Is Hotmail.com the same as Live.com?

(back to Send Email from Hotmail.com, Live.com, or Outlook.com)

Yes, hotmail.com and live.com are both part of Microsoft’s family of email services and essentially refer to the same backend infrastructure, although they originated from different services.

Key Points:

1. Hotmail:
   • Originally launched in 1996 as one of the first free webmail services.
   • Acquired by Microsoft in 1997 and eventually integrated into Microsoft’s email ecosystem.
   • hotmail.com was a popular domain for email addresses.
2. Live.com:
   • Part of the Windows Live suite introduced by Microsoft in 2005.
   • live.com became an alternative domain for Microsoft’s email services, allowing users to create email addresses with the “@live.com” domain.
3. Outlook.com:
   • In 2012, Microsoft rebranded its email services under the Outlook.com name, which merged Hotmail and Live into a unified platform.
   • Now, all Hotmail, Live, and Outlook accounts share the same infrastructure, and users with any of these domains access their email via the Outlook.com interface.

Differences in Domains, Same Platform:

• Users with “@hotmail.com”, “@live.com”, and “@outlook.com” email addresses all use Outlook.com to access their email and share the same underlying Microsoft account system.
• You can still register new email accounts with the @outlook.com domain, but older @hotmail.com and @live.com addresses remain valid.

While “hotmail.com” and “live.com” are different domains with separate origins, they are now part of the same unified Microsoft Outlook service.