Using my own domain with iCloud email

checkraising wrote

Again,

Need domain to be used for iCloud account for full functionality just like if I were to use Exchange.

Again: it's not possible, but if you want to expend your time and energy trying to find a workaround we shall all applaud your enthusiasm.

Roger,

When I find the solution, will you retract your negativity and state that you were wrong? Give me a formal apology that you gave bad advice? What will I do? Find the solution.

If you prove me wrong and provide evidence to that effect in the form of a testable and working process I will certainly admit I am wrong.

Let's take one step at a time. Please let us know when you have been able to send an email from the iCloud website with a non-Apple email address as the 'From' address, using a method that other people can replicate,

checkraising: I too usually find workarounds for mostly everything I want, but I'm afraid Roger is right on this one. There's absolutely no way you can send an email out of the iCloud website (the WEBSITE) from an address other than the one from Apple (i.e. @icloud.com, @me.com or @mac.com).

Apple used to allow personal domain set up with MobileMe, but that got removed with iCloud. Of course, if you don't mind skiping the use of iCloud's web portal, you can easily set this up from your Mac (i.e. the Mail app) and even kind of workaround for calendars, etc. But for the web, no way! Sorry.

AND... If you ever find a workaround for this, share it here and I'll happily follow Roger in retracting my words... and even a little bit of praising... =)

Hopefully Apple will allow external aliases at some point, but I wouldn;t put my money on this. I'm actually even considering migrating to Gmail completely, but I like some iCloud features a lot more and the only thing missing (for me) is being able to send emails from Icloud.com via my personal domain!

*sigh*

I want to talk with you by phone if possible. 863.669.8077

It sounds like you have a solution for me on Mac etc. for now.

Can we do it?

very respectfully,

jay

As I already said, you can do this in the Mail application - the method was explained in the quoted answer to the first post in this forum (it's simply setting Mail to use another SMTP server than iCloud's).

As for anybody using GoDaddy for their forwarding, don't make the same mistake I did -- you can't forward an existing address, you can only carbon copy it. Since I didn't want to carbon copy (and leave a copy on the GoDaddy server), I then had to delete my existing address, and then set that same address up as a forward, so that it only exists in name only to GoDaddy (not as an actual email account), which then forwards any mail addressed to that address. So far, so good, but the problem occurs when you go to set up the SMTP server for outgoing mail. Since that address isn't an actual email account with GoDaddy any more, it's not valid for the SMTP server. I found this out only by talking to tech support there; they told me I had to use an actual email account and carbon copy it rather than forward. As to why you cant just forward using an existing account, I have no idea. Anyway, after I re-created my email address as an actual account and used the carbon copy option, everything worked fine.

Any update on this "icloud not using external smtp server" issue.

Till that time I am forwarding all my google apps ( free) mails to outllook.com ID, added my google apps mail id as a primary alias in outlook.com email and spoofing all outgoing mails from outlook email id to appear as if they are going out from google apps ID.

Auto forwarded all mails from google apps ID to outlook.com id, but it does require frequent monitoring to check if any mails have been skipped by the strict MS filter or sent to junk. One needs to keep on adding certain domains to the safe sender list in outlook.

Using this same setup on iOS 7.0.4 successfully. Still works. May jump to Mavericks on my MacBook soon. Still running Lion. Hopefully the reports are correct and it will continue to function without issue.

Jumped to Mavericks and can report all is well. Using 3 iCloud accounts with 2 Goddaddy domains (Business Email plan with copy/autopurge) and 1 forwarded Hotmail account. Works great between my jailbroken iPhone 4S running iOS 7.0.6 and my MacBook Pro. About to add an iPad to the mix too. Will report back on that when it's set up.

Had some strangeness migrating accounts during the upgrade. Ended up with a rogue iCloud account, which I deleted that broke some things. Setup the account up again, which was essentially the same, though I didn't have to start completely fresh. And for whatever reason, my main iCloud account which is used for syncing all my contacts and other settings now also functions with Mail enabled, rather than needing a seperate iCloud account dedicated just for mail for that username. Everything tests OK, so I'm leaving it be. Headers are fine and emails are routed to destination (both recipents and account folders) properly.

My icloud accounts associated with my domains are named, "mydomain@icloud.com" and the Hotmail one is called "XXXX.hotmail@icloud.com," where XXXX is my Hotmail account user name/email. The one minor annoyance is that when generating new mail in mail.app on Mavericks, the FROM drop down list shows 3 addresses for each account now (XXXX@mydomain.com, XXXX@me.com & XXXX@icloud.com). Mai.app is set to default to the proper outgoing email address for each account, so it's not really a problem.

Have anyone done a similar setup with their outlook.com registered personal domain email account on iCloud as have been suggested with ditto on Gmail?

For all the trouble and configuring why not just go with Exchange online? If your running a business and email is important and you need a professional presents then spend the $5/mo. I have tried so many ways to be 100% Apple but as a person who supports computers, my time is worth money and I dont want to waste it on my own issues. All Apple device are Exchange ready so why reinvent the wheel...IMO

Outlook.com hosted domains have free exchange support. Set up your email using the exchange or outlook links on your ios device while adding new mail.

What do you mean "hosted domains"? I can't just register an account with my own domain email account as id with outlook.com? And send out emails with my own domain name address in the from field? This is the way it works with google as I recall.

Did you mean MX-hosted domains? So that the email servers for your domain are handled by outlook.com?

Thanks for the suggestions mikefxd & riteshritesh

I've always gone through these steps with iCloud, because when it works, it appears the most transparent, seamless integration across my devices. Of course all my standard iCloud data is synced (Contacts, Calendars, Bookmarks, Notes, Photos, Reminders, etc.) with very little, if any delay, my e-mail is the same no matter what device I'm on, including flags (though colors aren't available on iOS), marked as read/unread, replied/forwarded, deleted, archived, etc. Previously this was not the case with IMAP solutions, and my prior experiments with Exchange proved less than reliable, creating a lot of unnecessary clutter (extra mail folders, address books, etc.). Mind you it's been a few years since I've tried Exchange, but do you find it's pretty transparent and doesn't create any issues? Do all the mail designators (read/unread, flags, forward/reply, etc.) sync? Do the Archive buttons work? Are there fields for all the different data? (I recall from my old Outlook days having to give up on Calendar Categories when I switched to Mac and there being other annoying discrepencies between field data in a lot of equivalent applications).

I'm fairly naive when it comes to Exchange and I understand that it has been supported for some time on OS and iOS, I just stayed with iCloud because it felt the most integrated. Not to mention I read a lot about Exchange problems depending on how your Exchange server was set up, and I know I ran into tons of issues with IMAP based on the protocol my hosts were implementing.

I've been a long time user of Hotmail, since before the MS days, so I'm happy to give Outlook.com a try. One would hope they'd have a solid Exchange setup in place and it would play well with iOS and OS. I guess the easiest way to experiment and see if it works for me would be to temporarily disable forwarding on my Hotmail account and set it up on my devices as Exchange. If that works out for me and I like the functionality, then I can migrate my 2 domains over. I see a few tutorials on how to do this online. I'd certainly like to A) Not be limited by iCloud's 5GB free limit, and B) Not have to pay for Business Class e-mail with Godaddy (set to expire in about 5 months) which I found more reliable than their free options included with their domains.

Of course I bet the moment I transfer over, MS will drop this free service like Google did.