Possible to use one iCloud account for two iPhones under different Apple ID?

[amaggie05]

Hi all,

With the new iCloud pricing scheme, we have to pay for two 200GB accounts for a total of ~100 bucks per year, to backup the two iPhones in the family (mine and the wife's). But the one-step down plan is only 20GB, which is not enough for neither of us.

Now the question: is it possible to have the same iCloud account on both iPhones, and still use them like two individual phones under different Apple IDs?

Please let me know if this is doable. Thanks.

 

[Primejimbo]

Can I ask what you're backing up? Sharing an Apple ID just causes issues IMO. Issues with iMessage, fine my friends, contacts, and I think that's all.

If you need that much space for backing up, just back up to iTunes then.

Edit: never mind, you're asking 2 Apple ID's and one icloud account. I would just back up to iTunes if I had that much to back up.

 

[Small White Car]

It's a bad idea. You should each have you own iCloud account.

What you can do is share the same Apple ID for the store. So you each have your own iCloud but the iTunes store is logged in to the same account.

Have you looked into why your backups are so big? Mine have rarely gotten over 10 GB and are usually under 5. Go to SETTINGS > iCLOUD > STORAGE > MANAGE STORAGE > [This Phone] and tell us what's taking up so much space in your backup. Is it photos? You may have to be more diligent about getting them off loaded onto a computer from time to time. I can't think of what else you have that's pushing your backups so high.

(Or go with Primejimbo's advice and backup to iTunes instead of iCloud, but either way I'd look into what's making them so large.)

 

[wesk702]

Thought your iCloud id is your Apple ID.

 

[amaggie05]

Can I ask what you're backing up? Sharing an Apple ID just causes issues IMO. Issues with iMessage, fine my friends, contacts, and I think that's all.

If you need that much space for backing up, just back up to iTunes then.

Edit: never mind, you're asking 2 Apple ID's and one icloud account. I would just back up to iTunes if I had that much to back up.

Thanks for your inputs. I just tried to use the same iCloud on a backup phone, a lot of the data like contacts, notes and photo streams are going to be merged together among devices with the same iCloud account. You can turn these off in iCloud backup to avoid mixing, but then you are defeating the purpose of backing up your phone to iCloud.

iMessage is actually separate as you can sign in use a different Apple ID for that and nothing will merge.

So I think it either pay up to take advantage the ease of iCloud automatic backup, or just manually do backups via iTunes.

-jin

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It's a bad idea. You should each have you own iCloud account.

What you can do is share the same Apple ID for the store. So you each have your own iCloud but the iTunes store is logged in to the same account.

Have you looked into why your backups are so big? Mine have rarely gotten over 10 GB and are usually under 5. Go to SETTINGS > iCLOUD > STORAGE > MANAGE STORAGE > [This Phone] and tell us what's taking up so much space in your backup. Is it photos? You may have to be more diligent about getting them off loaded onto a computer from time to time. I can't think of what else you have that's pushing your backups so high.

(Or go with Primejimbo's advice and backup to iTunes instead of iCloud, but either way I'd look into what's making them so large.)

Yes most of it are photos accumulated through the years. Thanks for your reply.

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Thought your iCloud id is your Apple ID.

Yes you use your Apple ID for iCloud, and you can also use different Apple IDs for iMessage, iTunes store, FaceTime etc. So for these items no mixup will happen if you use a different Apple ID than the one for iCloud. But everything else will be merged and share across different devices using the same iCloud account.

I think I just answered my own question, and I hope I was clear, lol.