This. For this reason I regret making an @icloud.com cause now it’s permanently attached to my Apple ID. Also, it only offers 3 alias, what is up with THAT!?
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iOS 15.4 Beta Adds Support for Setting Up Custom Email Domains With iCloud Mail
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Most of time, when you registered a domain name, it doesn't come with mail service. Usually you have to pay extra to add mail service so you can send/receive emails via your new domain name.
Wow, the comments here asking “why?” — some things aren’t for everyone, ha.
Well mostly it just works out of the box and you don’t have to spend several hours arguing over the name of specific mailboxes, config or service provider specific messes.
It’s also cheap.
I've been using this with my own domain for a few months and I'm happy to report that I've had zero issues. Mail is pushed instantly and mailboxes are synced with all my devices. I found the setup straightforward. No regrets leaving Google Workspace.
It seems that Apple is low key setting up the pieces for a full on Office 365 or Google Workspace competitor. Seeing they already have their version of an office suite (Pages, Numbers & keynote), FaceTime with weblinks, iMessage and now the email hosting, I could possibly see them advertising this in the near future as a solution for companies who exclusively use Apple hardware. Could there be a web version of iMessage coming soon like they did with FaceTime?
It seems that Apple is low key setting up the pieces for a full on Office 365 or Google Workspace competitor. Seeing they already have their version of an office suite (Pages, Numbers & keynote), FaceTime with weblinks, iMessage and now the email hosting, I could possibly see them advertising this in the near future as a solution for companies who exclusively use Apple hardware. Could there be a web version of iMessage coming soon like they did with FaceTime?
How? You can just switch it off again and use a different provider at any time. Your username is not appropriate.
Well, I assume anybody that bought a domain know how to set servers up, heh. Specially because he also would need to configure the domains DNS records and point it to some shady iCloud servers, that’s an deadly sin, no decent Admin will ever do that. It’s a nonsense feature.
In the same situation.
Currently looking at Tutanota which seems to support everything I need, except they don't support importing emails yet and the latest is that they don't expect to be able to by the deadline for the great G-Suite migration of 2022.
I really wish Apple would add catch-all, and drop the completely arbitrary 5 domain limit (I like to add all the stupid pointless meme-domains I buy as jokes to my mailbox).
Is there any way to create aliases, or to share mailboxes with multiple users? My wife & I have own own addresses, but also share access to another IMAP mailbox, to which we get notifications from school and so on. Can that be replicated with this service?
This is not shady at all. In fact iCloud is a hell of a lot less shady than 99% of the other providers out there. They actually bother with DKIM, SPF, have no deliverability problems, the setup is straightforward, reliable and it works implicitly across all devices tied to an account.
As for decent admin, apparently you don't know what one is. It's not about setting up servers; it's about delivering solutions with highest ROI and lowest operational expenditure and that is exactly what this does.
Are you expecting credibility to be defined by someone farting out an HA FreeBSD cluster running bind, postfix, dovecot with virtual mail setup over the top of it, then spent 6 months arguing with Yahoo over your IP being perma-rejected, because I can do that all night but it's the wrong solution in 2022.
Edit: actually I think managing that pile of crap for over a decade was what made my hair fall out.
I host all my domains on gandi.net and use their free email forwarding service to forward the meme domains.
Currently considering buying monkeysavingexpert.com as it's a good typo for moneysavingexpert.com ?
I tried adding this to three of my domains when it first came out in beta a few months ago. I was able to send email but not receive. All 3 had the same issue. I followed everything they said but must have been having an issue somewhere in my DNS records. Fast forward to today and I deleted all of them, then set back up under the beta on the phone. It walked me through really easy then connected to my GoDaddy account and automatically updated the DNS settings for me!! That way I could not screw up again. I ended up moving 4 domain names to Apple Mail. Only 1 of these had email before and the move saved me about $70 a year, while adding email functionality to those other 3 domains. I am quite happy with it.
But then you can't email from the monkeysavingexpert.com domain! How will you reach out to potential investors with your great monkey-saving finance expertise!?
I've set it up (a few times already…), but still can't get the recipient to see my name instead of my email address in their inbox.
So, they get an email from name@domain.com, rather than the nicer and usual First Name Last Name in the mailbox.
This works fine with with the iCloud email address, or works fine with my custom domain if I email from the iCloud web UI.
But nothing works from Mail app on iPhone or Mac
So, they get an email from name@domain.com, rather than the nicer and usual First Name Last Name in the mailbox.
This works fine with with the iCloud email address, or works fine with my custom domain if I email from the iCloud web UI.
But nothing works from Mail app on iPhone or Mac
Correct, but you can set up rules to make anything coming to that alias go to a special folder to help keep them separate.
Exactly this. I also started using this feature a little while ago, migrating from Google's previously free solution but son to cost money. Apple's solution is a full solution, including having to make sure MX records point to iCloud servers, but the result is that you do not get an additional mail account, but rather that the custom domain mail is merged into your iCloud mail account. So e.g. when you go into preferences of Mail app on your Mac and select your iCloud account, the email address field will be a popup showing both your iCloud mail address(es) and your custom domain ones. Similarly when you send, you will get a popup. So for everyone communicating with you, it seems as if it is a regular mail account, but for you it will be just an address interchangeably used with your iCloud mail address in a single account.
I suspect this is also why you need family sharing to be able to use the same custom domain for email addresses connected to different persons: By doing this, you can still use the same custom domain for different personal email addresses for individual users in your family sharing group, but you can't just give out custom domain mail addresses to random people.
So far it's looking good for me; I'll probably migrate my other two custom domains from Google to Apple soon as well
I just did this move recently because of this exact reason. Created 2 folders in iCloud, one for Inbox and one for Sent, on a Mac copied all Google emails to these two folders. Made the MX record change and removed my Workplace Free subscription. Really easy. I have all my old emails in iCloud and I am using my custom domain with no issue.
It won’t allow you to add a custom domain email that’s associated with an active AppleID.
Hmm. From a user perspective, there is no association remaining after you change an AppleID's email address (i.e. the previous email address is no longer displayed anywhere in the AppleID settings webapp). So the "association" Apple mention must just be a row in a database somewhere?
EDIT: Or maybe @ErikGrim is talking about a situation where someone has 2 AppleIDs (1 in use, 1 old one that was deleted), rather than a single AppleID that had its email address changed sometime in the past.
Does email count towards the storage allotment on an iCloud+ plan? I'm currently dealing with both my wife's and my gMail accounts regularly hitting the 15gb upper limit, and having to delete years worth of garbage from the accounts (2015 Best Buy Black Friday emails, anyone)? We currently have the 200gb icloud+ plan and it's ben fine for our purposes, but I could see a problem if email counts toward that as well.
I'm in the same boat. I really only use Legacy G Suite to have custom emails for my family members. I did provide feedback to Google that I'm also a Google One paid subscriber on my normal @gmail.com account, and if they were able to recognise that and still give me the equivalent legacy G Suite features, or at least the mailboxes, then I would be happy to leave everything as is (and it can even count towards my Google One storage)... but if not, I guess I'ma also an iCloud+ subscriber and this seems like a great option.
I'd be willing to bet yes... although if you've survived up until now with 15GB, as long as you continue your current practices, I don't see 200GB being hit anytime soon although presumably you also have plenty of other stuff on your iCloud+.