iOS 15.4 Beta Adds Support for Setting Up Custom Email Domains With iCloud Mail

[Drzed]

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.

How did you manage to copy all of your Google emails across? I have 34k emails over many years and I can only see the last 12 months only when viewing via Apple Mail on MacOS. I have to go into Gmail’s interface if I want to see them all.

 

[jasonefmonk]

How did you manage to copy all of your Google emails across? I have 34k emails over many years and I can only see the last 12 months only when viewing via Apple Mail on MacOS. I have to go into Gmail’s interface if I want to see them all.

Check your Mail settings to make sure you are set to sync all email and not just the last 12 months.

I did this when I ditched Gmail for a custom domain a couple years ago.

 

[Drzed]

It won’t allow you to add a custom domain email that’s associated with an active AppleID.

Wow this is a massive deal breaker.

So if my current Apple ID is “name@myname.com” I can’t use “my name.com” as my custom domain?

If so that’s crazy as I suspect a tonne of users who have had their custom domain emails for many years used that email for their Apple ID as well.

I could have sworn I read people who had success with it though?

 

[simmepi]

Questions I have for those with more experience:

I don’t want to use @me.com and @icloud.com addresses that are attached to my Apple ID. Until this point I’ve had Mail turned off in iCloud settings on all devices to disable that account. If I have to turn on iCloud Mail to use my custom domain, can I still disable the @me/@icloud mailboxes so they don’t appear in Mail.app? Does the custom domain replace the iCloud one?

Does Apple provide IMAP settings so you can set up your email in other mail clients?

Thanks in advance.

The custom domain is just an alternative way of sending/receiving mail to your iCloud mail account. From a technical point of view, it works as a regular mail server & account: You configure MX records etc to point to Apple's servers, and people mailing/receiving mail to/from your custom email will just see that address and interact with a standard mail server. However, as the owner this works as if you have two mail addresses in one account: Your iCloud mail address + your custom one.

So you will indeed need to switch on mail for your iCloud account. But: You can of course simply create a new iCloud account and use this for your custom domain, and then only use this account for mail. It will then work as any old mail account, and since any iCloud mail account can be accessed using e.g. IMAP, it will work in any mail client. Caveat: Since you need to use at least some iCloud subscription to be able to use custom domains, you'd have to add some subscription to this account, e.g. the 99 cent / month for 50 GB cloud storage.

 

[simmepi]

Wow this is a massive deal breaker.

So if my current Apple ID is “name@myname.com” I can’t use “my name.com” as my custom domain?

If so that’s crazy as I suspect a tonne of users who have had their custom domain emails for many years used that email for their Apple ID as well.

I could have sworn I read people who had success with it though?

You can use it. What some people have an issue with as far as I understand (even though I as described in a previous post here I had no issues accomplishing this) is when they have 2 iCloud accounts, one active & primary and another secondary, and the custom mail address they want to use with their primary account is tied to their second. If you only have one, no worries, it will work just fine