Domains & DNS

Adding custom domains, how DNS verification works, and managing records and certificates on Vercel.

By default a deployment is reachable at a *.vercel.app URL. To serve it on your own domain you add the domain to your project and point DNS at Vercel.

Adding a domain

From the linked project directory:

vercel domains add example.com
vercel domains inspect example.com   # check status and required records

Or in the dashboard under Project → Settings → Domains. You can attach apex domains (example.com), subdomains (app.example.com), and wildcards (*.example.com).

Pointing DNS at Vercel

There are two common approaches:

Use Vercel's nameservers. Transfer DNS management to Vercel and it handles records and certificates for you. Best when you want the least manual work.
Keep your existing DNS provider and add records that point to Vercel:
- An A record on the apex domain pointing to Vercel's IP, and/or
- A CNAME record on a subdomain pointing to the Vercel-provided target.

vercel domains inspect shows exactly which records are required and whether they've propagated.

HTTPS / certificates

Vercel automatically provisions and renews TLS certificates for verified domains, so HTTPS works without manual certificate handling. You can list or manage them with the certs command:

vercel certs ls

Managing DNS records

If Vercel is your DNS provider, you can manage records from the CLI:

vercel dns ls example.com
vercel dns add example.com www CNAME cname.vercel-dns.com
vercel dns rm <record-id>

Aliases

An alias maps a domain (or a *.vercel.app name) to a specific deployment. Production promotion is essentially an alias operation; you can also alias manually:

vercel alias set <deployment-url> example.com

The CLI side of all of this — domains, dns, certs, and alias — is detailed in Domains and routing (CLI).