Setting up Outlook 2013 Web App

[theprog2]

Until now, all e-mails that I have sent from my x10Hosting account have been sent using Roundcube Webmail. Recently, I was exposed to the Outlook 2013 Web App, and seeing that I like it more than Roundcube, I would like to set it up on my x10Hosting account, but I am having two problems in doing this:

1.) How can I get the Outlook 2013 Web App
2.) Is it even possible for me to use the Outlook Web App? Research I have done says something about a Microsoft Exchange Server. What the heck is that?

I know this isn't really related to web hosting, but I would appreciate any and all help.

 

[essellar]

Short answer: you can't use it here.

Longer answer: The Outlook 2013 Web App is the web interface for Microsoft's email system, which otherwise consists of at least one each of Microsoft Exchange Server email server and Microsoft Windows Server, as well as the Microsoft Outlook desktop client application. (You can use other email clients with the Exchange server, but you don't get full functionality.) It's the sort of thing you'd use for the email system in your own organization, where internal communications between your users, scheduling meetings, and that sort of thing is the primary purpose; the fact that you can send email to and receive email from the outside world is sort of icing on the cake. The Outlook Web App lets your users access their Exchange email, calendar and the corporate address book without having to install the Outlook mail client application. In addition to the basic set of Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Windows Server, it also needs Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) and the .NET framework so that it can run the ASP.NET web application.

This host, and almost all free and most low-cost hosts, uses a flavour of Linux (in this case, CentOS), not Windows. The mail server is most definitely not Microsoft Exchange (and it doesn't have very many of the features that you'd expect or need in an internal corporate mail system), so even if the servers allowed running .NET applications (they don't, at least on Free Hosting), you would have nothing to hook the web application up to. The Outlook Web App is a program that allows the user to access the mail "on this server" (or "in this domain"); it's not a stand-alone mail client like Outlook that can be hooked up to other mail servers.

 

[theprog2]

Okay, thanks. I was not aware that the Outlook Web App was not a regular mail application. Thanks for that in depth explanation.