Industry: Apple to enter B2B mailbox space, Amazon exits

Here’s a quick update on recent comings and goings in the business mailbox provider space.

Amazon to wind down Workmail offering

Amazon just announced that they are shutting down their corporate mailbox solution Workmail. The service officially ends just about a year from now, on March 31, 2027.

Amazon announced Workmail back in 2015. I blogged about it then, but never really ran into it much between then and now. Not to say that it had absolutely zero adoption; I see amazonaws.com in the MX records of just over 14,000 of the top ten million domains, according to my January 2026 DNS snapshot. But I never really ran into it very much out in the deliverability world.

Updated Apple Business offering launches soon

At the same time, Apple has announced that they’ve got a new business mailbox offering. Starting April 14th, their updated “Apple Business” launches with new support for corporate email inboxes and more; combining email and calendaring into their device, domain and even brand management functionality. Meaning, I think that Apple Business Connect, which includes BIMI-like logo functionality, will be managed as part of this suite as well.

I have lots of questions. I read that the Apple offering will be free, but there’s free and then there’s free. I don’t think this is a standalone email service; will there be some sort of overall cost or verification requirement for a business to register – and what constitutes a business, if so?

And will this be hosted on the regular, existing iCloud mailbox infrastructure? Seems possible; it already does have calendar support and custom email domain support. Apple iCloud is lightly represented in the top ten million domains data today, with just over 5,500 domains pointing their MX records at icloud.com, according to my January 2026 snapshot.

I am looking forward to the upcoming April 14, 2026 launch date, so that I can investigate further and learn more about Apple’s new offering. Stay tuned.