Syncing Mail with iCloud

[colodane]

For some time now, I've used iCloud to sync things like Calendar, Contacts, Bookmarks and Notes between my iMac and my iOS devices. It has worked very well.

Now I would like to sync my Mail apps, primarily to easily maintain a unified structure of folders, etc. My main email account is a private domain set up with POP3. My secondary backup account is gmail on IMAP. I was hoping to sync these two accounts across platforms. I currently do not have an iCloud email account.

When I try to select syncing of email via iCloud, either on OS-X or iOS, it seems to insist that I sign up for an iCloud email account - something that I am not interested in doing, not right now at least.

I'd like to understand why this restriction exists. Also, given my email usage, would there be enough actual benefit from syncing to be worth the hassle of establishing another email account?

Thanks in advance for the advice

 

[Vejper]

For some time now, I've used iCloud to sync things like Calendar, Contacts, Bookmarks and Notes between my iMac and my iOS devices. It has worked very well.

Now I would like to sync my Mail apps, primarily to easily maintain a unified structure of folders, etc. My main email account is a private domain set up with POP3. My secondary backup account is gmail on IMAP. I was hoping to sync these two accounts across platforms. I currently do not have an iCloud email account.

When I try to select syncing of email via iCloud, either on OS-X or iOS, it seems to insist that I sign up for an iCloud email account - something that I am not interested in doing, not right now at least.

I'd like to understand why this restriction exists. Also, given my email usage, would there be enough actual benefit from syncing to be worth the hassle of establishing another email account?

Thanks in advance for the advice

Sorry to say but icloud mail is not a syncing service for your other email accounts it works the same way that your gmail works pretty much, only with an @icloud.com email.

 

[Significant1]

To sync folders you should eliminate pop3. Imap/exchange does what you ask for, they sync folder structures and mail-status (read, flag). It is very likely your private domain already supports IMAP. But IMAP relies on having everything on server, so you need sufficient serverspace. If you do not have sufficient server-space, you can setup an automatic forward to an cloud mail like gmail, icloud-account, outlook etc., which can all sync with at least imap. If configured properly with reply-address, this can be done without any difference in the other end. From their point of view, they are sending to and receiving from your private domain.

 

[colodane]

Thanks, folks, for the advice. Very useful.

In fact, this is good timing as I was going to change my private domain email host later this year due to issues with my present provider. When I make the change, I will transition to IMAP instead of POP3. This should improve my situation significantly.

Thanks again!