Cloudflare Developers•2y ago

External domains served by Worker

Hi! I've built a SaaS with Workers as the backend. Right now every user on my site gets a custom page like saas.com/username. I'd like to add a feature where users can add their own domains to the platform and have their site served on that domain. Let's say user owns mydomain.com. Is there a way to set DNS records on mydomain.com so that the domain points to the same Worker that is serving saas.com/username ?

15 Replies

IDisposable•2y ago

You can add custom domains at Workers/Overview/xxx/Add Custom Domain in the CloudFlare console, but the domain DNS has to be hosted by CloudFlare (why wouldn't

vassbenceOP•2y ago

So if an user has their own domain with like godaddy there is no way to add it as a custom domain? Hmm.. the docs suggest this might be possible:

Add a Custom Domain
To add a Custom Domain, you must have:

- An active Cloudflare zone.
- A Worker to invoke.

Add a Custom Domain
To add a Custom Domain, you must have:

- An active Cloudflare zone.
- A Worker to invoke.

And for an active cloudflare zone i can do:

Partial (CNAME) setup: Keep your primary DNS provider and only use Cloudflare’s reverse proxy for individual subdomains.

Partial (CNAME) setup: Keep your primary DNS provider and only use Cloudflare’s reverse proxy for individual subdomains.

zegevlier•2y ago

What you're looking for is Cloudflare for SaaS. https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-for-platforms/cloudflare-for-saas/

IDisposable•2y ago

That should work, but to be honest, anyone supporting GoDaddy get's my disrespect 😉

vassbenceOP•2y ago

Sadly Apex proxying is an enterprise only feature And without that it does not seem possible to route the root mycustomdomain.com to the worker Or at least thats what i'm reading from the docs here:

In a normal Cloudflare for SaaS setup, your customers route traffic to your hostname by creating a CNAME record pointing to your CNAME target.

However, most DNS providers do not allow CNAME records at the zone’s root. This means that your customers have to use a subdomain as a vanity domain (shop.example.com) instead of their domain apex (example.com).

In a normal Cloudflare for SaaS setup, your customers route traffic to your hostname by creating a CNAME record pointing to your CNAME target.

However, most DNS providers do not allow CNAME records at the zone’s root. This means that your customers have to use a subdomain as a vanity domain (shop.example.com) instead of their domain apex (example.com).

@zegevlier are my assumptions correct?

zegevlier•2y ago

That depends on the DNS provider of your clients. If they're on Cloudflare, it'll all work fine since CF does allow CNAME records at the root zone (on all plans). If they use something else, it depends on what that provider does

vassbenceOP•2y ago

Yeah, most users are not tech savvy enough to use cloudflare and most other dont support this feature

Codename_404•2y ago

@vassbence did you managed to find a solution for this?

vassbenceOP•2y ago

I just user Vercel for this use case as they provide unlimited domains for the pro plan which is like 10 usd for cloudflare i'd have to sub to the 1000+ usd enterprise plan to get the same stuff my frontend is next.js so this works out

Codename_404•2y ago

This works, however vercel will charge you for data transfer, I don't know your exact setup. However in my case 10 usd would be way cheaper then egress fees on vercel. I have managed to get it worked by the way ~

vassbenceOP•2y ago

mind sharing your setup?

Codename_404•2y ago

https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-for-platforms/cloudflare-for-saas/start/advanced-settings/worker-as-origin/ I followed this exactly.

Workers as your fallback origin · Cloudflare for Platforms docs

Learn how to use a Worker as the fallback origin for your SaaS zone.

vassbenceOP•2y ago

and so you end up with an IP address which users can point their domains to?