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

[MuGeN PoWeR]

So I have a domain through google and I am using Zoho mail for my custom email! Can anyone guide me how to add my email to iCloud? I have added the records to Google Domain and everything but when I click on finish setup it says

Check your MX record​

Make sure the settings that you updated on your domain registrar match the ones sent to you. If you just updated the information, try this again in a few minutes.


Any ideas?

 

[dhruveonmars]

Anybody having their emails go to Gmail Spam? A friend just told me mine went into their spam, even though we've emailed back and forth before, and might have since...

 

[lap1551]

Anybody having their emails go to Gmail Spam? A friend just told me mine went into their spam, even though we've emailed back and forth before, and might have since...

Yup - I’ve seen my emails, especially those with links (like forwards) get stuck in spam.

 

[dhruveonmars]

Yup - I’ve seen my emails, especially those with links (like forwards) get stuck in spam.

Managed to get that resolved or find a workaround?

 

[lap1551]

Managed to get that resolved or find a workaround?

I’m pretty sure it’s the DKIM alignment issues.

 

[dhruveonmars]

I’m pretty sure it’s the DKIM alignment issues.

Ah, gotcha. I thought that's what the CNAME for sig1._domainkey was for

 

[lap1551]

Ah, gotcha. I thought that's what the CNAME for sig1._domainkey was for

For some reason, the authentication is off. I believe it’s because it’s still returning iCloud.com, not your domain when authenticating. This is something Apple needs to fix. I believe, in many scenarios, this by itself won’t land an email in spam, but when you have what looks like a marketing email (links/images) it tips the spam score over the edge.

 

[jeutie]

I’ve noticed sending mails from the iCloud.com website makes the DKIM alignment being correct.

Anyone found out how to correctly configure DMARC to use with this as well?

Just tested a mail sent from the web interface with https://www.mail-tester.com/ and got a 10/10 score with only error/warning being no DMARC record being published.

 

[samwa3]

I’ve noticed sending mails from the iCloud.com website makes the DKIM alignment being correct.

Anyone found out how to correctly configure DMARC to use with this as well?

Just tested a mail sent from the web interface with https://www.mail-tester.com/ and got a 10/10 score with only error/warning being no DMARC record being published.

Depends on you really. Any DMARC record will do. For example:

_dmarc.example.org IN TXT "v=DMARC1; p=quarantine; sp=reject; rua=mailto:reports@example.org; adkim=s; aspf=s;"

Fine-tune it to your own liking. There's nothing specific to the mail server inside of a DMARC record.

 

[lap1551]

I’ve noticed sending mails from the iCloud.com website makes the DKIM alignment being correct.

Anyone found out how to correctly configure DMARC to use with this as well?

Just tested a mail sent from the web interface with https://www.mail-tester.com/ and got a 10/10 score with only error/warning being no DMARC record being published.

That is pretty strange. When sending from iCloud.com, DKIM authentication comes back green (through alignment is still an issue). When sending from an iOS device they both come back with an error. All of this should be sending from the same SMTP endpoint with the same config. Very odd behavior. Mail-tester.com seems pretty happy with the config though.

 

[jeutie]

Depends on you really. Any DMARC record will do. For example:

_dmarc.example.org IN TXT "v=DMARC1; p=quarantine; sp=reject; rua=mailto:reports@example.org; adkim=s; aspf=s;"

Fine-tune it to your own liking. There's nothing specific to the mail server inside of a DMARC record.

Thanks! I’ll try that out right away.

 

[offdwall]

Loving this feature. Being a small family business with only three users, this fit perfectly into our ecosystem since we already have a 2TB iCloud+ Family plan. I moved three custom domains from GoDaddy email to iCloud+, saving money and getting a much bigger cloud storage area to boot.

 

[offdwall]

Sadly, this is about as useful as a screen door in a submarine! Think about it...any personal domain email you set up gets dumped into the same inbox as your existing @iCloud.com email address. What good does that do? I use my @iCloud.com address for several things but I'd like to move my personal domain from Google Workspace, but this won't suffice because it's not treated as a separate account. I set up a test account to try it, just to make sure I was reading it right...I am. Everything comes to your one inbox. I supposed you could implement a filtering system using rules...but why bother when other solutions already exist.

There is a workarround. Set up a new, separate Apple ID using your me@domainname.com as the Apple ID. Then invite me@domainname.com to your Family sharing in your original @icloud.com account. Assign the custom email me@domain.com to that other Apple ID. Add the new Family member as an iCloud email account. You then have two mailboxes, your original @icloud.com and the other me@domain.com. Both are iCloud email accounts.

 

[frizby1966]

Solution to anyone with a Domain and no existing mail server.

If you have a domain parked and no existing mail server, (which means you cant verify any email addresses), then the solution (which Apple Support struggled with) is to choose the setup for family members but SKIP the setting up of email addresses. Then get the settings, put them in to your domain control panel settings for your domain and wait. Finished the setup on custom domains in your iCloud account and once completed, each family member can login to iCloud settings, custom domain and create their own email addresses WITHOUT having to verify them (which is impossible if you didn't have an existing email server).

PS (if not already covered). If you get an MX error when trying to finalise the setup, try adding the full stop at the end of the address value, or removing it (depending on the existing config).

 

[dhruveonmars]

Loving this feature. Being a small family business with only three users, this fit perfectly into our ecosystem since we already have a 2TB iCloud+ Family plan. I moved three custom domains from GoDaddy email to iCloud+, saving money and getting a much bigger cloud storage area to boot.

You may want to re-consider, as not having DKIM set up means emails can end up in peoples spam instead of their inbox. I've seen several of mine when sending links end up in the spam folder instead of the recipients inbox.

As much as I wanted this, I think I'll move back to Google Workplace until Apple can resolve this.

 

[cube4ever]

You may want to re-consider, as not having DKIM set up means emails can end up in peoples spam instead of their inbox. I've seen several of mine when sending links end up in the spam folder instead of the recipients inbox.

As much as I wanted this, I think I'll move back to Google Workplace until Apple can resolve this.

Same here – GSuite is up for renewal but unless Apple sports a Google-like deliverability, migrating is a no-go if you're serious about email.

 

[mstroiu]

Regarding the DKIM support, the team is aware of this missing feature.

Thank you for your message. The feature you are inquiring about is not yet available, but we are working on supporting DKIM signing for custom domains within iCloud Mail.

Best regards,
iCloud Mail Team

 

[samwa3]

Yesterday and today only getting my iCloud email, not my custom domain, to show up in Apple Mail on macOS... even though that was working fine for weeks now and no configuration changed whatsoever. Seems more and more to me that this feature should've maybe gotten in with macOS 13, and not this year.

 

[offdwall]

Yesterday and today only getting my iCloud email, not my custom domain, to show up in Apple Mail on macOS... even though that was working fine for weeks now and no configuration changed whatsoever. Seems more and more to me that this feature should've maybe gotten in with macOS 13, and not this year.

What kind (if any) error message do you get back if you try to send email to your custom domain from another address?

 

[kaardowiq]

What kind (if any) error message do you get back if you try to send email to your custom domain from another address?

Sending and receiving is not related. Therefore there isn’t any error when sending mail to the custom addresses…

 

[samwa3]

What kind (if any) error message do you get back if you try to send email to your custom domain from another address?

Yeah no problem there. All fine.

 

[offdwall]

Sending and receiving is not related. Therefore there isn’t any error when sending mail to the custom addresses…

I was trying to help determine if the OP's email was really NOT being delivered to his custom domain or he just wasn't seeing it in his inbox. ie if a sender saw an undeliverable message when attempting to send to that custom domain or not.

 

[samwa3]

I was trying to help determine if the OP's email was really NOT being delivered to his custom domain or he just wasn't seeing it in his inbox. ie if a sender saw an undeliverable message when attempting to send to that custom domain or not.

Sorry yes my wording was indeed quite bad and lacking. The emails deliver fine, have been since August. What is not showing up is the email address when for example sending a new email. In the drop-down it only shows my iCloud email, even though it has mostly worked for several months (except in the very beginning). But now since Friday or so, these addresses completely vanished.

Maybe this is fixable with some tinkering in the iCloud.com Mail app settings or by waiting for macOS 15.1, but what irks me about this is that it just happens without apparent reason and is not just a little quirk that is fixable by restarting the Apple Mail app or something... it just stays broken.

 

[offdwall]

Sorry yes my wording was indeed quite bad and lacking. The emails deliver fine, have been since August. What is not showing up is the email address when for example sending a new email. In the drop-down it only shows my iCloud email, even though it has mostly worked for several months (except in the very beginning). But now since Friday or so, these addresses completely vanished.

Maybe this is fixable with some tinkering in the iCloud.com Mail app settings or by waiting for macOS 15.1, but what irks me about this is that it just happens without apparent reason and is not just a little quirk that is fixable by restarting the Apple Mail app or something... it just stays broken.

Ah, got it. I did see that as well once. In Apple Mail, I just selected "Edit email addresses" from that pull down in Mail Pref that is "supposed" to show all the return addresses. That immediately throws you into the iCloud.com email prefs in a browser. Just "looking" at those prefs, returned all my custom addresses to the list.

 

[junpit]

Having major issues removing this....

My apple ID was my gmail account as were the other members of the family. Was informed by the process that I needed to enable icloud email which meant creating an icloud.com account for email purposes.

I did this and enabled custom email domain after making the dns changes I needed to.
I have since tried to remove it as gmail is better for indexing.

We decided to make the new icloud.com accounts our apple id. This was a relatively simple procedure once you have 2 email addresses per account and one is an icloud.com. We removed the custom email domain email alias.

On icloud.com after logging in the custom email domain still shows up but just fails to remove on trying. There is no dns pointing to apple and my email for my custom email domain is back with gmail. Any ideas how to get rid of it?