iCloud+'s New Custom Email Domain Feature Now Available in Beta

Wednesday August 25, 2021 7:48 am PDT by Joe Rossignol

Starting with iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS Monterey, users with a paid iCloud+ storage plan can personalize their iCloud email address with a custom domain name, such as johnny@appleseed.com, and the feature is now available in beta.

iCloud General Feature
iCloud+ subscribers interested in setting up a custom email domain can visit the beta.icloud.com website, select "Account Settings" under their name, and select "Manage" under "Custom Email Domain." Users can send and receive email with up to five custom domains, while family members can each have up to three email addresses per domain.

After entering a custom domain on the iCloud website, users can add email addresses that they currently use with the domain. Users can also create new email addresses after they have finished setting up the domain with iCloud, according to Apple. Note that any custom email addresses must not be in use with another Apple ID.

For those who missed the announcement back at WWDC in June, iCloud+ is Apple's new branding for paid iCloud storage combined with new features like iCloud Private Relay and Hide My Email. iCloud+ features are included with iCloud storage plans at no additional cost, with prices remaining set at $0.99 per month for 50GB of storage, $2.99 per month for 200GB of storage, or $9.99 per month for 2TB of storage in the United States.

The ability to use a custom email address for iCloud is not to be confused with Hide My Email, a separate iCloud+ feature that allows users to create unique, random email addresses that forward to their personal inbox so they can send and receive email without having to share their real email address.

(Thanks, Tommaso Armstrong!)

Tag: iCloud

Top Rated Comments

PhireWare

27 months ago

It's surprising how many people don't understand custom domain email hosting. Do you own your own domain name and need a place to host email that isn't Google Apps, Microsoft 365 or a personal server? Then this iCloud+ feature is for you.

This is certainly not a feature for everyone and it's actually a fairly "advanced" consumer feature by Apple standards

Score: 38 Votes (Like | Disagree)

nattK

Can’t add “Mac.com ('http://Mac.com'),” unfortunately. Damn shame - I missed the cutoff for one of those email addresses by a few months back in ’08...

Custom domains only work with a domain you own (i.e. a domain you obtained through GoDaddy, NameCheap, Google Domains, etc). You can't add "Mac.com" because Apple owns that domain.

Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)

jclardy

I'm surprised they went through the effort of building this, I feel the intersection of people that know how to update DNS records on a domain and the people that want to use iCloud for email is extremely small.

I'd consider it if it wasn't so heavily tied into the Apple ID system - you can't add anyone to your domain email outside of your iCloud "family".

Score: 16 Votes (Like | Disagree)

BillyBobBongo

Oh. I'm a pretty casual email user so I guess this doesn't apply to me. I definitely don't understand this at all so forgive this question if it's dumb, but what is the problem this is solving?

I pay for iCloud and I pay to host a separate email address. I could potentially reduce my recurring costs by merging it all together.

Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Saturnine

This is what I would need as I currently have about 8 aliases at Fastmail for this sort of thing.

Similar. I have a single catch-all. Every site I sign up for, I use sitename@mydomain.com.

If I start receiving spam or other unsolicited mail to a particular address, I know which website leaked my details and can nix the address without having to update my email details at any other websites.

Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Zadigre

you can send and receive from your custom domain name directly from your iCloud account on all your devices and probably also from iCloud web.

forwarding emails to iCloud.com email address doesn't allow you to properly send from this domain name. hosting on iCloud will allow this.

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