Host Your Domain E-mail for Free

Though it is well known to tech world, still lot of people don’t know about it, so I wanted to come up with this article.

As earlier said in one of my articles, lot of organizations are still using the e-mail of Yahoo, Hotmail, Rediffmail, and Gmail though they can opt for their own e-mail like info@TheOrganization.Com. Recently, I have come across a University website where departments using the free Yahoo IDs like SomeUniversityRegistrar@yahoo.com, SomeUniversityAdmissions@yahoo.com, etc., though they are hosting their website. This is because of expenses associated with hosting the e-mail server, I think.

RediffmailPro offers 5 e-mail IDs of I GB storage at Rs. 1695 (approx. $36)/per year and GoDaddy offers 5 e-mail IDS of 1 GB storage at $19.99/per year.

Microsoft and Google are offering free e-mail hosting for domains called "Windows Live Custom Domains" and "Google Apps for Your Domain" respectively.

Windows Live Custom Domains
WLCD offers unlimited number of user accounts, each with an e-mail storage space of 2 GB and the mails will be hosted on Hotmail. Users have to enter their ID and password on Hotmail to login to their account. Users can use the same ID to access Windows Live Messenger and other services on the Windows Live Network.

Google Apps For Your Domain
Google offers limited e-mail accounts with 2 GB of storage space and all the features of Gmail. When I signed up, I opted for 100 e-mail accounts and I got 100. I came across a webmaster’s forum saying that 250 users will be the maximum limit of free e-mail accounts. Also, GAFYD offers mailing list and ‘catch-all address’ options.

Now getting your own email ID is very cheap, less than $10 or Rs. 460 per year.

Signup for Windows Live Custom Domains here: http://domains.live.com/
Signup for Google Apps for Your Domain here: https://www.google.com/a/