>>A couple of my customers use the email server smtp.office365.com. Prior to this, I have never come across this type of the SMTP server.
>>I have a couple of questions:
>>1. Is smtp.office365.com an online email server that MS offers for $$?
>>2. I have a Family edition of the Office 365. Do you know if I could use an online SMTP smtp.office365.com or you need to purchase a different subscription?
>>
>>Basically, I am thinking that if I could use such an online SMTP (if my assumption is correct), I could resolve some issues that the customers come across.
>
>SMTP should not be an issue for pretty much all businesses and individuals:
>
>- Smaller: Their ISP should provide an SMTP "smart host", which may or may not require authentication, and which is included as part of their monthly fees
>- Larger: Will have dedicated IT support and possibly their own mail infrastructure. They can help if you can't get it working
>
>I can't recall any cases amongst my clients where I needed to arrange specialized SMTP support, it's always been available one way or another with what they already had.
>
>I work mainly with M365 business tenancies so I don't know much about Personal/Family plans. For businesses MS offers Exchange Online (EXO), either as a standalone product or bundled into various other plans. EXO normally talks to client devices/apps via web protocols such as Exchange ActiveSync. I believe businesses can enable SMTP support for legacy SMTP traffic but it requires authentication (M365 account credentials) to use and it isn't enabled by default (?)
>
>It looks as though Personal and Family plans get mail via outlook.com. Never having used it I don't know how it compares to EXO. There's an article at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-a-personalized-email-address-in-microsoft-365-75416a58-b225-4c02-8c07-8979403b427b .

Al,

Thank you very much for the detailed and helpful reply!