• Posted: Sep 1, 2023
• guide

# Why

I've just signed up for iCloud+ to use the "Custom Email Domain" feature as my email host. At $0.99/mo it certainly beats Google Workspace's $6/mo, and hey, my iPhone yelled at me just this morning that my iCloud storage was full. I was fully expecting there to be some element to keep me in the Apple ecosystem and make using 3rd party apps a pain, but to my surprise - other than no documentation on the process - it was doable.

# How

After you've set up a custom email domain through iCloud (must be done on an Apple device of course), to add the email to your 3rd party:

1. If you haven't already; add your regular @icloud.com email to your email client. if you haven't done this before, you'll find you need to generate an app specific password, and if your client doesn't autofill IMAP/SMTP the details, see here.
2. If you didn't recently add the records to your domain, you might not have been instructed to add a DNS SPF record to your domain. Without this, the root iCloud account would not be authorized to send emails on behalf of your custom domain. This should come in the form of a TXT record saying "v=spf1 include:icloud.com ~all", but I'd check the current documentation on Apple's end for this if unsure.
3. Add your custom domain email as an 'alias' for the iCloud root account on your mail client. This can come in many forms, so you might need to dig around the documentation for your client. On Thunderbird this can be found under Account Settings -> [your iCloud account] -> Manage Identities. Basically you just want to find the setting that allows you to send mail from your iCloud account as your custom email.
4. Some mail clients will be upset that your domain doesn't say anything about how to handle DMARC, so you might want to add a TXT record under _dmarc.yourcustomdomain.com with the body: "v=DMARC1; p=none".

Following these steps I am getting a 100% rating on mail-tester.com.