Maski vs Apple Hide My Email: it is already on your phone, and it stays there

If you have an iPhone, you already have this. Hide My Email is built into the signup sheet, it costs nothing through Sign in with Apple, and it is right there at the exact moment you need it. That is a distribution advantage I cannot compete with and will not pretend to.

So this page is not about features. It is about one question: what happens to those addresses the day you want to stop being an Apple customer.

Two different bets about where your identity lives

Apple’s bet is that your Apple account is the centre of your digital life, so anchoring your addresses to it makes them more convenient rather than less. On an iPhone, in Safari, with iCloud Mail, that bet pays off constantly.

Maski’s bet is that your email should not be anchored to a hardware company. Aliases live on Maski’s domains or on a domain you own, forward to whatever inbox you like, and work identically on a Pixel, a ThinkPad or a terminal.

If you are never leaving the Apple ecosystem, Apple’s bet is the better one and this is a short page.

What matters, side by side

Maski compared with Apple Hide My Email on price, aliases included, custom domains, replying to a forwarded message, and sending a new message from the alias.
Compared on	Maski	Apple Hide My Email
Price	Free, or $4.99 a month for Pro Buys the alias service itself. No mailbox or storage is bundled in. Pro is free for a year for the first 1,000 sign-ups.	US$0.99 a month for iCloud+ with 50 GB, the entry tier Buys storage; masking is a feature inside iCloud+. Free through Sign in with Apple, which needs no subscription. iCloud+ plans — Apple Hide My Email, opens in a new tab Sign in with Apple — Apple Hide My Email, opens in a new tab
Aliases included	10 on Free, 25 on Pro	Apple's own pages disagree Support says as many as you need; the iCloud Terms reserve the right to limit them. Both, rather than one. Apple Support — Apple Hide My Email, opens in a new tab iCloud Terms — Apple Hide My Email, opens in a new tab
Custom domains	Yes, on Pro Bring your own domain. Maski can publish the DNS records for supported providers.	Not for Hide My Email — Apple's custom-domain feature is for iCloud Mail Custom Email Domain is an iCloud Mail feature: five domains, three addresses each. Custom Email Domain — Apple Hide My Email, opens in a new tab
Reply to a forwarded message	Yes, on Pro The alias stays in the From address. Your real address is never disclosed to the sender.	Yes, and the address stays in the From Documented in Mail, with the address as the sender. Using Hide My Email in Mail — Apple Hide My Email, opens in a new tab
Send a new message from the alias	Yes, on Pro You compose in your own mail client and address the message through Maski, so the alias is the sender.	Yes, by choosing the address in the From field Chosen in the From field. Apple states it can only reach a single recipient. Setting up Hide My Email — Apple Hide My Email, opens in a new tab Using Hide My Email in Mail — Apple Hide My Email, opens in a new tab

Verified 11 September 2026. I re-check every figure on its source page, and this date only moves when the whole table has been checked again.

Apple's custom domain feature is not for Hide My Email

This one catches people out, so it is worth being exact. Apple does support custom domains, up to five domains with three addresses each. That feature is Custom Email Domain, and it is part of iCloud Mail.

It is not a way to generate Hide My Email addresses on a domain you own. Two different features, in two different places, and the one attached to your domain is the one that is not the alias product.

So if your plan was your own domain plus unlimited random addresses on it, Apple does not sell that combination. Three addresses per domain is a mailbox feature, not a masking one.

Apple will not tell you how many you can have

Apple’s support pages say you can create as many addresses as you need. The iCloud Terms of Service say Apple reserves the right to limit the number of email addresses available under the feature.

Both of those are Apple’s own words, on Apple’s own domains, and they do not agree. I am not going to pick the flattering one or the unflattering one. You can read them both and decide how much it matters.

You will find figures circulating for the real cap. They come from Apple’s community forums, which is users talking to users, so they are not on this page.

Mail you send can only go to one person

Apple states this plainly: mail sent with Hide My Email can only be delivered to a single recipient.

For most personal use that is irrelevant. For anything with a CC on it, a contractor, an estate agent, two people at a company, it is the moment you fall back to your real address.

Leaving is the expensive part

Every Hide My Email address is tied to your Apple account. Switch to Android, lose access, or decide you would rather not have one company hold your photos, your payments and your logins at once, and each of those addresses has to be replaced one account at a time.

On a domain you own, moving providers is a DNS change. That is the entire argument on this page and I would rather make it once, clearly, than pad it out.

BE HONEST: when Apple Hide My Email is the right call

It is free, and Apple says so. Hide My Email through Sign in with Apple needs no subscription at all. Anyone telling you Apple charges for aliases is wrong, including, if I were careless, me.

It is at the point of need. The address is generated inside the signup sheet, on the page, in the moment. No extension, no tab switch, no copy and paste. Every other tool here loses to that on friction and it is not close.

If you already pay for iCloud+, it is included. The entry tier is US$0.99 a month for 50 GB, and you are buying storage with masking inside it. If you were buying the storage anyway the masking is free, and paying me on top is hard to justify.

It works where you already are. Hide My Email is wired into Mail, Safari and the system settings on hardware you carry every day. No forwarding service gets that close to the operating system, and nothing I build will.

Is one of those the reason you would not switch?

Then tell me which one. If the thing keeping you on Apple Hide My Email is a feature I do not have yet, I would rather hear it from you than guess at it, and a short note saying what you need and what you are using it for is worth more to me than any amount of competitor research.

Write to jay@maski.dev and it comes to me. If you would rather it went to the support queue, use hey@maski.dev. I cannot promise to build everything, and I will not pretend otherwise, but nothing gets built that nobody asked for.

Start on the free plan, before the domain question

Keep using Hide My Email where it is convenient. Bringing your own domain to Maski is a Pro feature, so do not start there. Start free, put an alias on the next signup, and find out whether the rest of it earns the upgrade first.

Start free Read the other comparisons