How do I add a custom domain to my services on Render?

We have some docs that walk you through adding a custom domain and configuring your DNS

We have specific guides for configuring DNS for Cloudflare and Namecheap. There is also a general guide that covers all other DNS providers.

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Hi @shantanu,

Has there been any updated documentation for GoDaddy? I saw there is a general guide for all other DNS providers, but it hasn’t worked for me with GoDaddy.

Best,

Dimitri

@dimitriborgers You’ll probably be best getting in touch with GoDaddy support. Whilst we’re able to provide generic documentation we can’t possibly provide documentation for all providers so their own support is often best suited for those questions.

You’ll want to ask them about adding an A record pointing to 216.24.57.1 on your root domain and a CNAME entry pointing to your .onrender.com

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Hi @John_B, thanks for the help! I took a look at the general guides and made the required changes.

Quick follow up question though: how can only those changes you mentioned work without changing the NS records as well? If I change the IP address in the A record, but don’t change the nameservers, wouldn’t the request not be able to find the IP address (since it’s looking in the wrong authoritative nameservers)?

@dimitriborgers, NS records need only be changed if you wish to host your DNS records with someone else, in this case if you wanted to use a DNS server other than your registrar’s.

Simplified version: The client needs to find your domain’s nameserver and contact it to get A and CNAME (and possibly RRSIG) records. Based on your description, I suspect your NS records will be godaddy’s default ones. In a lookup, the NS entries for your domains will be requested and then those nameservers will be contacted to get the A or CNAME records. Whether and how you can change the top level NS records depends on the registrar and you would have to contact them. Once the CNAME/A records are known, the client can contact the service host (here for web hosting on render.com) to access resources.

Since you modify your DNS settings on godaddy and the NS records point to their servers, the process should work as expected.

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Thanks @c54ffe @John_B! Very helpful explanation.

I updated the A record name in Godaddy but still cant access the website. Can someone help me with the instructions what exactly I need to do in order to connect my app with godaddy domain

Hi Akshay,

I think I’ve responded to a ticket you previously opened a custom domains.

Please could you share some specific details of the issue you are experiencing that may help us troubleshoot it with you, e.g. any logs/errors/output, specific URLs, service name/ID, reproduction steps, etc. If you don’t want to share these details on the community forum, please feel free to raise a ticket from the “Contact Support” link at the bottom of the Dashboard. Or, if this is still regarding your previous ticket, please reply to that.

Kind regards

Alan