Changing email provider from local company to iCloud email? Who is correct? Who is incorrect? What to do?

[Dervla]

Past:
A few days ago my email & internet provider notified me they would become internet only, ie, no email, at the end of this year.
I have an iCloud email account, set up about 10 years ago. I tried it yesterday. I can receive email on my M4 iMac but not send.
In Mail>Settings>iCloud>Server Settings>Outgoing Mail Account, it reads None.
Maybe I need to enter a server &/or port # &/or password for outgoing iCloud mail?
Can you help me make the change to using iCloud for email?
I have an iMac, an iPhone, and an Apple Watch.
I can send and receive email on my iPhone.

~~Present and future:
Spent about an hour on the telephone and screen sharing with Apple Support, spoke to one person, then to a Senior Advisor.

Turns out I can send messages using iCloud email on my iMac, they just take half an hour to be delivered. Senior advisor said it’s slow.

Senior Advisor said all settings on my iMac are correct. Said maybe my ISP is blocking SMTP.

He said, and at the Apple website:
"If you can receive messages but can't send them
→ Your IS might be blocking the protocol used to send email (SMTP) across their network. Contact your service provider and ask about SMTP traffic that crosses their network to an external service, such as iCloud. If your service provider blocks SMTP traffic, ask them how you can be exempted from SMTP blocking."

Called ISP, nope, they don’t block anybody, he said.

Anybody using iCloud email without problems? And whom for ISP?

Thank you.

 

[BrianBaughn]

It might be better to change your email to a Gmail address as Gmail has many more features than iCloud email. Gmail works great with the Apple ecosystem.

Anyway, you could set up a Gmail account and test it. I'll bet it "just works".

Stay away from Outlook.com. Folks with Macs are having issues with that.

I use iCloud for Reminders, Notes, Messages and iPhone backup only.

 

[Dervla]

It might be better to change your email to a Gmail address as Gmail has many more features than iCloud email. Gmail works great with the Apple ecosystem.

Anyway, you could set up a Gmail account and test it. I'll bet it "just works".

Stay away from Outlook.com. Folks with Macs are having issues with that.

I use iCloud for Reminders, Notes, Messages and iPhone backup only.

Thank you.

 

[GaryGnu]

smtp: smtp.mail.me.com
port: 587
username: <your icloud name before the @>
password: <your icloud password>
security: STARTTLS
authentication: Normal Password

 

[Dervla]

smtp: smtp.mail.me.com
port: 587
username: <your icloud name before the @>
password: <your icloud password>
security: STARTTLS
authentication: Normal Password

You know waaay more than me.

Would you have a guess why the two people at Apple Support did not suggest this?
.
<your icloud password> would be Apple ID password?
Normal Password would be what?

 

[GaryGnu]

You know waaay more than me.

No, I've just been bit by email settings before, but thank you.

Would you have a guess why the two people at Apple Support did not suggest this?

Yes, but forum decorum prevents me from answering.

<your icloud password> would be Apple ID password?

I think so, but it's the icloud password, which in my case is actually different then apple ID, but they could be the same. I'm a little password protective so I don't reuse any password, even an apple account and icloud.

Normal Password would be what?

On my system (which is Thunderbird), it's one of the options for authentication type. The others are no authentication, encrypted password, Kerberos and NTLM.

 

[Dervla]

No, I've just been bit by email settings before, but thank you.


Yes, but forum decorum prevents me from answering.


I think so, but it's the icloud password, which in my case is actually different then apple ID, but they could be the same. I'm a little password protective so I don't reuse any password, even an apple account and icloud.




On my system (which is Thunderbird), it's one of the options for authentication type. The others are no authentication, encrypted password, Kerberos and NTLM.

Thank you, and well done in #2.

 

[GaryGnu]

Thank you, and well done in #2.

Not a problem. I hope it works out for you. If you have any problems, you can ask, but honestly, I've reached my limit on what I can do for you without seeing your screen and all that other stuff.

 

[IvyKing]

Past:
A few days ago my email & internet provider notified me they would become internet only, ie, no email, at the end of this year.

I know your pain after having a speakeasy.net email for 14.5 years only to have speakeasy's ultimate successor, GTT, give a two month notice that the email service would be terminated. The 'fun' part was getting in touch with all of the entities that had my speakeasy email on file.

 

[Dervla]

I know your pain after having a speakeasy.net email for 14.5 years only to have speakeasy's ultimate successor, GTT, give a two month notice that the email service would be terminated. The 'fun' part was getting in touch with all of the entities that had my speakeasy email on file.

Yup

 

[Abydos]

seriously get another address (yahoo - gmail) have one to go to business asking for contact (solicitations and if they get hacked scam mail I think my current count is 40+ emails of dubious provenance daily ) try to get your apple email functioning - use it as you wish . the fun is seeing what types of scams are circulating today.

 

[kenta_]

My internet provider also gave up on supplying emails as well, but they transitioned everyone over to Yahoo, and kept our existing email addresses. Quite painless.

 

[MacInTO]

There is no right or wrong way to do this. Almost any email system will work - it just depends on what you prefer. I have several Gmail and several Yahoo accounts that I use for various purposes. My Apple ID email is my primary Gmail ID and it works pretty well as do a lot of other Google services within the iPhone. I also use Google Drive for storage and Photos for photo backup because I find it more flexible and cheaper than the offerings from Apple. All of my contacts are also in Google because Gmail is my primary email.

I have iCloud email as well but never use it. I think everyone with an apple ID must have an iCloud email. I prefer not to have everything on Apple in case I get locked out of my Apple ID, I can still login to Google elsewhere.

 

[klasma]

ICloud Mail isn’t great. I would also stay away from Google on principle. Look for another small but long-established email provider, or otherwise Fastmail or Proton Mail.

 

[HarryMudd]

Before you do anything, check with your current provider. I had the same thing happen with Cox, but they handed off the entire email business to Yahoo. I was able to keep my original cox email address and it ported to Yahoo. I think Yahoo is actually quite a bit better anyway. Also changing my main email address is a BIG hassle! BIG. Maybe your provider will so something similar.

 

[Dervla]

Before you do anything, check with your current provider. I had the same thing happen with Cox, but they handed off the entire email business to Yahoo. I was able to keep my original cox email address and it ported to Yahoo. I think Yahoo is actually quite a bit better anyway. Also changing my main email address is a BIG hassle! BIG. Maybe your provider will so something similar.

Thank you

 

[isomorphic]

This may be too technical, but you could consider purchasing your own domain (~$20/year), subscribing to iCloud+ (which I think can be as cheap as $1/month), and routing your new domain's email to iCloud+. I.e., Apple would be hosting / sending your email, but under this hypothetical new domain.

If you don't use a custom domain (that you own), you'll always be at the mercy of some email hosting provider—be it Apple, Google, whomever. With a custom domain you can switch to a different email host but keep your email address (although you may lose your archived email unless you back it up independently of the host).

I use iCloud+ for my email and I am very happy with it, much happier than I was with Gmail, because with iCloud+ I'm a customer and not a product. Unless you buy Google Apps or G-Suite or Google Workspace or whatever the hell Google calls it now, you'll be data mined and sold to advertisers. I don't think Microsoft offers custom-domain email hosting except with enterprise 365 plans that include Exchange.

Apple/iCloud doesn't have much of a through-the-web email client, however. The assumption is you'd use an email app (like Mail.app) on your Mac / iPhone.

 

[fatTribble]

Personally, I stay away from google as much as possible.

If you use iCloud you can use Hide My Email to help protect against spam.

 

[JoeSilver]

smtp: smtp.mail.me.com
port: 587
username: <your icloud name before the @>
password: <your icloud password>
security: STARTTLS
authentication: Normal Password

I had never had to manually set these. I thought that just having an iCloud account in System Settings -> Internet Accounts will set up everything.

 

[kschendel]

If you don't want to deal with google, and are looking for an independent email provider, and don't mind paying a little, try pair.com. I've used them for some 20 years with no problems. They have jacked up prices a bit recently, but for me it's worth the reliability and additional features such as web hosting.

 

[Fishrrman]

ATT has free email, you don't have to be a paying ATT customer:

Sign Up & Create Email Account | Currently from AT&T

Sign up today for a free email account from Currently in partnership with Yahoo. Get amazing features like 1TB of storage space, personalized news and automatic spam filtering.

www.att.com

It works with Apple's Mail.app and other 3rd-party apps (also web-based, which I seldom access).

This is hosted on Yahoo's server system, which a good number of formerly independent ISP/mail providers seem to be "shifting the email" to...

I was a paid ATT customer (landline phone and internet) for some years, I was happy to be able to keep my old original email address from back when I got ATT dsl in 2000...

 

[wonderings]

No reason not to use your iCloud email. If you are using Apple mail I would just completely delete your current account from Apple Mail on your computer. Then just setup brand new. You could have some weird settings from your ISP that are muddling things up. It is really simple to add an account and all those back end settings are there for people who know what they are doing but not necessary for most people.

 

[smithrh]

Email via Apple works great, TBH.

I've used (and administered) all sorts of corporate and private accounts over the years, and Apple has the just about everything covered.

Having an email address with your ISP isn't great, you're tied to their whims and policies and support absolutely change over time. Having independence is important.

Microsoft: if you have IT chops, this can work but it's got way too many features. Also plenty of technical issues that are almost impossible to solve or get help on when something goes wrong. Support is useless, if you can even get to them in the first place. Outlook does have reliable push, but that's becoming less important these days.

Google: not willing to have my emails go through google, nor responses to my emails. Yes, I have an account and have had it since gmail was invite-only.

Apple has hide my email, which is a great feature and completely underrated. They also support private domains, so if you want to use @myownpersonalemail.com you can, and doing that gives you even more flexibility, as long as you're able to buy the domain you want and are willing to do a bit of setup. Not to mention the integration with Apple devices, of course.

The way Apple mail falls a bit short is in the built-in email apps, they're basic as compared to Microsoft, but for personal email it covers what it needs to. Also the spam detection effectiveness in the cloud sometimes lapses a bit for a while, but then recovers - and there's always the spam detection on your device that's still working as well.

You get what you pay for. Yes, the features I mention that Apple has require a touch of money. I have gotten much better support out of Apple when issues have occurred as compared to Microsoft. And with anything free, you're giving up something for the freebie. No free lunch, and that goes in this case too.

https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/n...hments-to-train-its-ai-unless-you-turn-it-off

 

[deconstruct60]

ATT has free email, you don't have to be a paying ATT customer:

Sign Up & Create Email Account | Currently from AT&T

Sign up today for a free email account from Currently in partnership with Yahoo. Get amazing features like 1TB of storage space, personalized news and automatic spam filtering.

www.att.com

This is hosted on Yahoo's server system, which a good number of formerly independent ISP/mail providers seem to be "shifting the email" to...

If someone does not have an AT&T services , then I would strongly recommend to skip the middle man and go directly to the provider.

Yahoo handles the mail. ( if ever have to do a email backup recovery then you will be talking to Yahoo) AT&T just layers their advertising slop and a weaker account security set up on top of Yahoo for email services .


For the iCloud email address the lowest tech complicated way is to delete the ‘mailbox’ entry in whatever email program you use and re-create the mailbox with the modern auto-setup wizard. The settings ( and how they are stored ) from 10 years ago probably don’t work. [ have to be careful if have local device folders that are linked to the hosted IMAP server folders for your mail ] .Or can chose to do the manual setup ( or edit the current mailbox settings )

Why the Apple support folks didn’t know about is somewhat sad ( it is on their own support website. )

iCloud Mail server settings for other email client apps - Apple Support

Use these iCloud Mail server settings to manually set up your iCloud Mail account in an email client app.

support.apple.com

Apple skews their support service toward leaving customers ”happy and satisfied” as opposed to really solving their technical problems. And they support knowledge indexing and retrieval tools are seriously slacking.

 

[smithrh]

OK, a few comments on Apple Support:

Never blindly trust anything from their community pages. There are no Apple employees there, just people contributing answers, probably for free. I many times see bad answers there presented as definitive. This I do not like; I see this as Apple abusing their good standing with a large cadre of people, and getting them to provide free support to others - of questionable quality. Oh, it's not always wrong, but often enough and egregious enough to not trust it at all.

Phone support exists, and is pretty easily reachable. I will say the first level of support can be hit or miss, but on average it's not bad. However, whenever I've either been escalated or I've insisted on escalation, the next level is very very very good.

Microsoft? Forget it. Chat only, and even that is horrible, unless you're a bigger customer.

Google? Ha