Outlook.com removing "custom domains" feature...

[slugg]

I just got this email:

Dear Outlook.com Customer,

We want to inform you of some important changes to the Windows Live Admin Center: As of April 10th 2014, Outlook.com no longer supports new custom domain sign ups. We appreciate that you have used this service and we regret to inform you of this change. This email will explain the upcoming changes and your options as a valued customer.

As a current customer, we will continue to support the ability to log in to Outlook.com with your existing custom domain email address, but as of July 31st 2014, you will no longer be able to add or remove accounts in your domain.

Instead, we recommend that administrators who wish to continue managing email addresses in their domain should consider Office 365 - Microsoft's premium online email service. By migrating to Office 365, you will be able to continue managing your custom domains, as well as benefit from modern enterprise-class mail, collaboration and communication tools.

We would like to offer you a complimentary 90 day subscription to Office 365 Small Business Premium for 5 users if you sign up before July 15th 2014. Office 365 Small Business Premium includes the latest copy of Office for your PC / Mac & iPad, 50GB business-class email, OneDrive for Business online storage and more.

You will still be able to log in to Outlook.com with your custom domain during your Office 365 subscription, and even if you choose to cancel your Office 365 subscription.

Am I reading this correctly? Does that mean that I can keep my existing custom email address and it'll be grandfathered in forever? With Google ending their free Sync service, this would mark the end of the good-and-free email providers. I has a sad. :'(

 

[holden j caufield]

i think you lucked out

 

[Crono]

Didn't even know that was a feature . Been using Google Apps for Business to host mine, and forwarding my Outlook and other email accounts to that.

 

[PliotronX]

Yeah they're doing everything to shove people into 365, killing off Exchange Server is next

 

[Genx87]

Yeah they're doing everything to shove people into 365, killing off Exchange Server is next

I'd be surprised if they killed off exchange server anytime soon. There are still a lot of business that wants to keep their data local. I mean they cant even kill off public folders

 

[PliotronX]

Maybe not kill it off completely but reducing features or support I can definitely see. Or they might jack up the CAL's to make 365 look more attractive. On the plus side though, 365 goes down far less often than ES. I was horrified to find out how ES manages memory and just shuts down when free system drive space reaches low levels and also "forgets" to restart services about 1 in 10 times after a rollup update.

 

[SunnyD]

/me hugs my granddaddied Google Apps Domain account

 

[Genx87]

Maybe not kill it off completely but reducing features or support I can definitely see. Or they might jack up the CAL's to make 365 look more attractive. On the plus side though, 365 goes down far less often than ES. I was horrified to find out how ES manages memory and just shuts down when free system drive space reaches low levels and also "forgets" to restart services about 1 in 10 times after a rollup update.

It shuts down services when disk space becomes low to preserve data integrity. I dont find it a problem at all. I'd prefer it shut down incoming mail than run out to the end of the disk and go completely tits up while email is stuck in a queue.

ES can be made to be HA. But it requires clustering. Most small shops won cluster because of complexity and cost.

 

[PliotronX]

It shuts down services when disk space becomes low to preserve data integrity. I dont find it a problem at all. I'd prefer it shut down incoming mail than run out to the end of the disk and go completely tits up while email is stuck in a queue.

ES can be made to be HA. But it requires clustering. Most small shops won cluster because of complexity and cost.

Good point, I'm just working on servers that unfortunately initially set up system partitions that are very tiny and I can only do so much moving of the IIS logs and WSUS to free up space to keep their ES going. When moving into clustering and all that good stuff, it makes more sense to just throw it in a cloud.

 

[fjmeat]

I just got this email:


Am I reading this correctly? Does that mean that I can keep my existing custom email address and it'll be grandfathered in forever? With Google ending their free Sync service, this would mark the end of the good-and-free email providers. I has a sad. :'(

I got this email too. From what I understand. We can keep our custom domains long-term.

I really need to know if we can still add or edit users within our domain long-term too.

 

[cronos]

/me hugs my granddaddied Google Apps Domain account

You can actually attach more domains to one account now, do you know that?

So if you have one of the old ones with 500 users or so that only has a few users, you could utilize the rest of the unused free accounts with a different domain.

At least that's how I understand it. I've never tried this myself.

 

[dougp]

I got this email too. From what I understand. We can keep our custom domains long-term.

I really need to know if we can still add or edit users within our domain long-term too.

I think this answers your question from the OP.

"As a current customer, we will continue to support the ability to log in to Outlook.com with your existing custom domain email address, but as of July 31st 2014, you will no longer be able to add or remove accounts in your domain."

So no, you won't be able to do that.

As for getting rid of Exchange? Doubtful. Office365 integration requires federation which a lot of companies are not comfortable with, particularly large ones. While I know the retention policy for Office365 is nice, I've never had the opportunity to work with any email recovery with it - but I highly doubt it's like DPM.

 

[drquest]

/me hugs my granddaddied Google Apps Domain account

Same here!

 

[Gooberlx2]

Didn't even know that was a feature . Been using Google Apps for Business to host mine, and forwarding my Outlook and other email accounts to that.

Ditto, though I had always considered Outlook viable a alternative if Google ever decided to pull the service for the grandfathered accounts.