iCloud+'s New Custom Email Domain Feature Now Available in Beta

[Drachir2000]

Anyone who uses go daddy show me your settings? I am not getting it to work. Thanks.

 

[DotCom2]

I've got my domain name... not tellin' ya what it is. Oh okay, I'll give you a hint: ends in .com . Thank you, - this is soooo cool as I always wanted my own domain name but without the cost and effort of paying for my own unwanted website. Thank you MacRumours for informing me that this possible. I have been considering changing my ISP so I can change my e-mail to a more universal Apple hosted one with everyone for one last time in my life and not have the nightmare when changing ISPs.

To me, this is one of the biggest advantage of having your own domain name…never having to send out change of email address to everyone you know.

 

[thewhitehart]

Quick ?, have 3 email addresses with G Suite, tried to add all 3 to iCloud +. Mine worked (and is my Apple ID), wife and sons failed, says already in use with another Apple ID. Both emails are in my Apple family group.

read all 13 pages, not sure what to do. Want to use the stock email app for all 3 of us. Will Apple perhaps change their criteria during/after the beta? Thought of changing both their Apple ids that don’t use the email domain I have; but seems like a pain too. Any ideas?

This is the same question I have and will surely be relevant to anyone who wants to switch to iCloud hosting and has a family domain where family members use the domain for their individual Apple IDs.

 

[Pheelyx]

I see that some people are having luck adding their email address that is also their Apple ID but I keep getting an error message. My Apple ID is firstname@firstnamelastname.com and I get the error message of "There was a problem adding this email address. Try again later." I've tried skipping the email address part and completed updating the records and they were confirmed. I get the same error message when trying to add email addresses after the domain setup is complete. Maybe it's just overloaded right now or there really is some kind of restriction in place that you cannot use a custom domain email address that was already your Apple ID. I reverted back to Zoho but hope they get this figured out as I was really looking forward to moving away from Zoho. You really get what you pay for with them. I spend $12 a year for a Zoho account which is the same price I pay for iCloud storage so it would be great to basically combine the two at half the cost.

I changed my Apple ID to an email address that wasn't my domain and did get further in the process this time. I was able to add my custom domain email address in step 2 and received the verification email. I click the link in the email and it goes back to the iCloud beta site and looks to be doing something but then I get a popup error message of "Couldn’t verify your email. There was a problem verifying your email address. Try again later." Tried skipping step 2 and finished setting up the domain. Went to add the email address and now get the same error message from my first post. I officially give up for now. I normally wouldn't have even attempted this while it was still in beta but I figure this service will have the beta tag long after iOS15 releases so why not try now. I will try again this weekend in case this is just first day problems and being overloaded.

 

[lvanness7690]

Has anyone got it to work off of Squarespace? I'm having challenges linking the CNAME

Same here. It won't let me add the "." at the end. It's giving me "Not a valid host name".

Any suggestions?

 

[srbNYC]

Just tried with Squarespace, and leaving out the end periods seemed to work (in that the settings were accepted and seemed to "take")—BUT so far I'm receiving no emails from that address. Not the verification email, and not a couple of others I've sent from a different account. My work emails are not getting to me at all, even in webmail via my browser. Help.

(Also don't know about the "Personal TXT Record" that instructions say "was provided at setup." Didn't get that, don't know what it refers to, or when I was supposed to get it.)

 

[lvanness7690]

Just tried with Squarespace, and leaving out the end periods seemed to work (in that the settings were accepted and seemed to "take")—BUT so far I'm getting no emails from that address. Not the verification email, and not a couple of others I've sent from a different account. Now I'm scared that work emails are not getting to me at all. Help.

The settings take for me in Squarespace but I keep getting errors in iCloud settings. I'm not transferring an email over I'm just trying to set up the domain then add a new email.

 

[Bariwasmypart]

It all dumps to your standard inbox.

Unfortunately it doesn't look like that feature works with the iCloud custom domain name. Was hoping to move away from Gsuite for privacy reasons to iCloud. But any message to anything@customiCloud.com is undeliverable.

 

[tennisproha]

Any advice on deciding on a popular domain? All my name .xxx domains were already grabbed by others.

 

[okieoutwest]

This is an interesting addition but after how they’ve handled the issue of their approach to scanning for CSAM, I’m not convinced I want iCloud email hosting when it comes to privacy. I left gmail years ago and, while nothing is perfect*, went to mailbox.org for a balance of feature-set, not being the product, and staying separate from the otherwise sprawling Google and, increasingly, Apple ecosystems.

*mailbox.org is still based in a country that is part of 14 Eyes

 

[zenots]

My domain is at namesilo.com and I keep getting hung up on the CNAME portion. I copy the text as Apple provides it and get the error that it "must be a valid host." I have tried with and without the period at the end. Anyone else have any luck, or have any suggestions? Thanks!

 

[TonyC28]

In some situations it would just look more professional. Let's say you run a little yoga studio called "Half Lotus Studio" -- you'd be able to put on your business card "Annie@HalfLotus.com" instead of "Annie_Jones@icloud.com". Then with you can give your receptionist "info@HalfLotus.com" etc, and everything just looks more put together.

I guess this is where I’m confused. Couldn’t you already do “annie@halflotus.com” since you presumably already have “halflotus.com”? I’m sure it’s way easier than I’m making this out to be. I don’t get it but that’s probably why this won’t apply to me anyway.

 

[keenkreations]

My domain is at namesilo.com and I keep getting hung up on the CNAME portion. I copy the text as Apple provides it and get the error that it "must be a valid host." I have tried with and without the period at the end. Anyone else have any luck, or have any suggestions? Thanks!

The way that Apple has it is incorrect: Under the Cname, the first value “host” needs to be copied to name section, and the value would be under content section. Looks like you are using Cloudflare; I am using the same thing and I got stuck putting in this value until I read the forums here.
Basically, first column to fifth column— Type: CNAME | Name: sig1._domainkey (notice the lack of “host=“) | Content: (whatever the character string is after the “value=“) | TTL: Auto | No Proxy, DNS only.

 

[Jeaz]

I see that some people are having luck adding their email address that is also their Apple ID but I keep getting an error message. My Apple ID is firstname@firstnamelastname.com and I get the error message of "There was a problem adding this email address. Try again later." I've tried skipping the email address part and completed updating the records and they were confirmed. I get the same error message when trying to add email addresses after the domain setup is complete. Maybe it's just overloaded right now or there really is some kind of restriction in place that you cannot use a custom domain email address that was already your Apple ID. I reverted back to Zoho but hope they get this figured out as I was really looking forward to moving away from Zoho. You really get what you pay for with them. I spend $12 a year for a Zoho account which is the same price I pay for iCloud storage so it would be great to basically combine the two at half the cost.

I got the same problem. Won’t let me add email aliases.

an update: if I change my Apple ID to one of the apple ones (I chose iCloud.com) and then tried again and worked as a charm, including send as. I haven’t tried changing back again yet.

2nd update: so you can't have alias e-mails as your Apple ID, meaning you'll have to contend with having your Apple ID as one Apple default ones. This might change later on, but for now that's how it is.

I still can't add family addresses though.

 

[ipedro]

I’ve set up 3 domains. Is it just be or is there no option to send from the custom domains you set up? All the email from my custom domains go into the iCloud account but trying to send from iCloud sends from my @icloud.com account. I hope I’m missing something because that would defeat the entire purpose of having a custom domain.

EDIT: I’m able to send from my custom domains, but only in the iCloud beta web client, not from my iPhone or Mac.

 

[ChrisiMA]

I’ve set up 3 domains. Is it just be or is there no option to send from the custom domains you set up? All the email from my custom domains go into the iCloud account but trying to send from iCloud sends from my @icloud.com account. I hope I’m missing something because that would defeat the entire purpose of having a custom domain.

EDIT: I’m able to send from my custom domains, but only in the iCloud beta web client, not from my iPhone or Mac.

Lots of posters having that exact same problem in varying degrees… for me, sending doesn‘t even work in the icloud beta client… receiving works flawlessly.

 

[ipedro]

Lots of posters having that exact same problem in varying degrees… for me, sending doesn‘t even work in the icloud beta client… receiving works flawlessly.

Thanks, I’m just getting caught up on all the posts.

I’ve also noticed that everything gets dumped into the same single iCloud account. I’m willing to give it a try because I want to simplify my email setup and get rid of my email server costs but Apple needs to do better.

 

[kaardowiq]

I think especially this is a great benefit; everything unified in a single inbox. Just create filter on the iCloud email web interface to filter your needs.

At the moment my only problem is to assign aliases to family members.

 

[McCrypto]

I have set up the domain an email address: name@domain.com. Everything worked fine. Then I deleted the domain and email from iCloud and tested something else.

Now I have added the domain again and I have also added the same email address name@domain.com.

But now I can't see the email address and set it as sender address in iCloud Mail. So I can't send email as name@domain.com.

name2@domain.com does not work either.

 

[frumpsnake]

Works flawlessly for me. Two accounts, two domains, receiving and sending as work fine.

Migrated my email to iCloud and my Google Drive to Backblaze, I can finally close my GSuite.

 

[kaardowiq]

Works flawlessly for me. Two accounts, two domains, receiving and sending as work fine.

Migrated my email to iCloud and my Google Drive to Backblaze, I can finally close my GSuite.

Two accounts means two different iCloud accounts with Family sharing? Can you describe the process to set it up for a family members? I assume it's the same (beta.icloud.com, domains, and there's probably a selection of present domains?), isn't it?

 

[darkcompass]

Does anyone know whether this custom domain feature will give me calendar functionality or do I still need to use Google for that?

iCloud already has Calendar functionality, sending and receiving ical inviatations would be through email, so I expect that to work without any issue.

 

[Can Inelli]

I have set it up however it doesn't seem to work on Mac Mail Client? Anyone experiencing the same issue? I don't get to see my custom domain in the Mac Mail Client.

 

[Saturnine]

It's interesting, I just went to check and the poll option isn't even available on the accounts that I have on private email.com (Namecheap); the only place that setting lives is at the top-level of the mail settings now.

Anyway, I sent a mail to check and the email popped up on my iPad pretty much immediately (less than 2-3 seconds). So apparently they do support pushing mail. Funny how it's become so normal that it's not even mentioned in their docs.

Presumably that's been rolled into all the mail backends over the last few years.

And is that with the $9 a month e-mail tier? As I said, the higher tiers seem to use ActiveSync so I'd expect those to work fine with push, but the basic tier isn't clear.

If push is working on the lower tier I'll definitely have to give it a trial.

 

[BadMelonFarmer]

Unfortunately it doesn't look like that feature works with the iCloud custom domain name. Was hoping to move away from Gsuite for privacy reasons to iCloud. But any message to anything@customiCloud.com is undeliverable.

That is not how it should work... or could work. in your example you would need to register custom.com to you then change the DNS settings for custom.com to point the mail for custom.com to the iCloud mail servers.

you need to OWN the domain in the first place otherwise anyone could just hijack an email... eg tim@apple.com etc. you have to own the domain in the first place.