ICloud Mail Reliability?

Hi, I was wondering about your general opinions on weither I should switch to iCloud mail from Gmail. The only reason why I am hesitant to do this is because I know that iCloud had some issues when it came out. I am very afraid of not getting some of my mail when I need it.
How has iCloud mail been lately? Has it been reliable in the mid to latter part of 2012?
Would you switch from GMail to iCloud? (I know google is far more powerful, but I just use basic email tools and folders. And I just don't trust Google, I know its stupid..)

Forwarding gmail to iCloud wouldn't gain you anything except another failure point. However, if you want to do that to test it before droping gmail, then do it. Problem is that if you don't get a message, how are you going to determine if it's a failure in gmail site or iCloud?
You might be better off not droping gmail right away. But rather have some of your contacts use the iCloud address for a while for you to test it. Or forward it, and have some use the direct iCloud address for testing.
At some point you can choose one or the other. Or, just keep both. They can both be set up in Mail at one time.

Similar Messages

Can anything be done to ensure/improve iCloud mail reliability in sending/receiving?

The tl;dr version of my question: is there anything I can do from an end-user perspective to improve the odds that my iCloud mail messages will be properly delivered to others, or incoming mail properly received by me? I like iCloud, but this is something I never worried about with Gmail, though I would prefer to stay with a single service for personal information management (i.e., iCloud) as opposed to going to Gmail or Outlook.com for mail/contacts/calendars.
The slightly longer version:
I was formerly a Gmail user for many years. All of my hardware is Apple made, so iCloud makes sense, including for mail. I have multiple third-party email accounts forwarding to my @icloud.com address.
I have had intermittent reports of missing or delivered-to-spam messages which I sent from my @icloud.com address over the past couple months. Messages were sent from either the Mail.app on my MBP running Mavericks or from the native Mail app on iPhone. Software on both devices is always kept up to date. Messages appeared in my iCloud Mail sent folder without issue. No delivery delay/failure notifications were received by me for the messages which were reportedly not delivered.
The recipients in question had nothing to gain from lying and playing the "I never got the email" card. The destination addresses to which I was sending these messages were both institutional Exchange accounts (three delivered to spam, one not delivered at all) or Gmail accounts (one, with the recipient subsequently receiving my original message without issue when I forwarded it from my own separate Exchange account).
Thanks in advance.

For the first part, that does beg the question whether this is something that is more of a problem with iCloud than it is other providers, for whatever reason.
I'm not a huge fan of anecdotal "evidence" in general, but iCloud mail does seem to have the worst reputation for missing messages when compared to Gmail or even Outlook.com, at least going by a quick search. For other iCloud mail users, does this ever concern you? Any former iCloud users who left for similar reasons?

Surface Pro 2 iCloud Mail won't scroll

I have tried to set up my iCloud mail in Windows 8 Mail application without proper success (for example, I can't see any sent items, but there are other glitches too) so I decided to use web browser access. However, whether in Chrome or IE or Firefox, when I log in to mail I can see the first few messages in any mailbox but I can't scroll down to see older ones: there is no scroll bar and no scrollability so I am limited to seeing just a few messages in each box unless I reverse display order, in which case I can see the last few.
THis is a 'biggie' for me: I have purchased the Surface Pro in order to have a travel machine with good photoshop and Lightroom ablities but also a tablet like form factor. I also like teh stylus for use in image editing. But I really do neeed reliable email while travelling and I am not going to stump up for an Office subscription for full mail facilities on a machine I will use for maybe four weeks a year.
Does anyone have any clues?
Thanks in advance!

I don't know if this behavior has changed recently , but to scroll down, you have to be able to drag to below the bottom of the window. If you, and the other users of the machine, are the types who like to keep the main Mail window open to maximum height (as the maximize button on Mail's title bar will do), and you're viewing messages in that window, then you will not be able to scroll while dragging down. Try resizing the window and leaving a small space below the window.

How do I get to the rules section in iCloud mail on my iPad. I want to block just one email sender.w do I post

How dom I get to the rules box in iCloud mail on my iPad. I just want to block one address. Thanks

The replies have helped me to conclude that in this instance apple have failed by a long shot to provide any reliable help. I have exchanged chats with them and been told to just read variuos support notes which explain how to set the rules on an iPad. After many exchanges I was not convinced they had grasped the real problem. In the end they would appear to be wrong in the advice given. Apple were no help at all, I gave your replies a HELP star because they helped me conclude that.
The situation was and still is, the iPad was a gift to an 85 year old relative of mine, she loved it, really getting used to emails, photos,, web and so on. Suddenly things started to go wrong, photos started failing freezing up during uploads and albums sharing etc. in the end had to dump everything and with help call on Dropbox, all well now with that. Then an email from one of her eldly friends was delivered every 10 minutes, over 400 panic. Nobody gave any simple answer to her of the sender to stop the emails. She called me, 500 miles away to see if I could help, yep I said until you get someone close to help you just block that email address, easy or so I thought, you know the trauma from there.
I got the roundabout way to stop them with my own winbox and iPad., she as just got the iPad and is housebound. I have offered that if she gives me her security info I'l log into her iCloud mail in windows and set the rules and any other preferences for her.....highly desirable solution isn't it.
I,ll say to anyone that apple and many of it apps are not user friendly and fail badly. Sorry for being a bit longwiinded in this reply but it's given me some experience with this facility that again was not easy to master.

ICloud Mail - will not send in Outlook 2010

Hello:
I am desperate to get iCloud email working on my Win 7/Outlook 2010 machine. I have iCloud setup on my MacBook Pro and iPad using mail, calendar and contacts. On the Windows machine, I used the iCloud control panel to create the mail account setup.
It used my new @.me.com account as the user (only the name, not the @me.com).
It used p02-imap.mail.me.com and P02-smtp.mail.me.com
Port 993 with SSL for sending and port 587 with TLS for sending.
The problem is with authenticating to the smtp server. It stops and asks for a password. I have tried every port/encription option and still no joy. It authenticates to the imap for getting messages.
I can login to iCloud's web app and use the MBP and iPad without an issue. It seems like hundreds of people are complaining about the same thing.
What is the ciorrect seetings for iCloud mail and why does the auto config fail?
Thanks,
Kevin

I agree, i can't understand why they don't just explain the settings. And why they do not consistently work.
I too had issues, Outlook was "working" when i set up the @me account, then I started getting the annoying little internat email login popup (that does not go away). Finally after many "experiments" i have it "apparently working" (will explain working with the following settings:
accoutn type: IMAP
incoming server: imap.mail.me.com Port: 993: SSL
outgoing server: smtp.mail.me.com Port: 25 (default): Auto
"Require SPA" is checked, but not on outgoing server.
It does now finally work without putting up the annoying internet email login. However, now i discoverd a greater problem.
OUTLOOK IS NOT REALLY SENDING THE EMAIL. It is putting it in the "sent" box as if it did, but no one receives it. No errors, no warning. And this dates all the way back to the time i started using the @me account. My only work around is to use the stupid icloud mail browser app. Really low in functionality compared to outlook.
This really affects the reliability of the icloud product and this is a serious error. It really cuts down on the utility of the icloud and whewther it can be integrated with the PC at all. Like everyone else i have also had the creation of multiple calendars and multiple contacts.
Apple better fix this quick or a lot of people will start using gmail, droid and google cloud products.

I feel like I cant trust iCloud mail, anyone else got the same feeling?

This is getting very frustrating, I feel like my trust in iCloud mail are almost none. I switched my primary personal account to iCloud, thougt that it would be a nice step since I have many Apple devices. But the reliability is a real problem for me. Right now I´m waiting on two important e-mails that I know already have been sent but I cant access them...
Perhaps I need to go back to my old e-mail provider...

It is my opinion that you are completely correct. Apple is not providing correct information in this case.
The outage effected people in different parts of the world and USA. It is illogical that it only effected 1.1 percent. Mailer Servers are usually clustered by IP address. Google has different IP addresses in different parts of USA and users are assigned to those IP address. Take my word for it more than 1.1 percent of people are assigned to an IP address. My guess it was a bad software load or a major hack that propagated through their entire system.
It is the only thing that explains a two day outage. They need time to get rid of what was propagating. This is also explained by the fact that they originally said it was only .17 percent effected then raised it to 1.1 percent as it propagated through the system.
Hey, outages happen and that is not the problem.. It is that Apple, in my opinion, has stonewalled the truth and acted arrogantly. Not a good things to do.

Proposed solution to ongoing, indefinite, iCloud mail outage

Temporary solution as follows:
https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount
Using google drive is an effective, reliable, means of syncing docs across all devices (not just iWork). Drive app is available on App Store for iOS.

acplaird wrote:
Icloud Mail appears to have been down here in France for the past 3 hours however the Status page continues to show that all iCloud services are operating as normal. It would be really helpful if the status page was more accurate (or should that be more honest?). As it is it I have wasted the past 3 hours checking all confidurationas I control. If iCloud were a free service lack of candour re outages might be tolerable but when you pay for a service
iCloud is a free service, who are you giving your money too, and for what?

ICloud Mail Outage should cause minimal damage

I am among the throngs of disappointed users who finally got iCloud mail service back within the past few hours.
Just a note to everyone that outgoing email servers will typically make attempts at delivery every hour for two or three days before notifying the sender that delivery failed. Given that the outage here was less than two days in duration, everyone should receive all of their emails, albeit with a significant time delay.
If some impatient servers gave up after one day, then the sender might question the error message and resend the message.
On the whole, email loss should be minimal.
Nevertheless, iCloud service needs to be far more reliable than this for anyone to use it as their primary email account.

I have a similar issue, in that my email has been down since yesterday. None of the test emails I have sent, including one just sent, have shown up. I can sign into iCloud on the web, but it is not synchronized with any of my other devices, nor are any of them synchronized with each other.

TS4002 icloud mail freezes

iCloud mail has recently began to freeze while I'm typing an email. I use iCloud mail with both a pc and an iMac and it happens on both. I have tried different web browsers too, but that doesn't help. Any suggestions?

frankly, I am seriously considering giving up on Icloud mail for similar reasons...additionally, I find that I constantly have to "re-sign" in, and sometimes it seems to take forever for the app to load...whereas gmail has been absolutely reliable. Of course then i am not too happy about the ads and some privacy invasion that come with it...I am not sure where all of this is going but I feel increasingly uneasy about the internet altogether. When Google Chrome came along, I happily abandoned Firefox, and historically never found Safari all that enticing.
Aside from the holy war theory re icloud not working with Chrome, I am getting a little impatient with the fact that Apple seems to be becoming larger and less responsive. This issue seems to have existed now for some time, a year or maybe more, and I have no idea if Apple even cares about it...no updates, no way of getting a note to the Empire...it occurred to me a few weeks ago that in less than a couple of decades our civilization has become almost totally dependent upon the internet...I sometimes wonder what would happen to us if suddenly it stopped working. Has anyone noticed that technology seems to solve one problem but then create others...space junk, nuclear waste, emissions, oil spills, on and on...sorry, starting to rant!! if you want icloud, you might be stuck with safari...package deal. and so just have icloud mail forwarded to some other deal like Zoho or gmail or ??? and dont use it at all.

Can't send iCloud mail from Outlook 2011

I have recently installed Office 2011 for Mac on my Macbook Pro and I want to set up my iCloud mail on it. I can receive mail just fine but I can't send mail at all. I keep getting error code 17092 saying that the SMTP server doesn't recognize any of the authentication methods supported by Outlook. How can I fix this problem or do I have to just use the native Mail app? Any help will be greatly appreciated, thanks!

I was having the same issue. I was able to fix by login into appleid.apple.com and setting my @me as the primary email adress.( Make sure you verify it) The deleted your i cloud account on you Iphone, Ipad or Touch then added it again. You should be able to send email using icloud

How can I update my Mail program in 10.6.8 to iCloud Mail?

I am running 10.6.8 on my iMac, which is my work "workhorse." I can't update it to Lion because I can't afford to update Quark/Photoshop et al that I'd need. And it works fine.
I also have a Macbook Air running the latest Lion, as well as an iPod 5 running IOS7. Both access my iCloud mail address and folders/filtering set up on iCloud.
However, the Mail program on my iMac is still showing my MobileMe mailbox (and MobileMe is in my system preferences). I had an elaborate filtering-to-folders set up in Mail for my MobileMe account (not in the online MobileMe). I've disabled all the filtering in my Mail program, but iCloud still sends some mail to the older folders I had set up in the program, overriding the new folder-filtering I have set up on iCloud.
So, sometimes I'll get an email sent to my .me email address from a client which I cannot see on my Macbook Air (or iPod) because it's sent to a folder on my iMac. I'm semi-retired so don't do much work anymore so I'd rather not "fire up" the iMac unless I've work to do. But as it is with the Mail situation, I have to leave it on all the time or I can miss client email.
My question is, can I get delete my "mobileme" account in my iMac Mail program and then add my iCloud account to it? I assume the MobileMe in the iMac's system preferences is there for good, because I can't update to Lion. Will that fix my problem, or is that even do-able?
I'm not sure I've stated this clearly. I'm trying to get total coordination between my iMac, MB Air, and iPod mail accounts in the Mail programs of each device without having to resort to using iCloud mail online on my iMac. Perhaps that's unavoidable?
Any help appreciated. If clarification needed, I'll try to explain this better... Thanks all!
Nicol K

You can perfectly well access email in 10.6.8 - I'm doing it myself - and if you are receiving @me.com mail you are already doing so. the @icloud.com version of the address is exactly the same thing, and messages to it will arrive in the inbox alongside those to @me.com.
However if you have set up Rules to act on incoming @me.com mail it obviously won't act on @icloud.com messages, so you will have to duplicate the Rules if you want to keep them.
If you want to try starting over you can delete the account and set it up again, using the method described here:
Entering iCloud email settings manually in Snow Leopard or Leopard
You can't access other iCloud facilities in Snow Leopard but if all you are interested in is the email you have no need to upgrade to Mountain Lion.

IOS 8.1 Does Not Download All iCloud Mail/ Keeps Cache?

Hello,
I have setup and enabled an iCloud e-mail account on all of my devices and was successfully able to use the Mail app in Mac OS X Yosemite to copy mail from my Yahoo! inbox to my iCloud inbox. All e-mail copied from Yahoo! Mail appears in the OS X Yosemite Mail app as well as in the iCloud.com site, however, my iPad Air 2 and iPhone 5 both running iOS 8.1 does not download all of the mail from iCloud. I have tried the following on both iOS 8.1 devices with no success.
- Disable iCloud mail and re-enable
- Sign completely out of iCloud and sign in again, then reconfigure all iCloud services including mail
The result of both steps is that the incomplete list of e-mail in the iCloud inbox just reappears in the Mail app instead of downloading from iCloud again. It looks like the incomplete list of e-mail is stored on the iOS device and signing out of or disabling iCloud mail just hides it; re-enabling or signing in merely shows it again. This appears to work differently than my Yahoo! Mail configuration where if I sign out of or delete the Yahoo! account and reconfigure, iOS downloads a fresh copy of all e-mail in the inbox and all other folders. Here are my two questions:
- How do I get my iPhone and iPad Air 2 to download ALL e-mail from my iCloud mail account?
- Are my suspicions true? Does iOS actually store a cached copy of iCloud mail on the device when the service is disabled and just "redisplays" it when re-enabled?
Thanks!

I had the same problem. My iCloud it's a mess since the iOS 8.1 update.
Probably your iCloud isn't working too.

Problems with icloud mail constantly auto-saving

Problems with icloud mail constantly auto-saving - screen freezes. VERY frustrating. running windows 8. same problem through safari, explorer and chrome. Any suggestions to reduce auto save frequency?

Hi Csound1
approx every 30 seconds the browser freezes and 'saving' appears in the top bar of icloud mail. The cursor starts spinning and then after about 8 secs I can start typing again. I also fiund that about 5-6 times a day my icloud browser tab showing mail just close and return to the main icloud menu page showing icons for mail, calender, notes etc

Can not view my icloud mail messages on my phone

I am not able to look at my mail within the icloud mail. Any suggestions

Not sure what you mean by "within iCloud mail" but if you can't view your iCloud mail inside the Mail app on your phone, go to Settings>iCloud, turn Mail off, then after a few seconds turn Mail back on again.

TROUBLESHOOTING TIPS RE: iCLOUD MAIL SERVER DROPOUT

Here's what I learned throughout this and I will post a discussion in a separate thread for the rest of the folk out there.
MYTHS AND FACTS RE: iCLOUD MAIL SERVER DROPOUT- WHAT I'VE LEARNED
Hopefully this troubleshooting helps everyone that has had or having issues, for now and for the future...
Firstly, the Apple system status is a bit of a myth. Because it is a global community of people using iCloud, it does not always update in real time. The Apple techs check this when there is issues, as do the public, so odds are unless every single person is having issues around the globe, then it won't reflect an issue. http://www.apple.com/au/support/systemstatus/
Apple technicians work in territories. For example, I live in Australia so I had to deal with a tech supervisor who looks after Australasia and who is based in Singapore. They don't get a notification if a group of people in Canada are having problems, even if they are identical to mine, unless as above, the whole world is having issues.
CHECK THESE FORUMS as a first step measure to work out if the problem seems to be just you and your account, or a wider community. Particularly before you make any major change to your email accounts, passwords, computers or phones.
If you get an issue in the next week or so (and keep in mind for the future) Error Message: "MY NAME" returned the error "[AUTHENTICATIONFAILED] Authentication failed." Your username/password or security settings may be incorrect. Would you like to try re-entering your password?" and this happens multiple times when you know the password is correct, then odds are that the server is down and you are best to wait it out. Try checking your mail via iCloud to test. If you can send it through there, odds are that the glitch has nothing to do with your password or issues with your account and rather than make changes, try and wait it out.
If all of your folders in your email disappear, if they are IMAP folders, then log into iCloud mail in your web browser to check that they are still there. It just means that your mail client (Mac Mail, Outlook for Mac etc) can't access the IMAP folders via the server. Don't panic until they are gone from every device you use your email on.
Be wary of deleting ANYTHING from your computer unless you are backing it up first. For example, I had a tech guy on the first day of the server drop out, who gave me the wrong advice of deleting EVERYTHING from my keychain. This resulted in me having massive security issues for web browsers and thus, I couldn't log into my iCloud mail in my browser. Not only did I have to re-install my OS Maverick to fix it (which took 10 hours) but I could have muddled through this mess by continuing to work using web mail.
If everyone seems to be having a mail server problem based on online community discussions, then you are not alone and TELL your Apple tech this. Send copies of the links to the various conversations. Push them (nicely) to investigate internally what is going on and don't let them rely on the System support status. It also helps to put in a report to Apple down the track.
Make sure that you can get a copy of Apple tech guys email address. Thankfully, even though I was on the phone to them for in excess of 7 hours over the past two days, I could update my guy via email and also send him screen shots of things that did or didn't work using my iPhone. We would keep in contact and all I would have to do is send him an email and he would call me back straight away. No holding or dealing with any call centre issues, which is probably the only reason why I didn't lose my cool too much.
If you can get into your iCloud through your web browser, you have the options under the inbox and then the little wheel thing down the bottom (preferences) to put a vacation message, like an out of office. Put that on and explain you are having email issues and give another email address or your contact number. At least the people that you need to contact will know that things could get lost in cyberspace. I wish I had of known this earlier.
You can also forward emails emails to another email address under preferences. Also very handy.
Become friends with your tech guy rather than enemies. If you don't feel like your tech guy knows what he's talking about, politely request to speak to a supervisor. I would be having a nervous breakdown right now (small business owner, lost two days of billable hours so I am financially behind) if I didn't have a good relationship with the guy that has been helping me. We are a good team, with me updating him with the information, via these forums, to find a proper solution to the issue and to rectify the wrong information I was given by the previous Apple tech guy I spoke to.
Ask them to replicate your issue on their side of the fence to troubleshoot. For example, my tech guy Levi replicated my issue with websites by intentially removing the system certificate from his computer and he realised that was what the problem was, and thus he could quickly find out how to fix it.
Back up your stuff regularly. It might be annoying but it is peace of mind if know you are only going to lose a minimum of a week's worth of stuff.
Apple has an engineering team and tech guys raise 'tickets' to them with information on what has happened to their clients. I don't know much about this but I would assume it is having the engineering team investigate to stop this happening in future. They can only work with the feedback they get I suppose. I would also suggest doing the Apple Care survey so they also get feedback. We need to explain to them that we are asking for communication first and foremost - whilst it is inconvenient, if we all knew when and where they would be doing server upgrades (which the rumours indicate that this is what happened) then I don't feel everyone would be so frustrated.
Using your computer is like raising a child - you know when something is not right, even if you are not experienced at it yet. Sure, you may not know the lingo but trust your instincts and tell your tech guy. I have learned more in the past two days about computers and Mac's than ever before and I know when I can confidentially say that strange things were happening to my Mac and where Apple went wrong in guiding me. Don't always take a blanket or easy explanation if you don't think it is right; odds are it will result in making changes to your product that do more harm than good.
Keep a record of notes of how much time you have spent on the issue (including phone calls to Apple), what they have told you to do and at what time, changes to passwords, troubleshooting tips and the contact details (and reference numbers) of who you speak to. I'm not sure if Apple provides compensation for these issues or anything along these lines, but I certainly will be informing them so they can try and better their service to me in the future.
Anyway, I hope that helps everyone a bit - these are just things that I have learned and if anyone else has any tips please feel free to add them.

Tried port 465 but it wouldn't work.
Went to our help desk and here's the reply I got (paraphrased slightly cuz the person at the help desk was trying hard to be helpful and I don't want to get him/her in trouble):
I presented this question to the university team and then waited for a long time to get the following reply:
we do not allow relay from non-university IP addresses.
port 25 for smtp is a standard worldwide.
For the most part, that went right over my head and didn’t answer anything, but I hope it means something to you.
I called him to get more clarification, but all I really got out of it was that, if you don’t use exchange which is secure via port 443, then your other option is to use smtp. And then he said something about how relay, iron ports, and authenticated accounts work together to make it secure. I know it makes me sound a lot more inept than I am, but all that made little sense to me. What I gather, is… that by selecting SSL when configuring your client, it makes it so that your login info and mail content is safe. Sorry, I can’t provide a more cohesive and comprehensive explanation, but I think the bottom line is that they have combined a non-secure protocol with other stuff to make it secure.
So, I'm hoping that checking SSL and using port 25 somehow solves the problem to the satisfaction of our IT professionals at the University ...
Again, thanks for taking the time to educate the rest of us!

ICloud Mail Reliability?

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