I am considering switching from google mail to iCloud and am curious about your opinions.
I know there will be a lot of accounts I would have to change my email in, but most of my important accounts already have email addresses from apples „hide my mail“ function, so I am willing to do that work. And for the rest an automatic email forwarding will do.
A few questions are already in my mind, maybe someone can answer them for me:
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Will my 2TB iCloud be used for my emails? Or would I need an additional subscription?
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Is it possible to migrate all my mails from gmail to iCloud without any third party tools?
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And to everyone already using a iCloud email as primary mail account -> What are your experiences so far? Any problems?
If you are already paying for iCloud+, you might want to invest in your own domain and set up “Custom Email Domain”. That way if you decided to make another move in the future you won’t have to change your e-mail address. I recently switch from Google Apps to iCloud for e-mail, and didn’t have to inform anyone.
That’s a thing I already thought about many times. But for me it’s more important being able to throw away an email-address if I don’t need it anymore. As I wrote in another comment here I use apples hide my email in nearly all of my accounts (still working on switching everything). The email that is behind all that doesn’t matter, it just has to have enough space. And that’s what I have with my iCloud subscription.
Another reason I am doing this is being able to tell who exactly leaked your data (if it happens someday). As every account I make gets his unique mail-adress from me, I will then be able to exactly tell where my data was stolen from.
I use Hide My Email whenever I can, and then use custom domain name for official stuff. Works really well.
The only annoyance is you cannot send emails from the email aliases directly, you can only use it when replying to an email received on that alias.
Yes I do exactly the same. I love that feature! You actually can send mails via hide my mail, but I think you mean send via an already existing one, right?
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Yes, you can only reply to emails you received via hide my mail, but cannot compose new ones. This is a dealbreaker for some use cases, but the potential for abuse is understandable.
Seconding this. Having your own domain is so worth it for being independent of your email provider alone imo, and depending on which name you get, could even be cheaper than iCloud+ 50GB. Plus of course you can use it for other stuff such as a personal website in the future if you ever get the desire (:
I’ve been thinking about this for a while so I’ll ask, no kinks yet or anything one should know first?
I’m worried it might mess with apples “hide my email” thing, did you have that setup before moving?
You retain your Apple email as well, so everything should just work. I only have one or two hide accounts, but I think it has been working for me.
Only glitch I’ve seen is that I have a family plan, and it stopped working on my kid’s phone. Kicked them out and added them back and all was good.
Using iCloud mail since 2011, no issues. Yes, mail uses your iCloud storage. To migrate your emails, open the Mail app on Mac, select all from the Gmail archive and search for “move to other folder” from the menu. Move to iCloud archive. You can follow the same process for any other folder.
What’s interesting is that Gmail acts the same way with google drive. I once had a woman who hadn’t received an email in over a year because she stuffed her gmail drive full of photos.
Pretty sure Gmail starts deleting old emails in this case?
You’re probably right about that. This inbox had more venereal diseases than an old west brothel. I wonder if it was outpacing this feature?
I would rather not think about how much spam that email was getting if it was indeed outpacing Gmail’s auto delete 💀
Thank you, that’s good to know! Do you know if there is a way to do that without a Mac? Is there like an option on the iCloud website to import mails from gmail?
I don’t know, I’ve never used iCloud from the web… But you can follow the same process from iPhone or iPad
Hmm okay. So just to make sure I understand what you did… you copied every folder from one account to another using a mail program where both accounts were configured?
Exactly
I moved away from gmail some years ago (to protonmail). I’ve moved most accounts but kept my gmail account and forward all gmail emails. In this case I receive those emails where someone has my gmail address or those accounts I’ve forgot.
That’s exactly what I am thinking about doing (but with iCloud). Moving the important stuff over and configure forwarding directly in gmail for all the forgotten and unnecessary stuff.
I’ve been using it since the @me.com days. No problems
My main email is @me.com but sometimes I’ll use @icloud.com too. It’s handy for websites I want two accounts for as on my end they’re both treated as one email account but on their end I’m two separate people.
I used to have @mac.com too but I lost access to that some time ago and I don’t use what I had in front of the @ anymore anyways.
Ah yes. MobileMe. Such a terrible name for something that was out of apple naming. Something like iD. Would’ve been better.
Sounds great, thanks!
My main email is @me.com but sometimes I’ll use @icloud.com too. It’s handy for websites I want two accounts for as on my end they’re both treated as one email account but on their end I’m two separate people.
I used to have @mac.com too but I lost access to that some time ago and I don’t use what I had in front of the @ anymore anyways.
I had never bothered with iCloud Mail before, but I started using it recently as a secondary mail account when they introduced custom domains.
It’s been fine so far, the service seems reliable, no spam problems, and it was easy to set up initially. I find the Apple Mail client good enough for my email needs so no issues with that, I can’t speak for how iCloud Mail works with other clients however.
It’s good enough that I may eventually switch to it as my primary email provider.
I started using iCloud email nice I found out that we can setup custom email addresses. Oddly enough, I’m using google domains still so not too far out of the Google ecosystem just yet.
As for the experience, gmail does a better job at finding spam. Sometimes iCloud mail will mark it as junk but it’s not too big of an issue.
I migrated to iCloud in Feb 2022. It was a bit tedious to change the email address to all services, for some I had to create a new account since changing email address was not possible. I like how iCloud mail has worked, I use the web interface on my work laptop and Mail apps on iPhone and Mac, I haven’t faced any issues with it.
Why iCloud?
Looks like they are already paying for storage, and it has real push notifications for the native app.
Yep, you are right
