Email was devised as an open service without security in mind. As a result, it’s been badly abused by spammers and hackers and there are now complicated security and authentication bolt-ons for email, along with encryption. Yes, not that long ago, your emails would traverse the Internet in plain text.
The easy way to shift the emails would probably have been Google Workspace which is what almost everyone I know uses. However, as a subscriber to Apple iCloud+, I recalled that it offers not just cloud storage, but also email hosting.
It’s called Custom Email Domain and comes with privacy features such as Hide My Email that makes life a little more difficult for trackers and spammers. It didn’t make sense to add another monthly subscription charge for Google, when email hosting’s included with Apple iCloud+.
Starting with a clean slate, by registering a new Internet domain name and configuring email for that to be hosted on Apple’s iCloud+ is relatively straightforward even if you’re not super techie and follow the online instructions to the letter.
Moving email service for an existing domain to iCloud+ is more involved. First, you need to add automatically generated records to the domain name server that tells computers where your emails should go; your existing service provider would normally do this for you.
To my surprise, nothing broke after the configuration changes for my domain, and email could be sent and received via iCloud+.
Where was the promised message migration tool though?
The link on iCloud+ to set up the Custom Email Domain only had Yahoo and Outlook as options to move messages from, and no manual configuration option for other providers.
Googling suggested that other users around the world had run into the same missing email migration tool issue, with no solution from Apple as such. I solved the problem in a hackish fashion, by exporting all my messages to a file on my computer, and then importing that to iCloud+ via Apple Mail.
It took the best part of the day to slowly synchronise the computer’s emails with iCloud+ on a server in the United States, and I’m not doing it like that again.
Then I tried to point the email app to iCloud+ to have it pick up messages for my domain, like you normally do.
However, the login details that got me into other Apple services did not work with the mail access server where messages addressed to me were now landing.
An hour-long tech support call, which escalated to three different techies, established that unlike other mail services where you enter login details and server names, iCloud+ does it automatically for you. Nothing needed to be entered.
This may be documented somewhere that I’ve yet to find. My Apple devices needed no reconfiguration and picked up the email service changes automatically which is magic.
For Google Android, it’s a little more involved as you have to generate an app-specific password on the Apple ID management website. The upside is that you can revoke that password easily, for added security.
Generating the app-specific password was in fact the technological equivalent of donning the Great Magic Wig Hat and waving the Sacred Chicken Foot around, as it is what’s needed to log into the iCloud+ mail access server.
Emails to my own domain now arrive neatly into a separate inbox, which is much tidier.
By now I was celebrating, running around in the rain outside hooting with joy as befits a modern always-on digital native.
As with past technology wrangles, I didn’t feel at all silly for spending hours and hours on something that looked easy on screen, but which required superpowers of second guessing. Not at all, I tell you.
