Domains

Link a domain to your application with Begin Domains. Begin Domains is a managed service that makes it easy to subscribe to and manage domains for your Begin applications. Begin will automatically handle the DNS, SSL certificates, and CDN management for you.

Add a domain to your Begin account

Register a new domain

Domains subscriptions can be created from the Begin CLI. To check a domain’s availability and get a checkout link, run:

begin domains add --domain example.com
npx begin domains add --domain example.com

This will check the availability of example.com and return a link to the Begin Domains checkout page if the domain is available. If the domain is not available, the command will return suggestions for similar domains.

Current TLDs supported are the same as AWS Route 53. See the AWS documentation for a full list.

After completing the checkout process, your domain will be registered and associated with your account.

Associate an external domain

This feature is in active development. See our Domains roadmap for more information.

Transfer a domain to Begin

Transferring domains in will allow customers to leverage the full automation provided by Begin Domains. See our Domains roadmap for more information.

View your domains

Once you’ve registered a domain, you can view it with:

begin domains list
npx begin domains list

Or simply:

begin domains

begin.com
  begin-com production

example.com
  Available to link
npx begin domains

begin.com
  begin-com production

example.com
  Available to link

This command will list all of the domains associated with your account and their current status.

You can link any active domain to any Begin application by running:

begin domains link

? Select a domain …

? Select an application …

? Select an application environment …
npx begin domains link

? Select a domain …

? Select an application …

? Select an application environment …

This command will prompt you to select a domain, an application, and an application environment to link it to. After selecting a domain and application, Begin will handle the DNS configuration, SSL certificate provisioning, and CDN configuration for you.

Use begin domains list to track the status of your domain as it is linked. This process may take some time as DNS propagates.

The prompts can be bypassed by providing the --domain, --app, and --env flags:

begin domains link --domain example.com --app my-app --env production
npx begin domains link --domain example.com --app my-app --env production

Read more about working with domains in the CLI domains documentation.

You can unlink a domain from an application by running:

begin domains unlink

? Select a domain to unlink
npx begin domains unlink

? Select a domain to unlink

This command will prompt you to select a domain to unlink. After selecting a domain, Begin will disossociate the domain from the application. This process is quicker than linking, but as always, DNS propagation may take some time.

The prompt can be bypassed by providing the --domain flag:

begin domains unlink --domain example.com
npx begin domains unlink --domain example.com

Roadmap

We’re working on a number of features for Begin Domains. Our current priorities are:

  1. External domains - Associate domains that you own to your Begin account for linking to Begin applications.
  2. Domain record management - Manage your Begin Domains nameserver records.
  3. Domain transfer - Transfer domains that you own to Begin Domains for more robust management.
    • Transfer out - Transfer domains that you own to another registrar. If you have a domain that you’d like to transfer out, please contact us and we’ll help you out right away.

Read more about working with domains in the domains documentation.