Wildcard DNS subdomain setup

[Tisa]

Hi!
I’m intending to use wildcard DNS support on netlify, but I’m not sure if my use-case is will be supported.

We have a SaaS app that will be deployed once on netlify and we want it to be available for each of our clients at {{clientName}}.ourApp.com. For what I understand from other posts, this is possible using wildcard subdomain and will include out-of-the-box SSL if we set our name server to be netlify DNS .

Could the client then set up a record on their own domain/NS, to be for example someSubdomain CNAME {{clientName}}.ourApp.com? Would that work, especially with regards to SSL/TSL certificate provisioned by netlify? Could they also point their apex domain to {{clientName}}.ourApp.com?

We are using a PRO account.

Thanks in advance for your reply!

[sid.m]

Hi Tisa, good question. Yes, wildcard subdomains would support the pattern {{clientName}}.ourApp.com.

Additional requirements are:

1. The site must be on a Pro or above team.

2. The DNS must be managed by Netlify OR you need to bring a custom wildcard SSL certificate.

3. The site should not have any branch subdomains.

4. The site cannot use Automatic Deploy Subdomains, so please disable this feature if you are currently using it.

This support guide goes into detail about possible solutions for the use case you describe, I’d recommend giving that a read:

[Support Guide] Best practices for using your customers' hostnames on the Netlify site you build for them

Last reviewed by Netlify Support April 2024 We understand that many Netlify customers build websites for their own customers and need hostnames tailored to each user. This guide will explain the possibilities for hosting content like that in several different ways and demonstrate the tradeoffs between choosing one of these methodologies. Let’s start off by covering the prerequisites that will set you up for success: You will need to have a valid SSL certificate for all hostnames you will ser…

Could you speak a little more about your use case? When you ask if a client could create a CNAME pointing to {{clientName}}.ourApp.com, are you asking if a client could deploy their own site on a separate account and then point that site to yours using this wildcard? If you provide additional details on what you’re trying to accomplish we can advise further.

[Tisa]

Hi Sid, thank you for the response!

I’ve read the Guide and I can confirm that I’m trying to go by the Recommended Method outlined there.

What I’m unsure about is this case:
prerequisite: we have everything set up with wildcard subdomain on netlify, with netlify managing our DNS, we have no branch subdomains or Automatic Deploy Subdomains. customer.ourApp.com is live and secured and life is great!.
Use case: The customer would like to have their own subdomain product.customer.com (or apex domain customer.com) pointing to customer.ourApp.com. The customer.com domain is registered elsewhere and not managed through netlify.

Right now we host each of the clients as a separate netify site, so we just tell them to add a CNAME record pointing from product.customer.com to a given netlify site. Netlify later provisions a certificate on our behalf. An example of how we are dealing with this right now is site legia-umpire-ott-client on vod.legia.com.

What I’m curious about with the Recommended Method is:

1. will the customer still be able to setup their own external DNS, so their (sub)domain resolves to customer.ourApp.com (i.e. product.customer.com CNAME customer.ourApp.com)?
2. will Netlify be able to provision wildcard certs or do we need to inform you every time a new client registers with us and/or tries to connect their own custom domain (ie. product.customer.com)? We can do that without problems, as long as you have an API for that.
3. will some other setup or dns records be required here?

Let me know if you need some further clarification, I’m trying to explain myself as well as possible, but I know that it might be as clear as I hope

[luke]

Hi, @Tisa. This is ambiguous and could means several different things:

Use case : The customer would like to have their own subdomain product.customer.com (or apex domain customer.com ) pointing to customer.ourApp.com . The customer.com domain is registered elsewhere and not managed through netlify.

Is the customer doing a 301 redirect from product.customer.com to that customer.ourApp.com domain? If so, that is not something Netlify can assist with as we won’t be hosting product.customer.com.

Or do you mean that product.customer.com will be a CNAME pointing to customer.ourApp.com If so, that won’t work because you would need to manually add product.customer.com to the site’s domain management settings at Netlify. There is a limit of 100 unique domains assigned to a site at Netlify (unless they are subdomains on one domain and using the wildcard subdomain feature). This means that you won’t be using the wildcard subdomain feature because you want Netlify to serve content for product.customer.com.

You can manually do that second workflow but you are then limited to 100 unique domains on the site.