iCloud Mail, Fastmail, Gmail: what are the differences? The Email Service Feature Comparison Table

I meant 3 emails … got confused w/ domains

So as a long time Fastmail user, I decided to take the jump into Apple world with domains. For the same reason no matter what I tell myself I end up trying the latest and greatest phone, iPad, or app etc I felt that pull.

So 24 hours in……… I am beyond impressed. My wife and I each have our own domain (our name dot me) and then we share one domain for some other things. One thing I do find as a big change from Fastmail in a good way is support for calendar attachments in the calendar app (or Fantastical). That drove me nuts!

I was thinking about the money I am giving Apple and it might the one place where I really feel I am getting good value. We share the 29.99 Apple One family plan.

  • No matter what we would be paying for music, so if I switched it would be Spotify which is $15.99

  • Apple News is one of the more underrated products. I don’t love the app, but love the service. It has the few magazines I actually want to read, starting with the New Yorker but even better is the array of newspapers you have access to. From the Toronto Star to the San Fransisco Chronicle I now can read things that always got me a paywall. I always paid for way too many news subs, now it’s down to the NYT, Washington Post, and Apple News.

  • 2 TB of storage. I was paying for Dropbox 1TB for years and I am confident enough that I think I might drop that now. I also have 1TB from Microsoft for both a personal office and work office account. $10

  • Domains/Email. I was paying $10 a month with Fastmail which is now gone.

  • Fitness+ This one was one I did not expect to use, but have a bit. Pre Covid times I travelled a lot for work and personal, and over the last few months I had to do a few quick trips. In the hotel gym I fired up Fitness+ on a bike and treadmill and found it pretty good. It is not a product I would buy on it’s own but it is there?

  • Arcade Not a big gaming person but a few games like Threes not having ads is nice

Apple TV+ - Ted Lasso :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Is the iCloud custom email truly custom - as in it doesn’t do that Gmail thing where it shows me@mydomain.com on behalf of me@icloud.com?

I’m currently happy enough with Fastmail, but it isn’t cheap, and if I can get basically everything it offers through an Apple subscription I’m paying for anyway…

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It shows the custom domain name, and marked as important when I tested sending to my company’s Google Workspace too

iCloud Custom Domain sender inspection on GMail

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No it works just like Fastmail, from your domain only. You setup the MX records etc and off you go.

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Nice new feature for people that use both Fastmail and 1Password (like me): Masked Email

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where was this last year when I started doing this manually???

Oh well, so much for me trying out the new iCloud hidden emails. This will be MUCH easier!

Just tried it for the first time. Pretty cool :grinning:

D’oh. I just went to edit this, but it seems that the Discourse edit window has passed. :sweat:

@moderators (sorry for the tag)—is there any way to make this topic a wiki post?

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Do you mean 3 email aliases, or 3 mailboxes? I currently have separate mailboxes in Fastmail at $5/month per mailbox. All of the mailboxes are in the same domain, i.e.
janedoe@mydomain.com has her own mailbox
johndoe@mydomain.com has his own mailbox.
… etc.

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It’s more an alias. All emails end up in the one inbox.

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Fastmail’s advance , folder archive settings, server side email rules, and its subdomain addressing - alias@username.mydomain - make switching to iCloud+ from FM a hard sell.

icloud+ wins on price , but only because I already subscribe to it for storage. It also wins on calendar appointments , as I cannot get travel time to work when using Fastmail calendar.

Is there any chance we will see travel time in Fastmail calendar or is it an iCloud calendar thing only?

I’m using Travel time settings with BusyCal the UI for a calendar on FastMail.

I’m using travel time on the Apple Calendar app connected to my fastmail calendar and it works fine for me.

My iCloud calendar is turned off.

That’s good to know. What about calendar updates? While using iCloud ICS Calendars I do get updates if another entry was created within a shared calendar and/or when someone updates an entry.

Is this also possible, or not working with Fastmail calendars?

So, an update. Back in Sept. 2021 (it really doesn’t seem like it was that long ago?) I was thinking about switching from Fastmail. I did eventually pull the trigger and switch, but only after I figured out a working solution to my dozens of ‘alias’ email addresses.

I was using these as fixed but temporary emails. I sign up for a lot of web sites each year, but most of them are forums or products that I will likely not use beyond six months. When ‘done’ with them, I could just delete the email and any future incoming emails would simply bounce. Easier than unsubscribing, future-proof in case the email gets sold or hacked and used for spam or hacking purposes.

But iCloud only gives you three of these sort of emails.

But then in Sept. 2022 iCloud custom domain emails began allowing catch-all emails.
Back in the day, this was always considered ‘bad’ practice since it technically opened you up to the potential of more spam. Spammers would target ‘webmaster@’ and ‘president@’ or other such common email addresses so using a catch-all address was generally discouraged. However, with current anti-spam technology catch-all email is generally safe. So I made the switch.

Now, instead of manually setting up an alias, or using 1Password’s ‘masked’ email addresses (or iCloud’s ‘Hide my email’) I just type in any old made-up email, typically using the product or domain name before the @ sign. And, as a BIG bonus, I did not need to map the dozens of previous email aliases Fastmail had generated. It uses an odd ‘word.word1234’ pattern. The email I use for this forum is one like that. But with catch-all all emails come in no matter when or where they were used.

Now, when I’m done w/ an email, I can unsubscribe and move on. IF I notice something hitting my junk email folder a little too frequently I can manually set up a rule to auto-trash it by targeting either the incoming email address or the sender, bypassing the junk filter. It’s kinda an OCD thing for me. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Anyhoo, that’s my update :slight_smile:

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I don’t think I can answer that question, as I am not sharing my calendars with anyone.

I wonder how long this will be viable for you because I seem to get a lot of “verify your address” emails now. There is also a growing trend of sites of not having passwords, but using email addresses to log in.

I signed up for Fastmail last year, and I make heavy use of the masked email for this reason.

All my emails come through because I have catch-all turned on…