Microsoft 365 Business Email Setup
Email on your own domain through Exchange Online — structured so shared addresses work, leavers are handled, and your invoices do not land in junk.
Anyone can create mailboxes. The value is in the structure around them: how accounts@ actually works, what happens when someone resigns, and whether your domain is authenticated.
Every Microsoft 365 Business plan includes business email except one. Basic, Standard and Premium all give you Exchange Online mailboxes on your own domain with 100 GB of primary storage per user. Apps for business does not include a mailbox at all. Shared addresses such as accounts@ do not need a paid licence, and the SPF, DKIM and DMARC records on your domain decide whether any of it actually reaches your customers.
Six things a proper email setup covers
Email on your own domain
you@yourbusiness.com through Exchange Online, on every Business plan including Basic. Microsoft states 100 GB of primary mailbox storage per user, with archive storage that differs by plan.
Shared mailboxes, unlicensed
accounts@, info@, sales@ as genuine shared mailboxes that several people work from — and that Microsoft provides without an assigned licence. Setting these up as ordinary user accounts is one of the most common recurring wastes we find.
Aliases and additional addresses
Multiple addresses delivering to one mailbox, including a second trading name or a legacy domain you have not retired. No extra licence per alias.
Distribution lists and groups
One address that fans out to a team, with membership you control centrally rather than a contact group living in one person's Outlook.
Deliverability that holds up
SPF, DKIM and DMARC configured on your domain so your invoices and quotes arrive in inboxes, and so nobody can send mail that appears to come from you.
Retention and archiving
Archive mailboxes and retention policy set to what your business and your auditors actually require, rather than left at whatever the default happens to be.
Mailbox storage by plan
As stated by Microsoft, checked 21 September 2026. The row that catches people out is the last one.
| Plan | Mailbox storage | Outlook |
|---|---|---|
| Business Basic | 100 GB primary, 50 GB archive | Outlook on web and mobile only |
| Business Standard | 100 GB primary, 50 GB archive | Outlook desktop, web and mobile |
| Business Premium | 100 GB primary, 1.5 TB archive | Outlook desktop, web and mobile |
| Apps for business | No mailbox at all | Desktop Office apps only — email lives elsewhere |
The full plan comparison covers what else differs, and the pricing page has the current INR figures.
Three DNS records decide whether your mail arrives
If your quotes and invoices keep landing in customers’ junk folders, it is almost never the content and almost always these. They are part of every setup we do, and they are the first thing we look at when an existing tenant has a deliverability problem.
SPF
Declares which servers may send mail for your domain. Without it, or with it misconfigured after a migration, receiving servers have no basis to trust you.
DKIM
Signs outgoing mail cryptographically so a recipient can confirm it genuinely came from your domain and was not altered in transit.
DMARC
Tells receiving servers what to do when SPF or DKIM fails, and sends you reports on who is sending mail claiming to be you. This is the one most businesses have never configured.
A migration is the classic moment for these to break, because mail starts originating somewhere new. Email migration covers how that is handled.
Six email decisions that are painful to reverse
Creating mailboxes takes an afternoon. These are the questions that determine whether the setup still makes sense in three years.
Shared mailbox, distribution list, or Teams channel?
All three are ways to handle a shared address and they behave completely differently. A shared mailbox keeps one copy everyone works from and preserves replies. A distribution list copies to everybody and loses the thread. Getting this wrong is felt every day by the people using it.
What happens to a leaver's mailbox
The usual answer is convert it to a shared mailbox, which releases the licence while keeping the mail accessible and the address live. Deciding this before somebody resigns is markedly easier than during.
Naming convention
firstname@ or firstname.lastname@ or initials — trivial to choose on day one and genuinely painful to change once it is on business cards, signage and three years of correspondence.
Whether to keep the old address working
After a migration, mail to the old domain or old addresses can keep being delivered for a defined period. Cutting it dead on day one loses enquiries from customers using an address they saved in 2021.
Who can send as whom
Send-as and send-on-behalf permissions for assistants, shared roles and directors. Useful and quietly risky, so it is worth being deliberate about.
Mobile access and what happens to a lost phone
Email on personal phones is normal. Whether you can remove company mail from one that is lost depends on whether device management is in scope, which is a Business Premium question.
Business email — common questions
helpCan I use my own domain for Microsoft 365 email?
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Yes — that is the point of it. You verify ownership of your domain, then mailboxes are created as you@yourbusiness.com. If you do not own a domain yet we will register one for you. Every Microsoft 365 Business plan includes Exchange Online business email except Apps for business, which is the desktop Office apps with no mailbox.
helpDo shared mailboxes like accounts@ need a paid licence?
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Generally not. Microsoft provides shared mailboxes without an assigned licence, and several people can work from one. Organisations that set these up as ordinary user accounts pay for each of them every month indefinitely. On an existing tenant this is usually the first thing worth auditing, and it is the easiest saving to realise.
helpHow much mailbox storage do we get?
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Microsoft states 100 GB of primary mailbox storage per user on the Business plans. Archive storage differs: 50 GB on Basic and Standard, and 1.5 TB on Business Premium. In practice mailbox size is rarely the constraint for a normal business — the constraint is usually somebody's fifteen-year-old PST file, which is a migration question rather than a storage one. Checked 21 September 2026.
helpWhy does our email keep landing in customers' spam folders?
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Almost always SPF, DKIM or DMARC — either never configured, or configured once and then broken by a change of mail provider, a new marketing tool, or an invoicing system that sends on your behalf. It is not a Microsoft 365 problem specifically, and it is fixable. If your invoices are going to junk, this is the first thing to check and it is part of every setup we do.
helpCan we keep our old email addresses working after moving?
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Yes, and you usually should for a period. Old addresses can be kept as aliases on the new mailboxes so mail to them still arrives, and a legacy domain can keep delivering alongside the new one. Cutting the old addresses dead at cutover reliably loses enquiries from customers working off an address they saved years ago.
helpWhat happens to someone's email when they leave?
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The standard approach is to convert their mailbox to a shared mailbox. That releases the paid licence, keeps the historical mail searchable, and keeps the address live so customers writing to it still reach someone. Without a documented process, what actually happens is that the account stays licensed and active for months, which is both a cost and a security problem.
helpIs Microsoft 365 email better than Google Workspace or Zoho Mail?
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For reliability and spam filtering, all three are excellent, and anyone claiming a decisive edge there is selling something. The real differences are elsewhere: Outlook's server-side rules and the desktop client, Gmail's search, Zoho's price. We resell all three and will give you a straight answer for your situation rather than a product line.
helpDo you set up business email for companies outside Kerala?
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Yes. Tech Geum is based in Kerala and works with businesses across India. Domain verification, mailbox setup, DNS and migration are all done remotely. Same-timezone support matters most in the week after cutover, which is when questions actually arrive.
Related pages
Email Migration to Microsoft 365
Moving existing mailboxes in from webmail, Exchange or PST files.
Microsoft 365 Email Security
Phishing, impersonation and the protection layer above basic filtering.
Microsoft 365 Implementation
The wider setup: tenant, identity, files and security baseline.
Microsoft 365 Licensing Explained
Which plans include a mailbox, and which conspicuously do not.
Microsoft 365 Pricing in India
List prices in INR, GST, and what drives your real cost.
Microsoft 365 Services
Licensing, implementation, migration, security and support in one place.
Google Workspace Business Email
The same work on the Google side, if that is the better fit.
Business Email Services
Our wider email practice across the three major suites.
Set up Microsoft 365 business email
Tell us your domain, how many people need a mailbox, and which shared addresses you use. We will come back with a structure and a fixed-scope quote in INR.
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Shared addresses set up as shared mailboxes, not paid seats
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SPF, DKIM and DMARC configured as part of the work
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A documented process for what happens when someone leaves
For retail chains, the most useful single change is a shared mailbox for each branch; how that works across Kerala and the Gulf is on our page for Microsoft 365 partner in Malappuram.
Prefer to talk first? Call +91 99467 89916 or email admin@techgeum.com.