I Built a 1-Click DNS Provisioning Platform for Developer Subdomains

hackwithmagic — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 11:12:19 +0000

I Built a 1-Click DNS Provisioning Platform for Developer Subdomains

Getting a custom domain for a project sounds simple until you actually have to configure it.

You deploy to Vercel, Render, Railway, GitHub Pages, or a VPS, and then you have to configure DNS, copy records, wait for propagation, configure the domain, and verify everything.

I wanted to remove that entire process.

So I built Go-Live.me.

The idea is simple:

Pick a subdomain → connect your deployment → Go-Live handles the DNS configuration.

For example:

myproject.go-live.me

The Problem

A typical deployment can look like this:

Deploy application
      ↓
Get deployment URL
      ↓
Configure DNS
      ↓
Wait for propagation
      ↓
Configure domain
      ↓
Verify
      ↓
Live

For someone familiar with DNS, this isn't particularly difficult.

For someone deploying their first project, it can be confusing.

I wanted the process to become:

Choose name
     ↓
Connect deployment
     ↓
Click "Assign & Route Domain"
     ↓
Live

How Go-Live Works

Go-Live provides subdomains under:

*.go-live.me

A developer authenticates with GitHub and chooses an available subdomain.

For example:

sai.go-live.me

The platform maintains a subdomain registry so that names cannot be claimed by multiple users.

Once the subdomain is claimed, the developer can connect their deployment.

1-Click Vercel Integration

Vercel is currently the main integration.

Instead of manually copying DNS records, Go-Live connects to the developer's Vercel account and retrieves their projects.

The flow is:

GitHub Authentication
        ↓
Connect Vercel
        ↓
Fetch Projects
        ↓
Select Project
        ↓
Assign & Route Domain
        ↓
Configure
        ↓
Verify

The developer doesn't need to manually enter a CNAME record.

The main UX goal was:

DNS should be infrastructure, not a task the user has to think about.

Progressive Verification

Creating a DNS record doesn't necessarily mean the domain is immediately usable.

Go-Live performs progressive verification instead of immediately displaying a success message.

The current verification sequence is:

1s
 ↓
2s
 ↓
3s
 ↓
5s
 ↓
7s

The system checks whether the domain resolves and whether the expected endpoint is reachable before marking the deployment as active.

Custom Deployments

Vercel isn't the only target.

Go-Live can also work with custom DNS destinations such as:

Render
Railway
Fly.io
GitHub Pages
Cloudflare Tunnels
DigitalOcean
Hetzner
AWS EC2

Depending on the deployment, users can provide a CNAME target or IPv4 address.

Conceptually:

project.go-live.me
        │
        ├── CNAME → hosting.example.com
        │
        └── A → 203.0.113.10

The goal is to keep the interface simple while keeping the underlying infrastructure flexible.

Why I Built It

The motivation was simple.

Getting a project online often involves small infrastructure tasks that have nothing to do with actually building the project.

DNS is one of them.

I wanted to explore:

DNS automation
Cloudflare APIs
Deployment platform integrations
Authentication
Domain verification
Distributed DNS

It also became a practical way for me to learn how these systems work together.

What's Next?

The current release is v1.0.0.

Things I'm exploring for future versions include:

Deployment webhooks
More hosting integrations
ACME/TXT record support
Better deployment status monitoring
Subdomain analytics
Additional DNS tooling

The project is open source, and the implementation is available on GitHub.

View the GitHub repository

You can try the service here:

Try Go-Live.me

If you're interested in DNS automation, developer infrastructure, or building your own domain/subdomain service, I'd be interested to hear how you'd approach the architecture differently.

DEV Community: hackwithmagic

I Built a 1-Click DNS Provisioning Platform for Developer Subdomains