The Impossible Journey To Get An Apple Developer Account: Part 2 | DiokoStart a Project<br>Dioko blog<br>The Impossible Journey To Get An Apple Developer Account: Part 2<br>Two months, multiple support calls, broken email routing, and Apple still will not take our money.<br>Apple<br>Developer Accounts<br>Developer Relations

8/5/2026 · Jordan Sullivan

Apple finally told us how to give them our money. It still did not work.

In Part 1, we wrote about our attempts to create Apple Developer accounts for businesses whose apps we were helping launch.

At the time, we were about two weeks into the process.

We are now approaching two months.

We still do not have the developer account.

Apple Business Is Apparently the Answer

After enough support calls and transfers, we finally reached someone at Apple who seemed to understand the problem.

They told us that, for this use case, we should first create an Apple Business Manager account. That would allow the company to create managed Apple accounts for its employees, which could then presumably be used to enroll in the Apple Developer Program.

Great. An actual path forward.

Creating the Apple Business account required submitting business ownership and verification documents. We submitted everything and waited.

And waited.

Eventually, we called Apple to ask what was happening.

It turned out Apple had sent an email requesting additional documentation. The email had gone to spam, so we never saw it.

That part is not entirely Apple's fault. Spam filters happen.

What was less understandable was that the Apple Business dashboard continued to say the application was pending without showing any indication that Apple was waiting for additional documents. There was no warning, outstanding task, notification, or visible request in the dashboard.

From our perspective, the application was simply sitting in a queue.

Once we discovered the missing email, we submitted the additional forms. After several more days, the Apple Business account was finally approved.

Progress.

Or so we thought.

The Email Address That Is Not an Email Address

Apple Business Manager gives users managed Apple accounts with usernames that look something like this:

name@businessname.appleaccount.com<br>That looks like an email address.

It is not, however, an email inbox.

Messages sent to it do not reach the user. It is effectively a username formatted like an email address.

This distinction became important almost immediately.

Using the new managed Apple account, we enrolled in the Apple Developer Program. This time, the enrollment form actually let us through.

The status changed to:

Your enrollment is being processed.

We waited another week.

Nothing happened.

The account remained pending, and we received no communication explaining what Apple needed from us.

So we called support again.

Apple had requested more documents.

Where had they sent the request?

To the managed Apple account—the email-shaped username that does not receive email.

Apple had created an account identifier that looked like an email address, accepted it as the contact address for a developer enrollment, and then sent a required document request to an inbox that did not exist.

Fixing the Email Address Apple Gave Us

There is a way inside Apple Business Manager to associate a managed Apple account with a real email address.

We updated the account.

That change did not immediately propagate to the Apple Developer system. We had to wait another day or two before the developer account recognized the new address.

Before the change propagated, we could not even file an Apple Developer support ticket. The support form rejected the email address as invalid.

To summarize:

Apple gave us an account name formatted like an email address.<br>Apple used that address for the developer enrollment.<br>Apple sent required documents to that address.<br>The address could not receive email.<br>Apple's own support system then rejected the address as invalid.

Once the real email address finally propagated, we were able to submit another support request.

Apple confirmed that the document request had been sent to the unusable address and agreed to resend it.

This time, we received it.

We submitted the documents.

Surely, this was the end.

Three More Weeks of Waiting

It has now been approximately three weeks since we submitted the requested documents.

The enrollment is still pending.

We called Apple again today. Their answer was that the review team is extremely backed up and they cannot provide any estimate for when the enrollment will be completed.

There is apparently no escalation path, no published review timeline, and no meaningful status information beyond "pending."

We have now spent nearly two months trying to create an account that costs $100 per year.

We are actively trying to pay Apple.

Apple will not let us.

The Developer Portal Barely Works

The enrollment process is not even the only problem.

When attempting to log back into...