Custom Domain

Adding a custom domain to your Cartwright Vercel deployment — DNS records, www redirect, and canonical URL configuration.

After your initial deploy to Vercel, the app runs on a *.vercel.app subdomain. Pointing a custom domain at it requires three things: adding the domain to the Vercel project, creating DNS records with your registrar, and updating NEXT_PUBLIC_APP_URL to match the new canonical host.

Planning to also receive mail at hello@your-domain.com? Don't add records piecemeal — see the Email & Domains section for the complete DNS zone (Vercel + Resend + your chosen inbox provider) so SPF stays in one combined record.

Steps

Buy a domain from your registrar of choice and make sure you have access to its DNS settings.
In Vercel, open the project and go to Settings → Domains. Enter your domain (your-shop.com). Add both the apex domain and the www subdomain.

Create DNS records at your registrar:

Apex domain (@ record):

Type: A
Host: @
Value: 76.76.21.21
TTL: automatic (or 3600)

www subdomain:

Type: CNAME
Host: www
Value: cname.vercel-dns.com
TTL: automatic (or 3600)

Wait for DNS propagation. This typically takes a few minutes with most registrars, but can take up to 48 hours in the worst case. Vercel's domain UI shows a green checkmark when it has verified the records.
In Vercel Settings → Domains, configure the www-to-apex redirect. Set the primary domain to your-shop.com and enable the 308 redirect from www.your-shop.com to the apex. This prevents duplicate-content indexing.
Update NEXT_PUBLIC_APP_URL in Vercel to match the canonical host:
```
NEXT_PUBLIC_APP_URL="https://your-shop.com"
```
Also update brand.url and brand.domain in brand.config.ts to keep them in sync:
```
domain: "your-shop.com",
url: "https://your-shop.com",
```
Trigger a new production deploy after these changes so the updated URL is baked into static metadata.

SSL

Vercel provisions a TLS certificate automatically via Let's Encrypt once DNS records are verified. No manual certificate management is needed. HTTPS is enforced by default — Vercel redirects HTTP to HTTPS at the edge.

Verify

After DNS propagates and the certificate provisions:

curl -I https://your-shop.com/api/mcp
# HTTP/2 200

curl -I https://www.your-shop.com
# HTTP/1.1 308 Permanent Redirect
# Location: https://your-shop.com/

The MCP introspection endpoint at /api/mcp (no auth required for GET) is a quick smoke test that the app is running and the database connection is healthy.

If you use Vercel's nameservers instead of your registrar's (by pointing NS records at Vercel), you can manage DNS entirely from the Vercel dashboard. This is optional but simplifies the setup for teams already in the Vercel ecosystem.

Steps

SSL

Verify

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