How to Set Up Your Email Client With Live.com's Mail Server

Wrong or outdated server in an old guide

If a tutorial lists only imap.live.com or pop3.live.com and it fails, switch to the Outlook-domain servers in the table above. Microsoft consolidated Live.com onto the Outlook infrastructure.

Warning: with two-step verification enabled, never paste your master password into a third-party client. Create a dedicated app password instead, so you can revoke just that client's access later without changing your main password.

How to Create an App Password (Step by Step)

Since two-step verification breaks older clients, here's the exact path to a working app password:

1. Sign in to your Microsoft account at account.microsoft.com.
2. Open Security, then Advanced security options.
3. Under App passwords, choose Create a new app password.
4. Copy the generated string — Microsoft shows it only once.
5. Paste it into your email client where the password normally goes, for both incoming and outgoing servers.

Each app password is single-purpose. If you ever lose a device or stop using a client, revoke just that password and the rest of your access is untouched. That isolation is exactly why app passwords beat handing your master credentials to every app.

IMAP vs. POP3: Which Should You Pick?

This choice trips up a lot of people, so here's the plain version. Both pull mail from Live.com, but they behave very differently once it arrives.

For almost everyone in 2026, IMAP is the right call. POP3 only makes sense if you deliberately want mail pulled off the server onto a single machine — an uncommon need today.

Mobile Setup on iPhone and Android

Phones are where Live.com setups go sideways most often, because the built-in mail apps try to auto-configure and sometimes guess wrong. If automatic setup fails, switch to manual and enter the servers yourself.

• iPhone: Settings > Mail > Accounts > Add Account > Other. Add a mail account, then enter IMAP imap-mail.outlook.com (993, SSL) and SMTP smtp-mail.outlook.com (587, STARTTLS).
• Android (Gmail app): Settings > Add account > Other > Personal (IMAP). Enter the same server values when prompted, with your full Live.com address as the username.

The Outlook mobile app is the smoothest option for a Microsoft address — it recognizes Live.com automatically and skips the manual server entry entirely. If you're tired of fighting settings on a phone, install the Outlook app and sign in.

Pro tip: if mail syncs but the Sent or Drafts folder looks wrong, your client may have created duplicate local folders. In the account's folder settings, map Sent, Drafts, and Trash to the matching server folders so everything lines up across devices.

Live.com, Hotmail, and Outlook.com: All the Same Backend

If you have an old @hotmail.com, @live.com, or @msn.com address, good news: they all run on the identical Microsoft consumer mail infrastructure now. The server settings in this guide work for every one of them — same IMAP host, same SMTP host, same ports. Microsoft merged these services years ago, which is why the servers carry the outlook.com domain even when your address ends in live.com. Don't go hunting for special "Live-only" servers; they don't exist anymore. The Outlook-domain settings are the correct, current values regardless of which of these addresses you hold.

Verifying Your Setup Works

Once you've entered everything, confirm both directions actually work before you trust the account:

1. Test receiving: send yourself a message from another account and confirm it lands in your client within a minute or two.
2. Test sending: reply to that message. If the reply goes through, your SMTP authentication is correct.
3. Check across devices: if you set up IMAP on more than one device, read the test message on one and confirm it shows as read on the other.

If receiving works but sending fails, the culprit is almost always SMTP authentication or the wrong outgoing port — revisit those settings. Catching this now beats discovering days later that none of your sent mail ever left the outbox.

The Bottom Line

Live.com mail runs on Microsoft's Outlook servers, so the settings are the same across every client: IMAP imap-mail.outlook.com on 993 (SSL) in, SMTP smtp-mail.outlook.com on 587 (STARTTLS) out, with your full address as the username. Enable SMTP authentication, prefer IMAP over POP3, and switch to an app password if two-step verification is on.