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iCloud+'s New Custom Email Domain Feature Now Available in Beta

I wonder if everyone writing in this thread really has different issues or if we‘re sharing all the same - just describing it differently.

I experience two issues:

- Bug with deleted emails not being removed from mail applications
Emails that have been deleted are also deleted in the iCloud email client. But they still show up in the mail app on iOS, iPad OS and Mac OS.

- Design flaw (?) with emails that have been used with Apple ID service
Email addresses that have been used/connected or are being used as Apple IDs can‘t be used with custom domain. The error „email in use“ or „problem - try later“ are showing up. In my case, I want to add an email that used to be connected to an Apple ID that was deleted a year ago. There seem to be some remains in Apple‘s systems that currently make it impossible to use this email for custom domain.
 
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ChrisiMA said:
I wonder if everyone writing in this thread really has different issues or if we‘re sharing all the same - just describing it differently.

I experience two issues:

- Bug with deleted emails not being removed from mail applications
Emails that have been deleted are also deleted in the iCloud email client. But they still show up in the mail app on iOS, iPad OS and Mac OS.

- Design flaw (?) with emails that have been used with Apple ID service
Email addresses that have been used/connected or are being used as Apple IDs can‘t be used with custom domain. The error „email in use“ or „problem - try later“ are showing up. In my case, I want to add an email that used to be connected to an Apple ID that was deleted a year ago. There seem to be some remains in Apple‘s systems that currently make it impossible to use this email for custom domain.
Click to expand...
I’m experiencing both of these issues too.

I had a long phone call with Apple support on Friday about the first one. They called back yesterday and said that they’d had other reports of the same issue and that they expect it to be fixed within the next couple of days. Who knows if it’ll happen that quickly, but at least it’s on their radar.

I’m also experiencing the second issue, but I’ve not raised it with Apple yet - no doubt it’ll need a couple of hours on the phone to go through the details.
 
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I have the same problem, and I can not change the Apple ID to a my domain even if I deleted it from the iCloud.

I asked here about this problem, despite its popularity, I still have not received an exact answer.

There is no direct way to change the Apple ID as an iСloud custom email (since the system considers them to be an alias) and there is no way to completely delete the added iCloud custom email (it still remains somewhere in the databases and also prevents it from being used as an apple id)
 
Here is another related serious bug, I can still log in to icloud with the custom email that I deleted, which I think affects the protection of the account.
I can't understand how they didn't fix all this in the beta and made the release. Maybe they thought that it won't be a problem because only few people would be use this feature, but for me this became a reason to strongly doubt the level of Apple engineers today.
 
Alright, I have tried to follow the discussion here but I am uncertain whether or not I will be able to accomplish what I want. Can someone please hold my hand here and let me know if the two following scenarios will work (or if I'm about to mess everything up). First, for myself:

  • My iCloud account was originally registered as name@icloud.com
  • I added an alias, firstname@domain.com, to my iCloud account.
  • I set my "new" alias as my primary alias (effectively making it the new "username" for my iCloud and/or AppleID account).
  • Now I want to add the entire custom domain (including the e-mail address used as my primary alias) to my iCloud account, in order to stop using an external e-mail provider.
  • Summary: I want to keep using firstname@domain.com as both e-mail and iCloud account name, but have incoming e-mails show up in my iCloud mailbox, which is the original iCloud account.

Having read the discussions in this thread, I am afraid that my firstname@domain.com alias will somehow be affected by various errors or settings. I'm also not sure if there's any significant difference between AppleID and iCloud accounts...

To make matters even more complicated, I also have to solve the following scenario:

  • My wife's AppleID and/or iCloud account was originally registered as wife@domain.com
  • Wife's iCloud account is part of our "family", where the family admin is myself. This means I will add the custom domain to our family from my account.
  • Wife has since created an iCloud mailbox for her account, effectively giving her an iCloud address alias; wifename@icloud.com - the primary iCloud alias is still wife@domain.com
  • Summary: I want to be able to add the domain and e-mail address which is the "main"/"original" alias for an iCloud account, which is part of my family group.

If I go ahead and attempt to add my custom domain to our iCloud family, will it work with us being able to keep the name@domain.com and wifename@domain.com e-mail addresses as primary iCloud account names/aliases?

I have children in the family group as well, but they currently don't have any custom domain e-mail addresses associated with their iCloud accounts (they are kid1@icloud.com, kid2@icloud.com, kid3@icloud.com). I am simply assuming that I will be able to create new e-mail aliases for them easily, since they never had any kidname@domain.com associated with their iCloud accounts...

I have been following people's progress here on and off since this feature entered Beta, but I have been discouraged from testing it myself due to all the problems that have been discussed here. Huge thanks to everyone here who has been testing this, for those of us that have been too afraid to somehow "lock out" our custom domain e-mail addresses. :)
 
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I finally had some luck with this. My domain was with GoDaddy (I know...) because they had a one click set-up Microsoft 365. It looks like they've added this to iCloud+ now . I tried at the weekend and was getting error messages but today the final step on iCloud.com took me to my GoDaddy DNS page with all the iCloud+ details filled in. The custom address was ready to use in a few minutes.
 
Has DKIM alignment started working for anyone? And just to confirm:

- there is no catch-all
- there is a limit of three email addresses per custom domain

?
 
ensee said:
I finally had some luck with this. My domain was with GoDaddy (I know...) because they had a one click set-up Microsoft 365. It looks like they've added this to iCloud+ now . I tried at the weekend and was getting error messages but today the final step on iCloud.com took me to my GoDaddy DNS page with all the iCloud+ details filled in. The custom address was ready to use in a few minutes.
Click to expand...

Similar experience here. My two GoDaddy domains are now working, including my family one. This was after repeated “cannot add email” errors.
 
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stomer said:
Has DKIM alignment started working for anyone? And just to confirm:

- there is no catch-all
- there is a limit of three email addresses per custom domain

?
Click to expand...
Still not working unfortunately. The SMTP server does not add DKIM to outgoing mail. I have just sent a test a mail via iOS Mail App.
 
My two "business" domains are working perfectly now, but when I had a few hiccups, I created a secondary address "info@xyz.com" to help with the troubleshooting. After everything was resolved and working OK, it's no longer necessary and I deleted it from the iCloud "Manage Personal Domains" section. It's not there anymore - only mu in-ise addresses are there.

However, it still shows up in Mac Mail and iOS Mail. Any idea how to get rid of it? More a nuisance than anything as it's not used at all...

Ken
 
Anyone using Dreamhost as their registrar? If so, how was your experience with them on switching over to iCloud+'s custom domain hosting?
 
Thanks for all the advice so far, everyone. It seems like this topic brings up a lot of questions!

I have a custom domain (registered with Hover) and pay their $20/year for their small mailbox to get hello@mydomain.com. Now that I've added that domain to Apple — and set up MX records, etc. — it's working properly and I've also added a new mailbox — feedback@mydomain.com — which basically gives me what'd cost me another $20 in Hover, right?

The only thing I didn't expect, but probably should have, is that all mail to/from those addresses will end up in my personal @me.com mailbox. I guess that's by design, though. It'd be great if the Mail app could automatically separate emails from custom domains from your primary email.

In this case, I'd potentially prefer to have the separation with using a separate mail account in iOS/macOS Mail but I guess then I'm stuck with paying per address with Hover, right?

Also, now that I've done all this, can I cancel the paid small mailbox with Hover as it's all handled/hosted via Apple now?
 
eattherich said:
The only thing I didn't expect, but probably should have, is that all mail to/from those addresses will end up in my personal @me.com mailbox. I guess that's by design, though. It'd be great if the Mail app could automatically separate emails from custom domains from your primary email.
Click to expand...
You can create "hello" and "feedback" folders and then set up rules for iCloud to automatically sort emails sent to those addresses into the relevant folders. That's what I've been doing and it works great for the most part.
eattherich said:
Also, now that I've done all this, can I cancel the paid small mailbox with Hover as it's all handled/hosted via Apple now?
Click to expand...
Yes
 
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It’s super unfortunate things need to be filtered (check the apple insider link above for major caveat there), along with lack of notifications for folders
 
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Finally was able to add my custom domain after a nonstop "There was a problem adding this email address. Try again later." error. I was able to correct this by signing out and back in of iCloud on my iPad. Realized it was an issue with the keychain on that iPad because that couldn't be turned on or off at all until signing out/in of iCloud.

So those of you that can add the domain but keep getting that error when confirming a specific email address' try signing out/in of iCloud on all of your devices.

But...

Here is the new issue. After getting back up and running, old emails in several different folders will not sync properly on any of my ios devices. New emails received and sent seem to work fine but only some of my older emails populate the mail app properly after copying messages over. All is perfect on my mac and iCloud web interface (Showing a decade+ of emails from both iCloud and custom domain) but ios is a hot mess. For instance... Approximately only 2000 (of nearly 9000) emails appear in my inbox on my ios devices. Have tried disabling, deleting the mail app, and signing out/in of iCloud hoping it would redownload the emails correctly on both an iPad and iPhone but the issue still persists for both devices.

Ideas?
 
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Use Google Domains to register a custom domain name for $12/year with domain protection. Create an alias to forward to another email address. Set up your phone to reply as that alias. Been using it for about a year and works great.
 
jkronos said:
I just took the risk and removed my alias (that was my apple ID before using Icloud on my domain) and then I tried adding the apple ID back but now it gave me this new error. "email address not vetted".

I was sweating thinking what about if I can`t re-add back the alias now? But to my relief I was able to re-added and everything is working. I guess will just have to leave my apple ID email with protonmail, does not really bother me as you can still login with your alias email as well.

Thanks for sharing!! Lets hope for a good outcome now that Keynote is few hours away.
Click to expand...

I was able to add my old iCloud.com email as my main Apple ID. Before it gave me the same error “not allow to add alias as main account”

So for those who wanted to add back their iCloud email as their Apple ID you might be able to do it now.
 
jkronos said:
I was able to add my old iCloud.com email as my main Apple ID. Before it gave me the same error “not allow to add alias as main account”

So for those who wanted to add back their iCloud email as their Apple ID you might be able to do it now.
Click to expand...
I still can't change Apple ID as my iCloud custom email.
 
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So I decided to give this a try. Logged into iCloud and started the process. Got a pop up screen of what to change on my current domain registration page (Google domains). While these weren’t the clearest of instructions, I was able to fumble my way through it and got it set up. Took about 20-ish minutes to propagate the changes but it’s working now.
 
cute-ladybug-2019 said:
I still can't change Apple ID as my iCloud custom email.
Click to expand...
That still not working, but if you had an iCloud.com email as your Apple ID before bringing the domain that should work.

The problem was that I had my custom email address with my own domain as my Apple ID way before apple started accepting custom domains. So when I sign up for it in the beta period I had to remove it and change it to something else, thats when the problem started because I was not able to use my iCloud.com because it was listed as an alias. Now it seems they fixed that part, however am in the same situation as you, I would like to add my custom email If I could as my Apple ID, but I take using X@icloud.com for now.
 
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