Question about custom domain mail!

[TinaBelcher]

I do not own a domain, and by Apple's description of a soon-to-come custom email domain, it seemed like that everyone who pays for iCloud storage has the ability to create a custom domain to their @icloud.com, but all I read is people moving their domains from their previous host over to Apple... which makes me believe that it was never an option to register a free custom domain, but only to move an already-existing domain from one host to another (Apple). Is that the case?

Please, can someone elaborate on this?

 

[macOS Lynx]

You can use iCloud as your email host your domain, instead of using something like GoDaddy’s or something. You still need to own the domain. You do not get a free custom email domain.

 

[casperes1996]

You can use iCloud as your email host your domain, instead of using something like GoDaddy’s or something. You still need to own the domain. You do not get a free custom email domain.

Just want to add to this that my domain - which is a .com - costs me the equivalent of like $10 per year. I do my own hosting - domain + hosting can be substantially more expensive, but if all you want is a domain, it isn't really prohibitively expensive

 

[jdb8167]

I do not own a domain, and by Apple's description of a soon-to-come custom email domain, it seemed like that everyone who pays for iCloud storage has the ability to create a custom domain to their @icloud.com, but all I read is people moving their domains from their previous host over to Apple... which makes me believe that it was never an option to register a free custom domain, but only to move an already-existing domain from one host to another (Apple). Is that the case?

Please, can someone elaborate on this?

If you go to someone like namecheap.com you can search for unused domains. For example, I just searched on TinaBelcher and found that while TinaBelcher.com was taken, TinaBelcher.net and .org are available. You can get either one for under $10/yr. Once you register it, it is yours until you stop paying the yearly fee.

 

[TinaBelcher]

You can use iCloud as your email host your domain, instead of using something like GoDaddy’s or something. You still need to own the domain. You do not get a free custom email domain.

Dammmiiiit.. and all along I thought that if you paid for iCloud, that they would offer you domain email included. So all along it was just for people who already have a domain to move their existing one… if that’s the case I may as well just buy one from google.

 

[casperes1996]

Dammmiiiit.. and all along I thought that if you paid for iCloud, that they would offer you domain email included. So all along it was just for people who already have a domain to move their existing one… if that’s the case I may as well just buy one from google.

Well just buying a domain is significantly cheaper than buying a domain + hosting

 

[EuroChilli]

I do not own a domain, and by Apple's description of a soon-to-come custom email domain, it seemed like that everyone who pays for iCloud storage has the ability to create a custom domain to their @icloud.com, but all I read is people moving their domains from their previous host over to Apple... which makes me believe that it was never an option to register a free custom domain, but only to move an already-existing domain from one host to another (Apple). Is that the case?

Please, can someone elaborate on this?

You are right, they are not clear that you first need to own a domain, which is something you can pick up at the likes of Namesilo for as little as $0,99, for the first year, then about 8 bucks a year thereafter, depending on the TLD (Top Level Domain) ie: .com .net .xyz .bike .beer .practicallyeverything

This appears to be just what Gmail has been doing for the last 20 years with G-Suite / Workspace, or whatever they call it now. In other words, your domain stays registered at say Namesilo, and you 'attach' it to your Google Workspace / iCloud account, for a price. You can now enjoy all the benefits of Gmail/iCloud email @yourdomain.

Basically, it seems that if you have a family of 6, all with their own AppleID's, and you own the domain familywozniak.com, you can now all have email address's such as steve@familywoz, dad@familywoz, mary@familywoz etc, all hosted within the family iCloud account.

Yes, this is not exactly beginner level stuff. So if you don't know what DNS is, move swiftly along ;-)

 

[Peepo]

I added one of my domains the other day on beta.icloud.com
The instructions for adding DNS may be confusing to someone who is unfamiliar. Maybe one day Apple will automate this like others do (eg. Microsoft 365) where you just enter your DNS credentials.

Here are my GoDaddy DNS entries with everything irrelevant and private blacked out (I forgot to black out the www entry which is not needed).

 

[casperes1996]

In addendum to Peepo's image:

A lot of DNS settings panes won't have the MX priority listed like that. It's a pretty nice overview, but in a lot cases you'll just have

10 mx01.mail.icloud.com

and the 10 is implicitly known to be the priority

 

[Gulfcoastbabe]

Would someone be able to help me with this? I’ve been trying since Saturday to add my domain and I receive a TXT error. The is a new domain without any existing addresses setup. It’s with GoDaddy now.

 

[mavis]

I have a domain, but no hosting. I use a DNS provider to route subdomains to different things - mydomain.com points to google.com (lol) but various other subdomains point to specific (and useful) things - for example, router.mydomain.com points to my public IP address (which I auto-update through my NAS), mail.mydomain.com points to mail.google.com, etc. I used to point subdomains to publicly shared galleries (back when Apple used to let you do that) ... etc. Since my email is hosted by Google, I can use my email address (name@mydomain.com) as a login for YouTube, Google News, etc (as can everyone in the family). Very useful. I don't think I'll be switching to iCloud hosting as I don't see any particular advantages of doing so ...

 

[darthbane2k]

You are right, they are not clear that you first need to own a domain, which is something you can pick up at the likes of Namesilo for as little as $0,99, for the first year, then about 8 bucks a year thereafter, depending on the TLD (Top Level Domain) ie: .com .net .xyz .bike .beer .practicallyeverything

This appears to be just what Gmail has been doing for the last 20 years with G-Suite / Workspace, or whatever they call it now. In other words, your domain stays registered at say Namesilo, and you 'attach' it to your Google Workspace / iCloud account, for a price. You can now enjoy all the benefits of Gmail/iCloud email @yourdomain.

Basically, it seems that if you have a family of 6, all with their own AppleID's, and you own the domain familywozniak.com, you can now all have email address's such as steve@familywoz, dad@familywoz, mary@familywoz etc, all hosted within the family iCloud account.

Yes, this is not exactly beginner level stuff. So if you don't know what DNS is, move swiftly along ;-)

Is there a clever way we can use this to finally merge apple IDs with old MobileMe ids(which became iCloud)?