Outlook.com to manage your own domain e-mail accounts. Forget Google Apps

I have been using Google Apps for years to manage my own domain e-mail accounts, and it works pretty well! … when you get used to their stream model for organising mails. And it is free, sorry, it WAS free.

Since Dec. 12, you have to pay 4 €/month to get the service. 🙁  This is NOT good news.

Yesterday I needed a powerfull mail-engine for a new domain that I bought. So I went out and saw what is out there. I found Outlook.com, former Hotmail service. Uhmmm.. Microsoft offering free service?? Let’s see…

They offer basically the same features as Google Apps plus some interesting advantages:

• 7 GB storage capacity in Skydrive (more than Google Drive).
• You can go back to the classic way for classifying mails in folders, not just tags like in gmail.
• The one I like most: you can edit MS-Office files in the Cloud like if you were in your Desktop computer with MS-Office Apps. This is a wonderful feature. Neither Dropbox, nor Google Apps can do that.

Here you can find a more deep comparison. I must confess that I have to test Outlook.com sychro with muy smartphone, but first attempts have been successful.

Up to now, I must recommend Outlook.com for those who need a free and powerful mail engine for their own domain, with excellent features.