PSA: if you pay the 0.99 iCloud storage subscription, you can host your custom domain email on iCloud too. : selfhosted

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2023-05-30 09:30:08

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PSA: if you pay the 0.99 iCloud storage subscription, you can host your custom domain email on iCloud too. (self.selfhosted)

I know this is not selfhosting, but I randomly replied about this a couple of weeks ago on a yet another email hosting post and today got my 4th DM asking about it.

iCloud+ (which is when you pay for iOS backup) includes custom domain hosting. I had no idea too. There are no hacks or undocumented stuff involved. I’ve been paying for the 50GB storage option because it’s only $1 a month and makes switching between iOS devices so easy and convenient. I have also been paying for mailbox.org for years. This year mailbox.org raised their prices from $1 to $3 a month and included a bunch of additional online meeting, docs, etc services that I have no use for. While I understand the need to keep up with inflation and everything, I’m a very light email user. I have maybe 700MBs in total in my email account, and send maybe a dozen emails a month. I started shopping around for a mailbox alternative when I learned that I could already cover this with my iCloud+ subscription (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201238) and my mind was blown.

I used to use fastmail before mailbox.org, and the process for updating DNS was always straightforward, but manual. You just go through their docs, copy/paste a couple of stuff, and you’re good. iCloud honestly took it to another level for me. It asked if I want an automated setup, I said sure, it asked for my domain, figured out it was from cloudflare, poped up a cloudflare SSO I’ve never seen before, then proposed a bunch of changes to my DNS records that I approved, and everything was done.