Hotmail, Outlook, Live and MSN Email Domains: One Service, Many Addresses

hotmail.com, outlook.com, live.com and msn.com are all addresses on Microsoft's free Outlook.com service. They are personal, not business, addresses, and they're received by Microsoft's servers. Unlike Gmail and googlemail.com, though, they aren't interchangeable: jane@hotmail.com and jane@outlook.com are different addresses, and can belong to different people.

That makes Microsoft's domains the opposite trap from Google's. With Gmail you under-count duplicates; with Microsoft you can over-merge.

How the domains fit together

Hotmail launched in 1996, Microsoft bought it in 1997, and in 2013 it was moved onto Outlook.com. Over those years Microsoft gave out addresses on several domains:

Domain	Origin	Status for new users
hotmail.com (plus country versions like hotmail.co.uk, hotmail.fr)	Original Hotmail	Still offered
outlook.com	Outlook.com launch, 2012	Offered
live.com	Windows Live era, mid-2000s	Legacy
msn.com	MSN service accounts	Legacy

Existing addresses on all of them keep working, so a list from any decade will contain a mix.

How their mail is routed

Every one of these domains hands its mail to Microsoft. We looked up the MX records on 11 October 2026:

Domain	Primary MX host
outlook.com	outlook-com.olc.protection.outlook.com
hotmail.com	hotmail-com.olc.protection.outlook.com
live.com	live-com.olc.protection.outlook.com
msn.com	msn-com.olc.protection.outlook.com
hotmail.co.uk	eur.olc.protection.outlook.com

Same infrastructure, separate address spaces. That's the key difference from Google, where googlemail.com and gmail.com map to the same account (we cover that in googlemail.com vs gmail.com).

Live data for Microsoft's consumer mail is on our outlook.com and hotmail.com domain pages.

Three rules for lists

1. Classify all of them as personal

A "work email only" filter has to know every Microsoft consumer domain, including the country variants: hotmail.co.uk, hotmail.fr, hotmail.de, hotmail.it, live.co.uk, outlook.fr and so on. Our free email providers list includes the main ones, with a CSV you can drop into a filter.

Don't classify by MX host. A company that uses Microsoft 365 for its own domain, such as jane@acme.com, has MX records at acme-com.mail.protection.outlook.com. That address is business. The rule of thumb: Microsoft-hosted custom domains are business; Microsoft's own domains are personal. More in business email vs personal email.

2. Don't merge across Microsoft domains

jane@hotmail.com and jane@outlook.com are two accounts unless you know otherwise. Deduplicate on the full address, lower-cased. Outlook.com also doesn't ignore dots the way Gmail does, so jane.doe@outlook.com and janedoe@outlook.com are different addresses too.

3. Watch for typos

Microsoft's domains attract more typos than most: hotmial.com, hotmai.com, hotamil.com, outlok.com, outloo.com. They all bounce. Our free list health check flags the common ones on every row and suggests the fix. More patterns in email typo correction.

Verifying Microsoft addresses

Microsoft's consumer servers answer mailbox checks, but they're cautious about who's asking. Their rules for bulk senders are strict. Our guide to verifying Outlook and Hotmail addresses explains what Microsoft returns for real and non-existent mailboxes, and why a check from a poor-reputation server gives unreliable answers.

If your list has a lot of Microsoft consumer addresses, also read Outlook's sender requirements before a big send: getting into Outlook.com inboxes depends on authentication and complaint rates as much as on clean addresses.

To check a list now, the free list health check counts typos, duplicates, disposable and dead domains on every row, with no signup. The paid plan checks every mailbox.