How to Set Up Microsoft 365 for a Small Business

Microsoft 365 Business is one of the most useful things a small business can invest in. You get professional email using your own domain name, the full Office suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), Teams for communication, and OneDrive for cloud storage, all tied together under one subscription.

Setting it up properly from the start saves a lot of headaches later. Here’s what’s involved.

What Microsoft 365 Business includes

The most common plan for small businesses is Microsoft 365 Business Basic (around £5 per user per month) or Microsoft 365 Business Standard (around £10.50 per user per month).

The key difference: Business Basic gives you web and mobile versions of Office apps plus email. Business Standard adds the full desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. For most small businesses, Standard is worth it.

Both include:

• Professional email with your own domain (e.g. yourname@yourbusiness.co.uk)
• 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage per user
• Microsoft Teams
• SharePoint for shared files

Step 1: Sign up and choose your domain

Go to microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/business and sign up. You’ll be asked to choose a domain name for your email. If you already have a domain (e.g. yourbusiness.co.uk), you can connect it. If not, you can buy one through Microsoft or separately through a registrar like 123-reg or Namecheap.

Step 2: Connect your domain

This is where most people get stuck. To use your own domain with Microsoft 365, you need to add some DNS records to your domain’s settings. These records tell the internet to route your email through Microsoft’s servers.

Microsoft provides step-by-step instructions for most major domain registrars. You’ll need to:

1. Log into wherever your domain is registered
2. Find the DNS settings
3. Add MX records, CNAME records, and TXT records as instructed

If you’ve never touched DNS settings before, this is worth getting help with. A mistake here means your email stops working.

Step 3: Set up email accounts

Once your domain is connected, you can create email addresses for yourself and any staff. Go to the Microsoft 365 admin centre (admin.microsoft.com) and add users under Users > Active users.

Each user gets their own email address, 1TB of OneDrive, and a licence for the apps.

Step 4: Set up email on devices

Once accounts are created, set up email on each device:

On a Windows PC: Download and install Outlook from the Microsoft 365 portal, then sign in with the business email address and password.

On a phone or tablet: Download the Outlook app (free on iOS and Android), open it, and sign in. This is better than using the built-in mail app as it handles Microsoft 365 accounts more reliably.

In a browser: email is also accessible at outlook.office.com from any device without installing anything.

Step 5: Set up OneDrive

OneDrive is where your business files should live, not on the laptop’s hard drive alone. Files saved to OneDrive sync automatically to the cloud, which means:

• They’re backed up automatically
• You can access them from any device
• If your laptop dies, your files are safe

Download the OneDrive desktop app on each computer, sign in with the Microsoft 365 account, and move your important files into the OneDrive folder. From that point on, save everything there by default.

Step 6: Enable multi-factor authentication

This is important. Business Microsoft 365 accounts are targeted by hackers because they often contain valuable data and may have payment information attached. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) means that even if someone gets your password, they still can’t log in without your phone.

In the Microsoft 365 admin centre, go to Settings > Org settings > Security & privacy > Multi-factor authentication and enforce it for all users.

Common migration question: what about existing email?

If you’ve been using a Gmail, Hotmail, or basic webmail address for business, you’ll want to move your existing emails across. Microsoft 365 has import tools for this, or you can forward old email to the new address going forward without migrating the history.

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Setting up Microsoft 365 properly takes an hour or two if you know what you’re doing, but it’s worth doing right. A misconfigured email setup can cause deliverability problems that are annoying to unpick later.

If you’d like help getting Microsoft 365 set up for your small business in Falkirk or the surrounding area, I can come to your premises and handle the setup from start to finish.

Find out more about small business IT support in Falkirk, or call 07944 156 453. No fix, no fee, 7 days a week.