Connecting your own domain
How your project becomes reachable under your own address, and what still happens by hand today.
Until you set up something else, your project runs on a preview address of ours. That is fine for showing and testing. For real visitors you want your own domain.
There are two ways to get there, both under Domain on the project: you already own a domain and connect it, or you need one and we buy it for you.
The preview address
Every project gets an address where you can see the current state. You find the link on the project and in every finished ticket.
Currently an address with a port number
The plan is readable addresses of the form yourproject.preview.adenai.dev. That
still needs a wildcard DNS record and a matching wildcard certificate. Until then
you get an address with a server name and a port number. It works, it just does
not look nice, and it runs over HTTP rather than HTTPS. Not something to send to a
client, but fine for signing off on your own work.
Connecting a domain you already own
This is the usual case for a company: the domain has existed for years, it just points at the old site or at nothing.
Under Domain on the project you enter the name, for example my-company.com.
We then show you exactly the records you need to create at your provider.
What is a DNS record?
A domain is just a name. For a browser to know which computer serves your site, it needs a number to go with it. A DNS record is the note that says which number your name belongs to. Nothing more happens here: you tell your provider that your name should now point at our server.
The steps
- Sign in with the provider you bought the domain from. That is typically GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare, IONOS or Google Domains.
- Look for the DNS, DNS settings or Manage domain area. Every provider names it slightly differently, they all mean the same thing.
- Create the records we show you in the dashboard. It is one or two lines of type
A, notCNAME. If a record with the same type and name already exists, change that one instead of adding a second. - Save, then click Check now in the dashboard.
Column names differ per provider. Name is sometimes called Host or Hostname,
Value is sometimes Target, Points to or IPv4 address. The @ character stands for
the domain itself. If your provider will not accept @, leave the field empty or
enter the full domain name, which means the same thing. You do not need to set a TTL,
the default is fine.
Leave MX records alone
Records of type MX belong to your email and have nothing to do with the website.
Delete or change them and your mail stops arriving.
A change usually takes a few minutes to spread, in the worst case 24 hours. Until then the check in the dashboard tells you the record is not visible yet. That is normal and not an error.
After the DNS record, it is our turn
Once the record is correct, your part is done. Routing to your project and the
certificate for https:// are still set up by hand on our side. That takes up to
one working day. Until then your domain shows as "DNS correct, activation pending"
in the dashboard and is not reachable yet.
The domain stays yours either way. You can point it elsewhere at any time, and removing it in the dashboard changes nothing at your provider.
Buying a new domain
Under Domain on the project you can search for a name and buy it directly. Prices are shown per extension.
The intended flow: search a name, pay, done.
How it actually works today
We do not have a registrar account yet. That has two consequences.
We cannot check whether a name is free. The search says so instead of guessing: rather than "available" it tells you that we cannot check. An order is therefore not a promise. We look it up by hand, and if the name is taken you get the full amount back.
Nothing happens automatically after payment. The order stays at "paid, manual registration" and we register the domain for you by hand. That normally takes one working day.
On top of that, checkout depends on our payment setup being live. In practice: buying a domain through the dashboard does not work during the beta. If you need a domain, buy it from a provider of your choice for now and connect it as described above.
What happens to the domain if you leave
A domain we bought for you belongs to you. You can transfer it to another provider. Let us know and we will hand over the transfer code.
Stand: 2026-08-09
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