Office 365 is a subscription service offered by Microsoft to provide productivity tools like Skype for Business, Office applications, hosted Exchange emails and online file storage offered in OneDrive for Business. Office 365 offers various plans to cater for business needs both small and enterprise. They are paid a subscription on a pay as you go model billed monthly or annually.
In this how-to article, we shall cover how to set up email hosting with Microsoft office 365.
Overview
Today almost half of all emails are opened from mobile devices according to Litmus Software research. From that information, you can see how important the email has become in recent times. Some of the benefits of having a hosted email solution include-
- Creating a brand name – by using a hosted email platform, you convey a kind of professionalism that isn’t common. Thus, more people trust your brand, and your revenue grows.
- More security – Your system administrators worry less about the details they are sending, and they tend to focus on the business process. Besides, email hosting solutions tend to have firewall protection besides other secure protocols enabled to keep out unauthorized access.
- More storage – By using scalable resources, hosted email providers keep all your data within your reach
- Besides emails, you can schedule a meeting, share documents and contact calendars.
With office 365 you only need the following to use it:
- Your domain name
- Access to your DNS records
How to set up a hosted email solution with Microsoft office 365
Sign up for office 365
To get started, create an account at the Office site. Click on get office.
The site prompts you to choose between the home and business versions. Choose your version and continue. Next, you have to input your desired user ID. When you enter your first name, the company details are filled automatically. The good thing is that Microsoft gives all new users a companyname.onmicrosoft.com address if you do not have any domain. You can replace the address with your domain name. After all the signing up, you are logged in to your account.
Click Admin, and you have access to admin center. Enter your mobile number and a secondary email address. This is for security in case you lose access to your account.
Configure Office 365 Business Premium
Click on the Go to setup.
Next, click on set up mail get started.
You can use your companyname.onmicrosoft.com email address right away, but since we want to make it look professional, we have to change it to our domain name. You can connect your domain at the first option.
Enter your domain name and select the options that suit you with regards to email and website. Click next.
Confirming your domain name
You can click the left-hand side of the Admin center and go to the homepage. Navigate to setup and click Domains. If you had added your domain name at the setup email process, you would see your domain name here; if not, you can always add a domain.
Next, click your domain name and hit the start setup button.
Next, click select your DNS Host to choose your domain registrar name from the list. Then click verify.
If you can’t find the registrar, you can add them manually. To manually add the TXT records, go to your DNS host and copy the values displayed. The TXT records prove to Microsoft that you are the owner of the domain.
Click on verify then Next. You can then proceed to update your DNS records. This makes sure that your outlook connects to the right server to set up instant messaging.
Office 365 will ask you for DNS records so that it can manage them for you. However, if you own an existing website, it’s recommended to click No. Finally, select the services you want to use with your domain. Office 365 shows your DNS records required so that office can synchronize with your domain.
If you would like to buy a domain, you can purchase one on the sport by clicking the buy domain button.
A new window opens, enter the domain name you want, and if it’s available, you can buy and use it.
Congratulations, you are now set up to start using Office 365.
Adding a user
Just click on the left-hand side and click users. A new window opens; you can add or delete types of users as you wish.
Enter the Name of the user, Select Location, and Domain. Assign a license and click Add to create the user.
Conclusion
You will now enjoy the features of office 365 as will your customers. Features such as co-authoring which enable online collaboration, chatting with coworkers, turning data to maps, converting data to pdf format and lots of storage space among others will improve your productivity.
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