So now for charities Microsoft will keep your mail on their cloud servers under your own domain name for free, just like Google did – and they are giving you space to save Office files created in their on-line apps with the added advantage over Google docs that the native format is the same as most NGOs are using on their desktops.

Apply on-line here … I suspect it helps if your organisation gets software already through TT-xchange (used to be CTX) because they’ve already done the checks. I notice faith-based groups are now eligible too.

The idea is that while they’re deciding about your eligibility you can be trialling it. If you’re confident, you can set up the lot – point the domain MX (mail exchanger) DNS records to their servers, set up the users. The trial is on their E3 scheme but when you get approved you have to move your users over to the E2 scheme as the trial ends in a month…. by which time you’ll know.