I’m curious if any of you are using Apple’s “Custom Email Domain with iCloud Mail?” I’ve been hosting one of my domains with a web service provider, but I’m planning to leave that company and host it elsewhere. However, the new company doesn’t host email, so I’m looking for a place to host my two email domains (1 personal and 1 business). I’m all in on Apple and have been for decades, so having them host my personal email domain doesn’t seem like a bad thing.
What’s been your experience with Apple hosting your domain? Any reason(s) not to have them host my personal domain?
I host two domains with iCloud, and sure, it works.
Reasons to like:
Total integration with Apple platform services and apps including Mail, Messages, FaceTime, more
All-in-one authentication (sign in once, access all addresses)
Catch-all supported
Reasons to dislike:
iCloud’s stupidly aggressive spam filter
Three addresses per family/shared iCloud account per domain including the 5 non-family accounts (yes, really)
“Closed” relay so you are restricted to send from the explicitly allowed addresses
All addresses route to your primary mailbox and there is no support for standalone mailboxes (use iCloud rules to filter).
A few really silly restrictions that mostly don’t matter about which addresses are permissible like former Apple IDs at the domain (as usual, there is doubt about some of this)
If you can stomach the limitations, it’s just OK. If you need a proper email provider, best to pay for it. I use iCloud on domains that formerly received a lot of email, but that now largely receive spam to catch-all addresses. It’s pretty quiet, but it’s better to have it than not. Previously I used Cloudflare to do the same job, but now that iCloud can receive it directly, I set it up. I never send from my domains.
Apple’s email hosting is very limited. I prefer a host like Fastmail which gives you more control over filtering, aliases, etc., and if you run into a problem, like email going missing, you’ll get better support from Fastmail than from Apple. That said, I do host one domain with Apple, but I don’t really use that email address much and need only basic hosting.
I have an external domain which I integrated with google workspace (free) such that mail to me@mydomain were handled by gmail. I had some family members who also used that domain in that I had there email addresses such as them@mydomain auto forward to their email address of choice. When I moved to iCloud+ and now had me@mydomain become my iCloud email address it all worked nicely using Apple’s DNS changes that I inserted on my external hosts mail configuration (SPF,DKIM,MX records). The issue now is that ANYPERSON@mydomain is caught by Apple’s config and so forwarding will no longer work! Google was selective in their SPF/DKIM config. Yes, you can add other people to your icloud and just share an email facility but that will not work if they have their own iCloud+ set up! I have been unable to get Apple Support to address a possible fix. The fix would be cumbersome and would mean modifying the records for each added iCloud email manually and not hijacking the entire domain. No idea how to do that myself and doubt I could. Any mail config gurus out there?
I’m not sure why you can’t add additional non-family members (max 5) to your domain, irrespective of whether they have iCloud Plus. And this is unquestionably the “correct” way to do this: let them associate their iCloud accounts with your domain via the email address you’ve assigned them, then they would use their own iCloud Mail accounts to send and receive or forward on that mail.
An unquestionably questionable alternative, if you use iCloud, is a hideous kludge: set up a catch-all, then use rules on your own email account to forward mail to the final destination addresses yourself. This is risky: any email addressed to those addresses that doesn’t have that address included in the To or CC lines won’t be forwarded (BCC, for instance, or mailing lists). I do not advise this path, unless you really have no better option, such as …
You should seriously consider if iCloud is right for you. There are other email forwarding services, some provided free by web and domain hosting companies, if that is all you care for. These let you simply forward email destined for your domain to specific mailboxes hosted elsewhere. The major downside here is that if you want to send from such addresses, you typically have to make alternative arrangements to make that possible via another email provider. So if forwarding isn’t enough, it’s probably better just to get service from an email provider directly (FastMail, PurelyMail, Runbox, others) who will host your domains for a fee, give you the option of sending, receiving, filtering and forwarding mail, and let you have maximum control over the way your email is delivered. iCloud is just OK for what it does, honestly—it’s nothing special.
I did a bit more digging, and it turns out that yes, in fact the recipient of your invitation does need to have iCloud Plus, also. And the address must have an associated primary iCloud email, i.e. one that ends in “@icloud.com”. So it’s basically just an extension of the aliases feature. If the address is already in use as an Apple ID, it cannot be used, unless the address is first changed to an iCloud address.
All this just illustrates that the feature, even if you can get it to work, really is very Apply—full of silly restrictions that might make for a pleasant user experience, but are very limited in features and functions above the very basics (and, let’s be honest, because Apple just doesn’t do cloud services at all well).
Once more. (free) Google workspace wasn’t satisfactory. Whilst it delivered emails people would often reply to my emails ostensibly sent to me@mydomain.com with my google email address. I already have iCloud+ so I haven’t purchased it for this purpose. My comment was that unlike gmail when you register your domain all_emails@mydomain.com are captured by Apple’s suggested config. Of course, I am aware that there are paid services that will allow me to use the domain and also allow me to forward emails for others@mydomain.com to their registered email address. I understand why Apple did this though equally, they could have created a custom entry to be put on mydomain.com for EACH email address rather than capture them all. I was alerting people to the fact that currently you can only use the iCloud solution for those who have an iCloud (not iCloud+) email and you are limited to 5.
I’m sorry, I’m confused. Even when Workspace was free, accounts were at your domains. There is no way that a personal Gmail should have got involved at all. So either Workspace was forwarding to a personal account (perhaps using an alias) and you were using your personal account to reply, or you weren’t using Workspace to manage your domain’s email. That is how I recall Workspace—if you can explain, I’d be interested.
When you configure a mail host for a domain, by definition, it’s responsible for all mailboxes at that domain; anything you do from that point (forwarding, delivery, …) is the responsibility of the mailbox provider. It sounds like you’re aware that Google allowed you to forward arbitrary addresses, and iCloud doesn’t, and that’s exactly correct.
But, you do require iCloud Plus, both for yourself, and for the recipient of your invitations. Not sure why—that seems unnecessary to me—but those are the requirements. As long as they have iCloud Mail and iCloud Plus, they can join your domain in the proper Apple fashion, all one big happy family (and friends) group (maximum 5 non-family members). With their iCloud accounts, they could then, separately, set up forwarding, if they so chose.
As I said before, there is also the catch-all hack: turn on catch-all, then individually forward emails based on recipient address using iCloud’s rules. But I can’t recommend that approach as it’s privacy-invasive and dodgy.
Actually, no. You do not require iCloud+ for the recipient. My information is that you do require iCloud for the recipient in order to add them to your family group (limited to email aliases). If they have iCloud+ it makes them ineligible (even if they don’t use their own private domain). But yes, the granularity through mail configuration cannot handle individual mail boxes. I had though set up mail rules to catch those whose emails now flow through to me and they are autoforwarded to their other email address. This obviates privacy concerns somewhat though every now and again an email does hit my inbox.
Hi friends, I was considering moving my email hosting from my current host to iCloud (or another email hosts) but I’ve since reconsidered and will be staying with my web hosting service. I investigated and seriously considered Fastmail, but there were many annoyances that I had with them, and the first being that they only have email support. Their turnaround time is usually in the 4-hour range, but sometimes that’s not fast enough. My current host has 24/7 phone, chat and email support so I can get a response ASAP without having to go back and forth via email.
Secondly, I have 2 different domains, and Fastmail would charge me to host each separately, have multiple users/logins, and for each individual mailbox that I have as well, if I didn’t want them forwarded to my main mailbox.
With my web hosting service I have complete control over everything about my email and do pretty much anything that I want to for $14 per month. Not to mention that I can host multiple websites or upload and store data, if needed.
I am surprised that “the new company doesn’t host email”. I would have thought that web hosting takes more resources (and risk) than hosting emails.
I use site5.com for hosting my vdrsyd.com domain and email. Its support is reasonable but it is more costly than some of the other hosting services.
My biggest concern is that I started with another hosting service but it was apparently bought out by site5. Now that has become web.com but I think my site5 account is unchanged.
I ran web hosting and email services for a number of not-for-profit organizations for a couple of decades. Email resource usage was leagues higher than web hosting – to a large degree due to spam filtering. Risks were higher, too (constant attempts to subvert my servers to send spam). The web hosting – even hosting some relatively complex electronic medical records systems – were trivial next to the time and processor drain associated with email.
my misunderstanding!