protected]). The company has started sending emails to Microsoft 365 subscribers to warn them that support for new personalized email addresses is going away on November 30, 2023.
Several users in our forums have received these emails this week, and Microsoft made the change official on a support page as well. The good news is if you already have a personalized email address in Outlook.com, nothing will change for you.
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“Starting November 30, 2023, Microsoft 365 Personal or Microsoft 365 Family subscribers will no longer be able to create a new personalized email address associated with their Outlook.com inbox,” the company explained on the support page.
Again, if you already have set up a personalized email address in Outlook.com, you’ll be able to continue using it until you remove it yourself. “After November 30, 2023, if you remove your personalized email address from your Outlook.com account, you will not be able to add it back,” the company explained. In that case, your only alternative to keep using Outlook with a custom domain would be to switch to a Microsoft 365 Business plan.
It’s not the first time that Microsoft removes the ability to use Outlook.com with a custom domain. For a while, Microsoft allowed users to do that for free with the now-deprecated Windows Live Domains service. Microsoft later partnered with GoDaddy to offer personalized email addresses to Microsoft 365 Personal and Home subscribers, but maybe usage was too low for Microsoft to keep offering this feature.
If you’re really interested in using Outlook.com with a custom domain, you still have a year to subscribe to Microsoft 365 and get the domain name you want to use on GoDaddy. A Microsoft 365 subscription also gives you other premium features in Outlook.com including an ad-free interface, 50GB of storage, and email encryption support.