Design Custom Domain Setup

Collaboration & Enterprise · enterprise, settings, status

Updated 2026-08-04

Accept that this flow happens in two products at once. The user configures your product and then edits records at a registrar you do not control, so the interface has to work across a boundary it cannot see past.
Give the exact values to copy, each with its own copy control. Record type, name, and value copied by hand is where most of these setups fail.
Expect propagation to take time and say so. Changes can take minutes or hours to become visible depending on how long the previous answer was cached, and users refresh long before that.
Check continuously and show what you are seeing. Waiting for DNS. Last checked 30 seconds ago. with the value currently found is diagnostic, and Pending is not.
Name the specific problem rather than reporting failure:

No record found at that name.
A record found but pointing elsewhere, showing the value you saw.
A conflicting record that must be removed first.
Verified, but the certificate is not issued yet.

Treat the security certificate as a separate step with its own status. A domain that resolves but shows a browser warning is worse than one that does not resolve at all.
Keep the old address working during the switch. Cutting over the moment verification passes breaks every link and bookmark that used the previous one.
Let the setup be resumed. This flow is interrupted more often than any other because the next step happens in a different company's dashboard.
Link to instructions for the common registrars. It is not your product, and it is the step your users get stuck on.

A domain setup succeeds or fails somewhere you cannot reach, so your interface has to be the thing that reports honestly on what it can currently see.