How to Use iCloud Mail with External Self-Hosting Domain
themtparty.com to either redirect to each authors or the admin address. I wasn’t interested in having a separate email service for self-hosted WordPress blog, but there were times when I needed @themtparty.com email addresses.
If you are subscribing to iCloud+ *, possibly for cloud storage reasons, the package actually includes “custom email address” service. What that means is, if you already have a domain that can be hooked up to iCloud, you can use iCloud Mail as the email provider with the said domain.
* At the time of the writing, iCloud+ begins with 50GB of iCloud storage at $0.99 per month.
Following the Apple’s documentation is rather straightforward. What I didn’t realize is that my domain registrar and hosting provider, Namecheap, one and the same, has a rather interesting setup. In order to tweak the host records, all the records had to be copied manually. This may or may not be the case for other service providers, so hopefully this post serves as another good documentation.
- From hosting cPanel > Zone Editor, pull up all zone records. In my case, there were about 29 of them to be copied over; 26, without MX records. (We will be using the one iCloud provides)
- Once copied over, double check if your website is reachable. Now is also a good time to use a DNS propagation checker as well.
- Start the process on iCloud Mail, and follow the instructions. MX records option might be hidden away under “Custom MX”, if you can’t find it.
- Once done, double check if the email addresses with the custom domain is reachable.
I don’t understand why copying over 26 entries weren’t automated. Perhaps this wasn’t the most common scenario the service provider had intended. Regardless, I find iCloud mails to be more reliable email service than most hosting service providers’ email service. iCloud isn’t the only service that supports custom domain; I just happen to use iCloud+, so I wanted to take advantage of the full package without additional cost.