Office 365 Email Account Licenses and Saving Money

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Apr 17, 2014 by Kevin Oppihle

Office 365 is, in itself, not an expensive email hosting product. However, its costs can add up quickly as your company expands and/or you add service email accounts. Here is a way to save a few dollars on those special email accounts:

External Send-Only Email Option(copier)

First, set up your free external service account email addresses. For example, I like to use GMX because it is free and you can use it for SMTP relaying. In this example I will set up an email address for my copier to send from:

domaincopierservice@gmx.com

This will avoid using an Office 365 account. I can then set up my copier to relay SMTP directly through GMX.

Note: you may need to open up SMTP from the copier to the outside. Additionally I would recommend you block SMTP from other IP addresses internally to avoid a malware infection that sends SMTP and blacklists your domain and IP.

Note: You may also need to whitelist or mark that email address as not junk. You can test the email address by composing and sending an email from the GMX.com inbox interface.

External Forward Account Option: (domain email address for external board members)

In my example, let’s say you have an external board member that does not receive email regularly however needs a domain address that you can forward to their main email address. For example accountant@yourdomain.com forwards to CPA@DoWeCheatemAndHowe.com without sharing the address CPA@DoWeCheatemAndHowe.com to the general public as your accountant.

To do so, follow steps below “The solutions is you set up a contact in Office365 using these steps” and in the examples replace:

domainfacespace@gmx.com with the example CPA@DoweyCheatemHowe.comfacespace@yourdomain.com with the example accountant@yourdomain.com

External Temporary Email Account Option: (temporary social media address)

First, set up your free external service account email addresses. Again, I like to use GMX because it is free. In this example I will set up an email address for me to relay my social media:

domainfacespace@gmx.com

Of course, you want your social media or other address to have an email address that matches your domain and you many not want to publish domainfacespace@gmx.com.

The solution is you set up a contact in Office365 using these steps:

Log on as admin and on the right select the dropdown on the right and select “Exchange

Select “recipients”, “contacts” and select “+” to add a new “Mail Contact

Enter in your information for the contact and save. I recommend adding “External” or “External GMX” as the suffix. (You will see why in the next step)

Select “recipients”, “groups” and select “+” to add a new “Distribution Group

Now enter in your information. By adding the “External”.. . on the previous step you can now use FaceSpace@yourdomain.com as the distribution email address. You will have to have an “Owner” for the group to add one click on the “+” to add one then scroll down.

After you scroll down you can now add the “Face Space External GMX” contact you just added as a member (recipient). Then select “Closed” for group membership options and save.

You can now receive email as FaceSpace@yourdomain.com and access it using the GMX console.

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