Best eMail Service for Apple?

[MeeMac]

I am thinking of changing my eMail provider. I prefer a provider that is Apple friendly. Who do you recommend and why?

 

[ucfgrad93]

I use gmail without any problems.

 

[Mr Rabbit]

My iCloud email is the email address I use for my personal and important stuff. Non important or junk mail typically gets routed to my ISP's email address.

 

[MeeMac]

iCloud eMail????

Thank You for the replies.

I am interested in how you are using iCloud eMail. How does one set up iCloud eMail, and what are the limitations?

Does iCloud eMail remain independent from other eMail accounts you already have? Is it only associated with your Apple ID account?

 

[McGiord]

http://www.apple.com/support/icloud/

 

[iFarmer]

http://help.apple.com/icloud/

^ Great information.

 

[Jnesbitt82]

I still have my aol email address from over a decade ago. For some reason, it will occasionally error out and say the username and password are wrong.

 

[MeeMac]

Web Reviews

Most of the web reviews I found list gMail & Yahoo & AOL as the top 3 email providers. None of the reviews mention if any service works better than others in the Apple eco system. I guess that means Apple products and software will work equally with all eMail providers?

 

[kastorff]

Most of the web reviews I found list gMail & Yahoo & AOL as the top 3 email providers. None of the reviews mention if any service works better than others in the Apple eco system. I guess that means Apple products and software will work equally with all eMail providers?

For the most part, an email is email. A provider adhering to email standards will work fine. That said, Google's continuing and extensive customization of Gmail has made it a non-standard IMAP implementation. Mavericks' Mail app and Gmail coexist okay, but anything non-standard requires custom programming to work optimally. We saw this crash and burn when Mavericks was first released. A perfectly working Gmail configuration didn't work the same after upgrading to Mavericks for a lot of folks.

I got mine working acceptably after tweaking my Gmail web config a bit and waiting for a Mail update, but this is likely to become the rule and not the exception as Google continues to customize their IMAP implementation.

Personally, unless I already had an investment in using Gmail, planned to use POP instead of IMAP, or planned to always access Gmail from a browser, it's the one provider I'd stay away from.