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GSuite Legacy Free edition is being EOLed in May and pushed to a paid-only Google Workspace plans. Not really interested in paying $12/m (minimum cost for feature parity of what I use now storage-wise) to keep my google drive and custom gmail account as I'd already been considering leaving google drive entirely.
I'm somewhat lucky in that only Photos, Email, and Google Drive are the services I substantially used under the gsuite account -- others are looking at losing their Play Store purchases unless they migrate to paid plans. This is still a major nightmare for me as my consulting work uses my custom domain for file sharing with clients/collaborators, but we have been considering switching to self-hosted next-cloud server to decouple ourselves from Dropbox/GSuite due to frustrations with changes.
I already pay for Apple One Family, and it seems like it may be a good option for various friends/family members within the ecosystem. And given that many people who kept their iTools/Mac.com accounts active can still use those grandfathered accounts, I actually have some faith in this custom domain service sticking around for another 20~ years.
Has anyone played around with it? The Webmail interface on iCloud.com seems decent. I think mailbox storage is linked to iCloud subscription size, but there doesn't seem to be even official documentation confirming this. The responsiveness of the imap server appears to be pretty good on iCloud.com account activity. Does it play with with regular IMAP clients like Thunderbird or Evolution?
My gmail account for my custom domain is less than 4gb. I think I could reasonably switch to iCloud-hosted email.
After getting tired of my three spam filled gmail accounts, along with an increased interest in privacy, I've decided to work on getting a better email setup elsewhere using a custom domain and email aliases.
After doing a bit of research, I've landed on either Fastmail or iCloud+ as the options I'm considering. I already have a custom domain and am just trying to decide where to ultimately go.
My main goal is to use aliases for my different accounts and only give my actual email address (which has my real name in it) to personal friends and family. The aliases will make it easier to cut out spam or quickly change things up in the event of a breach for that one account.
With iCloud it looks like I'm limited to three email addresses with my custom domain and then I would use Hide My Email to create a new alias for each account.
Fastmail seems to do this very well and I especially like that I can create all of my aliases with my custom domain so I can take everything with me in the event I change providers or Fastmail shuts down. Unfortunately Fastmail also costs $50/yr and I figured it was worth looking at iCloud given I'm already paying for iCloud+.
I'm just curious to hear how people like iCloud+ for email. I know lots of people have transitioned over from other providers. How was it? Do you regret moving to iCloud, if so why? I'm especially interested in anybody who chose between iCloud and Fastmail, or even better has used both products.
Thanks all!
I would plan that you lose all aliases you don’t assign and have strictly three aliases per user for a total of 15 distinct mail addresses.
- https://support.apple.com/guide/icloud/add-a-custom-domain-mma473945269/icloud
I won’t be moving my work / consulting domain off of Fastmail since I need more than three aliases. I will likely make a personal domain since iCloud has this new feature.
My hunch is Apple won’t budge for at least a year on increased domains and aliases but would if lots of people use it and hit the limit regularly over a period of a year.
- One domain for the entire family.
- Max of five members in the family
- Max of three emails per iCloud account in the family.
I would like to add a couple of other limitations not mentioned. For a custom domain transfer from another provider, Apple will not download your old messages stored on your previous provider's server over to iCloud. It also won't assign it to its own mailbox in the mail app, which creates two issues.
First, there's a possibility of losing your stored messages if you didn't keep a local copy or relied on a web based mail client. To solve this, create another mail app account for your custom domain, if you don't have one already, and use it to connect to your current mail provider. Check your mail and make sure your account is set to read all old and new messages. It may take a while if you have a lot of mail, but when it's done, all your old mail should be stored in its own mailbox.
Second, since both your iCloud email address and your custom domain are on the same account, they are filed under the same mailbox. This makes it easy to confuse the two email addresses when replying and composing messages. It also makes it difficult to keep separate setting for each. So far, the best you can do is to create a special rule to file them into separate folders, which is less than ideal and won't isolate the two accounts.
Im considering moving from a selfhosted solution I have for my family email domain (using mailcow) to apple custom email domain solution. I need a few clarifications -
"You can use up to five custom domains, with up to three personalized email addresses per domain." - does it mean that each member in my icloud family can have up to three personalized addresses? meaning if we are 4 people, can I have in total 12 emails (3 each)?
"In iOS 16 or later, you can also share your custom domain with people outside your Family and allow them to create personalized addresses.*" - Does it allow other users outside of the apple ecosystem to use it as well, or is it still limited only to apple users with an iphone? and regardless of that question, a member outside of my family that accepts the invitation, will he be able to also create up to 3 personalized email addresses?
"You can share your domain with up to five other people. If you add someone who’s not part of your Family Sharing group, they need to accept the invitation before they’re added to the domain." - Is it aside for my family member count? If Im a family of 4, can I have my domain in use by up to 9 people?
Wow, somehow have not known about this feature until now.
I am strongly thinking of leaving GoDaddy as my provider (me and my family, 2 custom domains) due to expense, especially since they've switched to MS365 exchange email. It is always a hassle when something changes, and I have to re-verify with MS on each device over and over again. I don't need a business-capable email provider, so I think this will be streamlined as my family and I all are on Apple devices. Any thoughts or experiences out there? I've read a couple of older posts that had problems with MX records during setup.