If you own a domain, you can have Microsoft manage e-mail and instant messaging for your web address. Microsoft’s Windows Live Custom Domains allows you to set up for free up to 20 e-mail accounts using your domain name. I just set up mine a few minutes ago.

Each mail account gets the standard Hotmail inbox size of 25MB. After signing up, though, you only get 2MB of storage space, Hotmail says you’ll get the full storage size after verification, usually after a few weeks of usage. But if you’re from the United States, the free e-mail accounts come with 250MB storage space. You can then check your [email protected] e-mail address in Hotmail.

This is an excellent free service from Microsoft. I never used my domain for e-mails because the mails would eat up space from my hosting account. By letting Microsoft handle my mail, I can use my domain as e-mail address and yet not worry about e-mail maintenance or disk space.

I bought my domain from Ploghost, the company hosting this blog. Transferring my e-mail management to Windows Live Custom Domains took less than five minutes. At first, I got stuck in the process when I used Firefox. It was only when I used Internet Explorer that I was able to complete signing up for the service. I first logged into http://domains.live.com using my Hotmail e-mail account and I was given the MX details to enter into my name server.

I then logged into my Ploghost CPanel and clicked on Modify MX Entry under the E-Mail category. I then entered the address provided by Customs Domains and saved the setting. I went back to Custom Domains and clicked on Validate button and the MX Entry was confirmed to be correct. After that, e-mail service was immediately activated and I started adding accounts.

I went to the Hotmail site and signed in using the new e-mail address I created and I was prompted to change the password, enter a few profile details and choose from possible e-mail newsletter subscriptions. After that, I was redirected to the familiar Hotmail inbox, where I started sending messages announcing my new custom e-mail address.