Using Outlook with existing domains
 

For years I have happily used Fastmail, mainly through the web page, with three domains and I'm very happy with it.

For reasons unrelated to service quality I am thinking of moving the domains to Outlook in my Microsoft 365 account but I'm finding it hard, as ever, to find clear and up to date Microsoft instructions.

My questions then are:

- may I move more than one domain to Outlook?
- is it essential to use Godaddy as domain host or are there alternatives?
- are there any pitfalls?

Thanks

The main disadvantage IMHO is that Microsoft's email systems are absolutely horrible at determining what is junk and what is not. With our business account I have to check the junk folder nearly every day to find legitimate emails coming from longtime correspondents that are in my address book and are not junk. I can mark them as not junk every time this happens and it doesn't matter, occasionally they end up back in junk. On the other hand, numerous actually malicious emails sail right through their filters and end up in my Inbox!

This 100%. Outlook is the absolute worst. Same experience. I am constantly finding legit emails in Outlook's Junk Email folder. To top it all off, items in Junk are deleted after 10 days.

Not that you did, but if you asked for my opinion I would ask you: Why in the world would you even consider moving your domains to a service that ruined a fine email service (Hotmail.com), changed their email domains often (Hotmail to live to MSN to outlook - did I miss any?), a company that doesn't have good customer support - all this FROM a company (Fastmail) that has been great in pretty much every way?

Thanks ReunenNY. It's in order to leave something more familiar and accessible to my wife when I die. Death isn't imminent but at a creaky 72 in a pandemic, it can't be ruled out. ;)

One of the odd features of Gmail is that they have inactivity settings you can arrange to notify trusted contacts and give them access to your account. Obviously, you can set that up yourself, but I have seen the chaos when a loved one passes and nobody knows how to deal with their digital life. I have set up my own system, but things change all the time so it must be maintained. For example, if you change a password you must update that someplace.

Thanks, TenFour. That bears thinking about. You're right about the passwords. I once thought about services like SafeBeyond but it gets complicated updating passwords of different services. In this case I was thinking of Outlook simply as something the other person is familiar with.

One thing I have done is to print out basic information and directions to leave in a secure location that family members know about and can access. One of the items is how to access my passwords. I hope with the printed paper someone will be able to seek help if they can't figure out things for themselves. I have some very tech-saavy people in my family and my wife would be able to seek reliable help. Strangely, we all worry about and read lots of stuff about digital security, but sometimes the safest and most reliable way to make something secure is by using something physical and not digital! For example, I keep reading about all sorts of problems with smart locks, while the old-time key seems to work fine for me and it is pretty foolproof.

Thanks, TenFour. Yes, I've got the paper/safe place/key sorted. What I really want is to let them hit the ground running with Outlook. We share all password details. Fifty years of marriage suggests I can trust that!

One thing you could do is setup desktop Outlook to sync your emails from any other service and then your wife would just have to login in to your local computer and she would have access to all your email no matter what service you are using.

It depends which type of service are we talking about. I have no experience with the Family version of Microsoft 365, but my experience with the enterprise package (tend to have Office 365 E3) is great. You get response within minutes regardless the day and the time zone you are. Indeed Spam filter needed a bit of training (report to Microsoft) but after a while it works similarly to my experience with FM. And integration of services with things like Sharepoint/OneDrive i quite useful. The only thing i looked back to FM, was send from an alias feature. No problem with a large number of aliases for incoming mail, but for outgoing still goes with the main address. But i see it implemented in Outlook personal and they claim this also will come to the business grade accounts too.

That's helpful to know. Does that mean you can also import a number of domains?

Yes. I only have 4 domains hosted there, and moving 2 more. Not sure about the main limit though - It is an enterprise grade service (check Microsoft website for Office 365 E3, it does not work as a top up to live/outlook.com as it is the case with Family accounts), not so cheap (you can find some better deals, although more difficult to find a good one in COVID time, likely due to a higher interest with Teams, Sharepoint and so on), but you get 100GB mailbox with unlimited archiving of messages, 150MB attachment size limits, and up to 5TB of storage (OneDrive/Sharepoint), not mentioning desktop versions of Office 365 Pro Plus.
Still have few accounts valid til 15.11.2021 (mail hosted in Microsoft DC in Norway), which I would be happy to share/sell at a VERY reasonable price.., icluding setting up the domain, username and some aliases etc.) to a user with the reputation at EMD.

At almost $400/year/user it had better be great.

In my experience using Microsoft 365 Business Standard you do get decent customer service via phone if you need it, but it can be hit or miss whether or not you get a skilled person who can help you quickly. Same with Google Workspace Standard level. The Google cs might be a tiny bit better, but neither is instant or surefire. Unfortunately, customer service/support is not something you can expect with most services these days, no matter what business.