Hey everyone! Recently, I faced a tough challenge while building a custom solution for a business, which required allowing their customers to use their own vanity domains (like `app.theircompany.com` instead of `theircompany.myplatform.com`). What seemed like a simple task turned into a six-month ordeal for me as a solo developer. I struggled with everything from DNS validation to managing SSL certificate issuance and renewal across multiple domains. It was way more complicated than I expected and pulled me away from core product development. I'm curious to know if this is a widespread issue among SaaS businesses. How do you handle custom domains and SSL for your users? What challenges do you face? Have you thought about in-house solutions, and what stopped you? Would a self-service portal for handling domain validation and automating SSL be useful to you? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
5 Answers
There are a few solutions for dynamic subdomains, but most involve some technical hurdles for users. I used GCP managed DNS, but the customer still had to set up their CNAMEs correctly. It opens more doors than it closes but definitely comes with onboarding pain points.
Honestly, the simplest route might be to just use wildcard certificates if your customers share the same base domain. However, if they want their own domains, you’re right—managing that can quickly spiral out of control. It's good to know there are solutions out there, but they're often too complex for non-technical users.
True, managing DNS can be a pain point. If only we could find a way to automate that part without requiring too much customer input!
There are definitely solutions out there, like what Cloudflare provides. I actually built something similar for a few hundred customers using ACME and Let's Encrypt. It wasn't too bad, but it did lead to some support tickets, mainly because many customers struggle with DNS management. If you're considering a third-party service, good documentation is key, or you’ll need a solid support team to back it up.
I mentioned Cloudflare in another discussion. It exists, but setting it up can still be quite a technical challenge, especially if you want a self-service portal for users.
This is definitely not a trivial task, and plenty of apps struggle with it. Most services that offer custom domain hosting deal with similar challenges. From my experience, the complex part is figuring out what happens when a customer wants to switch back to their old domain, or if they don’t renew their custom domain. It’s not just about pointing DNS and getting SSL; there are a lot of edge cases to consider!
Exactly! It's the unforeseen issues that really pile up after launching. As a developer, you can prepare all you want, but you'll still encounter problems you hadn't anticipated.
I totally get the struggle. I had a project where I linked customer domains and found that Cloudflare and Vercel were the only real options. They worked but came with loads of headaches, like needing dedicated projects for each domain, which was a management nightmare. I ended up implementing my own setup with Let's Encrypt and Caddy, but even that required so much documentation and understanding of AWS. Honestly, I wouldn’t recommend trying to self-manage domain configurations with SSL; it’s really stressful!
Nice to hear I’m not alone! It sounds complex, but if done right, it can be slick. I’ve been contemplating whether there’s enough demand for a commercial product to ease this pain.
Good point! It's a challenge, but I think a streamlined, user-friendly setup would make a world of difference.