Organizations of all sizes win customers and create trust with a consistent and recognizable brand. Web and email addresses that match your organization’s name build brand equity and establish credibility. If your business is called Fourth Coffee, a web address of fourthcoffee.com makes you easy to find online, and email addresses that end in @fourthcoffee.com reassure your customers that they are dealing directly with you.

 

Microsoft makes it easy to integrate your custom domain with comprehensive collaboration tools like email from Office 365. Let’s look at your options.

 

Purchase a custom domain with your Office 365 subscription

For organizations creating their online presence for the first time, Microsoft makes it easy to purchase a custom domain and integrate it with Office 365. This new domain will instantly be linked with your Office 365 account, meaning that all your email addresses will include your new custom domain where you can also host your website. You can purchase this new custom domain from Microsoft at the same time as your subscription to Office 365 or later.

 

We’ve posted step by step instructions on how to purchase a custom domain directly from Microsoft in our support documentation.

 

 

Automatically join your own GoDaddy or 1&1 domain with Office 365 (UPDATED)

Many organizations will purchase a domain as soon as they have a name. As they grow and implement more advanced IT solutions, it can be challenging to integrate that custom domain. Microsoft makes it easy to join some domains to Office 365 services through an open standard called Domain Connect. Domain Connect automates many of the manual processes typically required for configuring web hosting and email service. Microsoft has enabled this standard in Office 365 to make it easy to integrate your Domain Connect enabled domains with your Office 365 subscription.

 

We’re excited to announce today that 1&1, a leading domain provider, has integrated the Domain Connect standard. This new partnership makes it easy to integrate your custom domain from 1&1 with your Office 365 subscription. 1&1 and GoDaddy are the first domain providers to offer compliance with the Domain Connect standard, with more on the way.

 

If you’re currently using another provider for your organization’s email service, it’s easy to migrate those email addresses and messages to your Office 365 subscription.

 

Check out the support documentation for more on how you can automatically join your existing domain to your Office 365 subscription and migrate your messages.

 

Manually join your domain with Office 365

You can still join your custom domain with your Office 365 services if you did not purchase it from Microsoft or a Domain Connect compliant provider. There are a few more steps to take, but it’s straight forward. The outcomes and benefits are the same.

 

The support documentation contains a step by step procedure for manually joining your domain to your Office 365 services.

 

 

 

Easier to manage; easier to focus on your goals

Automatically connecting your custom domain with your Office 365 services is another example of how we want to simplify your IT management experience so that you can focus on your actual work. Join the Office 365 Tech Community to stay up to date on the latest news and releases.