Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: It depends, but generally yes.
What’s in iCloud+?
There might be some differences depending on where you reside. However, it usually includes the following:
More storage
The more you pay, the more cloud storage you get. It’s easy to understand.
Private relay
This is a feature not many people are aware of. It is a service you can turn on and benefit from across all your iOS devices. You can basically treat it as a free VPN provided by Apple.
Hide my email
This is very useful if you use a lot of online services but don’t want to hand out your primary email address for privacy reasons.
How hide my email works
You can generate a random email address that ends with @icloud.com, e.g. 19*************@ic****.com, whenever you register for a new online service from a website or an app.
Then, you can still receive email send to this random email, it’s just that it will forward automatically to your primary address.
This way, websites can’t track you or build a marketing profile based on your email address since you have a unique address for every service you use.
Custom email domain
Do you have a website? You can create your own email address too!
This is yet another crazy useful feature that comes with Apple iCloud+ plan. You can use your own domain to receive and send emails from this domain email address. For example:
If you have a website domain like johndoe.com, and you want a custom email address like bu******@jo*****.com, you can do that if you subscribed to Apple iCloud+ plan.
How to create custom email domain
Simply use your iOS devices, go to Settings > iCloud > Email > Custom Email Domain > Add a Domain You Own > Type in your website and Apple will take care of the rest for common domain name providers like Cloudflare.
If you bought your website elsewhere, you might need to add some custom records to your domain DNS. Don’t worry, it’s not hard at all. Just follow the instructions from Apple, and you’re good to go.
Depending on how you want your addresses to behave, I usually set a catch-all function – which means you can hand out any address name that ends with @johndoe.com.
In other words, you can have as many as addresses as you like. It is because any characters before the “@johndoe.com” will be caught, and you will still receive the emails in your mailbox.
Special and excellent use case for Custom Email Domain
Initially, I didn’t think much about it other than having an extra email address for my website. But then I came across a reply on Reddit, and it was honestly so smart that I had to share it with you. Here’s how it goes:
The amazing catch-all email
Endless email addresses
Turn on the catch-all service, so you can get all the emails sending to all the email address ends with @yoursite.com. Which means you can have endless email addresses to receive from!
The privacy setup
Use this as a base and register all services with the company/service/website name as the email address.
For example, if you were to register an account on Twitter, just enter tw*****@yo******.com as your account email. And you do the same for everything, because you don’t have an upper limit on how many email addresses you have! So I have like hs**@yo******.com, re****@yo******.com, go****@yo******.com, etc. It will all got sent to my main address re****************@yo******.com, which I give to no one.
Why use it like this?
In this way, you have an email you can actually remember, unlike a random email address generated by “Hide My Email.” You also don’t have to be tied to Apple for using their @icloud.com, because with your own domain, you can use any email provider by changing your DNS record and still keep all the addresses.
More importantly, you can spot out who is giving away your email address to third party service! Because you see, if you register for se**@yo******.com, and they give your personal information to someone else, they can only have your se**@yo******.com. If you are receiving an email from indeed, sending to se**@yo******.com, that’s a real ah ha moment, isn’t it?!
HomeKit
Well, I can’t comment on that because I have no experience or knowledge in it.
Caveats
Even though the offering is excellent, there are some caveats you need to be aware of as listed in the following:
Private Relay
Only works in Safari.
Custom Email Domain
You can only receive from endless email addresses, but not sending. You are limited to create 3 “real” email addresses per domain. It is good for personal use and a small business you own, it is not built for team use.
Storage
iCloud is a sync service, not quite a cloud storage – You cannot expect to utilise the cloud storage freely like OneDrive, Google Drive or other cloud providers.
Mail Filtering Issues
It is common to see people online complaining not receiving legit email using iCloud mail. Spam filtering, however, is controlled by Apple, so there’s nothing you can do.
Walled Garden
Apple only, like always.
So, is iCloud+ worth it?
Well absolutely!
For such a cheap price, you get extra storage, a free Apple VPN (Kind of), endless email addresses, hide my mail, and the HomeKit thing? It’s hard to say no to.
I’m a programmer and always look for free or open-source alternatives, and I’ve been digging the internet like crazy for anything I need. But the price of Apple iCloud+ is really competitive, considering what it offers.
If you were to source each service individually from separate providers, the cost would easily be five times higher per service.
Do you need it?
If you value privacy and need more storage on your Apple devices, just use it.
