Email hosting for home

hellarda · 29 Jun 2015 at 14:11

Hi all,

We are moving away from Plusnet and getting FTTP but currently we use @xxxxx.plus.net emails and want to avoid having to move again in the future so will be buying a domain name and using emails with that.

Now my question is about email hosting, I have been looking at using Office 365 Essentials which seems pretty good for ~£3.10/user/month, however is it possible to use this in a home that is not a registered business?

If not are there other good email hosts around?

Thanks

Ali

Sin_Chase · 29 Jun 2015 at 14:23

I do not see why there would be any restrictions on Essentials for personal use and can find no literature about such a limitation.

hellarda · 29 Jun 2015 at 14:33

Sin_Chase said:
I do not see why there would be any restrictions on Essentials for personal use and can find no literature about such a limitation.

Perfect, I assume it will work with my own domain aswell? On the sign up site you have to create an account email (e.g. [email protected]), so If I bought a domain I could get it to use that email?

Glanza · 29 Jun 2015 at 15:09

The Cloud Exchange host we use at work I use for my personal email and have had 0 issues with them in the last year of it being hosted. Costs me around £2 a month for a mailbox with a 25gb limit on with unlimited distribution groups so I can catch who's giving my email out for spam.

hellarda · 29 Jun 2015 at 23:52

Ok so I've decided to go with Vidahost and office 365. Now trying to add my domain to 365 and its asking me to verify I own the domain by adding a TXT or MX record, I have done this on the vidahost control panel but office 365 can't seem to pick it up? I added them a couple of hours a go and it still won't find them?

Screenshots attached.

any ideas?

cheers

PistolPete · 30 Jun 2015 at 00:39

DNS changes can take a while to replicate. Wait 24 hours and try again

thenewoc · 30 Jun 2015 at 00:43

If you enter your domain name in the search at the top of the following page it will show what the dns records are for your domain. If the txt record you added shows up then it should be discovered by the microsoft process too.

https://domain-records-lookup.com/

hellarda · 30 Jun 2015 at 06:34

Yeah it doesn't show up on that...

asim18 · 30 Jun 2015 at 06:56

Looks like you have two MX records. The one with the highest priority is still forwarding mail to mail.vhdns.net which is vidahost. AFAIK you should have your MX records pointing to one mail server, it will only try a lower priority record if the higher priority routes fail.

Make a note of Vidahost's default MX record then delete it.

Priority of 3276 for the other MX record seems strange though. Where did it tell you to put 3276?

Also for the TXT record you need to take out the quotation marks ""

thenewoc · 30 Jun 2015 at 08:41

Yeah the vidahost mx record should be deleted. As Asim said, the priority on the other mx record is odd, as it's the only other mx record it would be better to change that down to 10. Am not familiar with vidahost's admin interface but do you need to click that update zone button for your changes to take affect?

hellarda · 30 Jun 2015 at 10:35

I only added the MX record when the TXT record didn't seem to work. The priority was on the Microsoft website and that was the value it said to use. I thought the quotation marks might be wrong but I can't seem to remove them, if I take them out it just RE adds them for me when I update the zone....

hellarda · 30 Jun 2015 at 18:26

bump, still nothing is working. I can't remove the quotes on the TXT record, have tried changing the priority on the MX but hasn't helped

bremen1874 · 30 Jun 2015 at 18:52

Neither the quotes or the MX priority should be a problem.

If your changes aren't showing up when you check using https://domain-records-lookup.com/ or a similar tool then O365 isn't going to see them either.

thenewoc · 30 Jun 2015 at 19:01

I think you'd want to delete the mail.vhdns.net mx record as it has the highest priority so unless the vidahost mail server was down the mx record to direct mail to microsoft wouldn't happen.

hellarda · 30 Jun 2015 at 19:07

Ok well they weren't showing up on https://domain-records-lookup.com/ earlier and now its saying no records were found for the domain?

Will give Vidahost a call in the morning

bigdunc · 30 Jun 2015 at 19:09

I've set this up a few times and had no issues. I only ever add just the TXT record and not the MX record. If they are not updating and being seen when you do a lookup on mxtoolbox.com then I would talk to the host in case there is an issue

bremen1874 · 30 Jun 2015 at 19:16

thenewoc said:
I think you'd want to delete the mail.vhdns.net mx record as it has the highest priority so unless the vidahost mail server was down the mx record to direct mail to microsoft wouldn't happen.

It doesn't matter for this purpose. As long as the MX record exists it should work. Microsoft's own instructions tell you to use a lower priority than any live MX records to avoid delivery problems to any existing mail servers.

Uhtred · 30 Jun 2015 at 19:59

I've sometimes seen hosts who have two dns control panels if say, for example, you have Web hosting with them as well as a domain registration.

As above mx toolbox will tell you what is what

Caged · 30 Jun 2015 at 20:46

Are you sure you are changing the zone on the correct name server?

hellarda · 30 Jun 2015 at 23:30

Caged said:
Are you sure you are changing the zone on the correct name server?

Mxtoolbox and the other link above are both saying the domain doesn't exist?

I can't see a different DNS page and I can't see any option to change it on specific nameservers