If you already pay for iCloud+ and live on Apple devices, Hide My Email is excellent and costs you nothing extra. It's built into Sign in with Apple and into Safari's autofill, so generating an address is genuinely frictionless. Two limits matter: the addresses are on Apple's domain, and it works best inside Apple's ecosystem. Don't SPAM Me puts the aliases on a domain you own and works anywhere, but has no OS integration and no reply support.
Comparison
| Apple Hide My Email | Don't SPAM Me | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Included with iCloud+ (subscription required) | Free software + your domain |
| Address domain | @icloud.com | Your own domain |
| Number of addresses | Apple publishes no limit | Unlimited |
| Creating an address | Built into iOS, macOS, Safari, Sign in with Apple | Automatic on first mail — type it into any form |
| Reply from the address | ✓ in Mail | ✗ Not yet |
| Deactivate / reactivate | ✓ | ✓ (hard SMTP 550) |
| Requires 2FA on the account | ✓ | — |
| Custom domain | ✗ — separate iCloud+ feature (see below) | ✓ Required |
| Works outside Apple devices | Via iCloud.com, but the integration is the point | ✓ Any device, any client |
| Per-alias spam attribution | ✗ | ✓ |
| Leak alerts naming the sender | ✗ | ✓ |
| Survives leaving the provider | ✗ | ✓ |
The confusion worth clearing up first
They get conflated constantly, including by people recommending them. Hide My Email generates random @icloud.com addresses that forward to you. Custom Email Domain lets you use your own domain with iCloud Mail.
They are separate features and Hide My Email addresses are not created on your custom domain. So "I have iCloud+ so I already have custom-domain aliases" is not quite right — you have custom-domain mailboxes, and separately you have random Apple-domain aliases.
What Apple does better
- The integration. This is the real advantage and it's hard to overstate. Sign in with Apple offers to hide your address at the moment you're creating an account; Safari offers a Hide My Email address inline when you tap an email field. No other alias service can reach into the OS like that. The friction is close to zero, which matters more than any feature list because it determines whether you actually use it.
- Replies work from within Mail.
- It's already paid for if you subscribe to iCloud+ for storage, which many people do.
- Apple's incentives are reasonable here. They sell hardware and subscriptions, not advertising against your mail.
Where it's limited
The addresses are Apple's
Every Hide My Email address ends @icloud.com. If you ever leave the Apple ecosystem — a work switch, a change of preference, a household consolidating on something else — every address has to be replaced at every service using it. For someone who has used Sign in with Apple across a few hundred accounts, that's a substantial project, and any account whose password reset goes to a dead address becomes a support ticket.
This is the general provider-domain problem and it applies to DuckDuckGo and Relay too. It's just more acute here, because the whole appeal is deep ecosystem integration — which is exactly what makes leaving expensive. The full argument.
The addresses are opaque
Hide My Email generates random addresses. You can label them, which helps inside Apple's interface, but the address itself tells you nothing. Seeing spam arrive at a random string doesn't identify the company at a glance; you have to look the label up.
With a readable per-service address the source is on the To: line. That's a small thing that compounds over a few hundred addresses.
It's ecosystem-shaped
Management happens through Apple's interfaces. It works via iCloud.com from anywhere, but if you're on Windows or Android day-to-day, you're using a tool designed for somewhere you aren't.
Who should pick which
| If you… | Choose |
|---|---|
| Already pay for iCloud+ and use Apple devices | Apple Hide My Email — it's included and the integration is excellent |
| Want zero-friction address creation at signup | Apple Hide My Email |
| Need to reply from the address | Apple Hide My Email |
| Use Windows, Android or Linux day-to-day | Don't SPAM Me |
| Might leave the Apple ecosystem one day | Don't SPAM Me |
| Want readable addresses that name the company | Don't SPAM Me |
| Want to know which company leaked each address | Don't SPAM Me |
| Don't want an iCloud+ subscription | Don't SPAM Me, or DuckDuckGo Email Protection (free) |
Using both
Perfectly sensible, and probably what a lot of Apple users should do. Hide My Email is hard to beat for casual signups where its OS prompt appears — the convenience means you'll actually use it. A custom domain makes more sense for the accounts you'd hate to lose: banking, government, utilities, anything where being locked out is a genuine problem.
Splitting on that basis costs nothing extra if you already have iCloud+ and gets you the convenience where it helps and the portability where it counts.
The verdict
If you're inside the Apple ecosystem and paying for iCloud+, use Hide My Email. It's included, it's well made, and the integration is genuinely better than anything a third party can offer.
Consider a custom domain for the accounts that matter, or if you're not confident you'll still be on Apple devices in five years. The cost of that hedge is a domain registration; the cost of not taking it is re-addressing your entire digital life at whatever point you change your mind.
More: all alias services compared · vs DuckDuckGo · custom domain vs provider domain