iCloud Mail
Apple's email service for icloud.com, me.com and mac.com addresses. Apple publishes bulk sending requirements but offers no feedback loop and no allowlist.
What it means
Apple's postmaster page lists what bulk senders must do to reach iCloud Mail, or be rejected: mail only recipients who explicitly subscribed (no purchases, rentals or appends), offer an immediate unsubscribe link, add ARC headers to forwarded mail, follow RFCs 5321 and 5322, publish reverse DNS, keep IPs and domains consistent while separating marketing from transactional streams, use SPF and DKIM, publish DMARC, act on SMTP errors, handle bounces and remove inactive subscribers.
Apple offers no allowlist and no feedback loop; it tracks reputation from IP and domain reputation, content checks and user feedback. iCloud Mail honours senders' DMARC policies, and its own domains publish p=quarantine.
Apple Mail Privacy Protection, a separate feature, affects open tracking for many readers.
Related terms
Sources
What this definition rests on. The wording is ours; the facts are theirs.
- Apple Support: Postmaster information for iCloud Mailsupport.apple.com
All 432 terms in the glossaryThe wiki: blocklists and bounce codes