Apple ID as custom domain email

Hi Larry McJunkin,

It seems that your concern is addressed in the article Add an email domain you already own to iCloud Mail on iCloud.com that was linked in the other reply. From that page it mentions:

Before you begin

...

• You need to have a primary iCloud Mail email address set up to use a custom email domain. If you don’t, see Create a primary email address for iCloud Mail."

as well as

"You can’t add an email address if you or someone else is using it with a different Apple ID. If you want to add that address, the other Apple ID needs to be changed to a different email address. See the Apple Support article Change your Apple ID."

It would appear the only restriction would be if you were attempting to add this domain using an email address associated with a different Apple ID rather than your own.

It's also worth noting regarding future use of that email address:

"Note: Once you add a custom domain address to iCloud Mail, you can’t use it as an Apple ID, even if you delete it later."

Regards.

Hi Larry McJunkin,

We'd love to help answer your question, and provide clear and concise information that you can rely on. Please see the details we've provided below to clear things up for you.

"If you subscribe to iCloud+, you can use a custom domain that you already own to send and receive email from a personalized email address with iCloud Mail.

• You can use up to five custom domains, with up to three personalized email addresses per domain. 
• You can use your personalized email address in the Mail app on any device signed in with your Apple ID and with iCloud Mail turned on, and on iCloud.com/mail.
• You can also use your personalized email address for Messages, FaceTime, Calendar, to sign in to your device, and more.
• If you don't have any existing email addresses in use with your custom domain, you can create new personalized email addresses after setting up your domain with iCloud Mail.
• If you share iCloud+ with your Family Sharing group, you can share your custom domain with your Family sharing group and allow them to create personalized addresses. In iOS 16 or later, you can also share your custom domain with people outside your Family and allow them to create personalized addresses.*
• You can share your domain with up to five other people. If you add someone who’s not part of your Family Sharing group, they need to accept the invitation before they’re added to the domain.

To add a personalized email address for a custom domain that you use with iCloud Mail:

• That email address can't be used as the email address for a different Apple ID. 
• If you want to add a personalized email address that is used for a different Apple ID, you need to change that Apple ID email address.
• If you delete that Apple ID, you still won't be able to add your personalized email address.

Learn how to add a custom domain for iCloud Mail on iCloud.com.

Reference: Use Custom Email Domain with iCloud Mail - Apple Support

Cheers!

Many thanks. We are in a simpler situation and having the emails for our custom domain appear in our single iCloud inbox would not be not a problem for us, as this is the only email address we use to send/receive emails.

Indeed these are the email addresses associated with our iCloud accounts - hence my question.

I ended up raising a Support ticket about this and was routed to an advanced support engineer, who tells me I won't have a problem and the comment

"Once you add a custom domain address to iCloud Mail, you can’t use it as an Apple ID, even if you delete it later."

is no longer relevant.

As such he assured me we can keep all three iCloud accounts associated with our "Family Sharing" group using these existing custom email addresses e.g.

MyName@MyMomain.com

WifeName@MyDomain.com

DaughterName@MyDomain.com

and also migrate the email handling for the MyDomain.com to iCloud, with each of us using the same email addresses as above. I have tried this and all three email addresses were automatically verified, as they were associated with existing iCloud accounts (obviously the names below masked out).

As such it seems this will work, but like you I am cautious and don't know if I should proceed or not, as the Apple documentation is so poor in this area. My alternative is to revert all three of our iCloud account emails back to their iCloud versions, as that would hopefully avoid any possible confusion.

Did you get to bottom of this Larry, as I am trying to get the answer to this question as well?