This email address is not available - iCloud Custom Email Domain

I have this exact problem. After speaking to an escalated resource on the Apple Support team, it was confirmed that email addresses can only exist once (similar to an Apple ID). Once an email address is deleted, it can never be used again in iCloud. Pretty lame considering we own these domains, so we should have full control over when emails are deleted and reused. Because of this I am going to have to migrate my email domain away from Apple to another service. I suggest everyone submits feedback on this to Feedback@apple.com

Hello Opieb_inOZ

Thank you for your post. I'm having same problem. I called Apple support yesterday but turned out Apple has no solution as of today. Also asked them if they have any plan to resolve this issue but answer was no.

Apple support suggested me to share it from Product Feedback - Apple

Hi Opieb_inOZ,

Thanks for coming to Apple Support Communities for help today.

If this email address is the same one you initially set up, what you are describing would be expected behavior. If it's not, we'd advise contacting Apple Support for a deeper dive.

Have a fantastic day!

Hi Opieb_inOZ,

same problem here.

After creating two of my families members email addresses in MY account (only for test purposes), these email addresses can no longer be added in my family members accounts as their own ones.

Message says “This email address is not available. …”

I have checked and deleted all locations where the addresses have been mentioned.

No more ideas by now - seems that since the address have been used in my account, they are blocked in all other (families) accounts although deleted in my account.

hope this can be solved…!

If you have an Apple ID with that email on your domain you're going to need to change it to a different Apple ID. the reason your getting that error is because iCloud and Apple ID are the same, I had to change my secondary Apple ID from my own custom domain to a gmail and then I tried it again and it worked.

Had this issue as well for 18 months, first getting a response to wait a year, then 30 days, still not working. Now getting the "it's forever lost" answer.

Which is ridiculous. They need to change this policy. We have this domain for a family website and all familiy members have their name@domain email address except for me, as my brother added my name as a test 18 months ago and immediately deleted it.

100 percent my case. Apple’s recommendation was - use an other name.

I am struggling for months now and I am sure they have no solution in the pipe! Absolutely frustrating

Having this issue too >.<

Cannot use one of my e-mails because of it. The emails should be released to be reused. We're the domain owners after all.

No, you need to remove your custom domain email from any apple id you have, and you can never use it again with apple

id unless you go to other email providers like gmail, outlook