Use your own domain for passports

What this domain is for

Every passport you publish already has a working URL at passportcraft.com — nothing about this step is required. What it changes is whose name is on it: once your own domain is live, the pages your customers see and the codes you print carry dpp.yourbrand.com (or whatever you chose) instead of ours. It's a subdomain of a domain you already own, not a domain we sell you or host for you — you keep your own registration, at your own registrar, the whole time.

This is available regardless of what kind of product your passports cover, batteries included. It applies to one workspace at a time: if you manage more than one brand, each one sets up its own domain separately. A partner organization's own workspace, its Playground, has no Custom domain page. A partner sets up a custom domain in a client's workspace instead; see Managing clients.

For a battery passport, there's a specific reason this matters. The law requires a battery passport to stay reachable even after the company responsible for it no longer exists — that's a legal requirement, not something PassportCraft decided. Once your passports carry your own domain, keeping that domain's registration current is part of meeting it.

Before you start

You need a domain you own and access to its DNS settings.

Adding your domain

1. Go to Settings > Custom domain. The page shows the address your passport pages and new QR downloads currently use.
2. Type your subdomain — for example dpp.yourbrand.com — and confirm.
3. The page shows a CNAME record: a host name and a value to add at whatever service manages your domain's DNS (your registrar, or wherever your domain's nameservers point). The exact value is read fresh each time, so always copy what's on screen rather than a value you saw before.
4. Above the CNAME, the page shows a TXT record at a host that starts with _passportcraft-verify. Only someone who can edit the domain's DNS can add it, which is how we confirm the domain is yours — every domain gets one, and yours cannot go live without it. Occasionally a second TXT record is listed alongside it; that one appears when the domain was already associated with a Vercel account elsewhere, and it is needed too.
5. Add every record the page shows at your DNS provider, then come back and press Check DNS.

DNS changes are not instant — it can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours for a new record to take effect everywhere. If Check DNS doesn't succeed right away, wait and try again. The page also re-checks on its own when you open it, though not on every single visit — so once you've added a record, press Check DNS rather than reloading the page.

What the checks do

Check DNS looks up your DNS records and confirms three things: that the CNAME points where it should, that the TXT record proving the domain is yours is in place, and that a security certificate can be issued for your domain. All three have to pass. If the TXT record isn't there yet, your domain stays at Waiting for DNS and the page asks you to add it and press Check DNS again. A successful DNS check does not mean your domain is serving passports yet; your plan also needs to be paid. After verification, open DNS settings to see the current CNAME record. The completed TXT records are no longer shown. Leave all the records you added in place at your DNS provider.

Once DNS is verified, use Check connection to check the connection again. Opening DNS settings only displays the record; it does not run a check. Last check attempted shows the time of the most recent attempt, not continuous monitoring.

Understanding your domain status

The page shows your current passport address and the next action:

• Waiting for DNS — your records aren't confirmed yet. The page keeps showing what to add.
• DNS verified — setup is complete during a trial. Choose Start Pro to go live to review the plans and pay for Pro or Scale. Your QR codes and passport pages keep using passportcraft.com until the domain is live.
• Activation pending — DNS is set up and plan activation is still pending. Use Refresh status to load the latest state.
• Live — your plan is active and your domain is serving your passports. Every QR code you download from this point carries it. Codes downloaded before this point keep working at passportcraft.com; going live does not move them.

Once your domain is live, treat it as your passport's real home: it's what new codes carry, and it's the URL search engines are pointed toward for your published pages. The passportcraft.com copy of the same page doesn't disappear — it's still there for anyone holding an older code — but your own URL is the one to share and the one your printed materials should use going forward.

If the page shows Connection needs attention, check the CNAME record under DNS settings, update it at your DNS provider, then choose Check connection. A failed request on its own does not mean the domain is disconnected; use Try again to retry.

When a passport is published, Open passport opens that passport on your domain and Copy passport link copies its address. View passports opens your catalogue, where you can choose a passport and download its QR code. If none is published yet, publish one to see it here.

What Remove costs

Removing your domain is more than a settings change. Once it's gone:

• Any code already printed with that domain — on a label, a hang tag, packaging — stops resolving until you point the subdomain somewhere else. There's no automatic fallback to passportcraft.com for a code that was generated with your own domain.
• Some of your dealers or retailers may already hold digital copies of that code — on their own systems, in their own materials — and you have no way to recall those. They'll carry the same broken domain until whoever holds them is told to update it.

If you're changing to a different domain rather than dropping the feature entirely, the same rule applies to the old one: remove it, then add the new one. There's no direct swap.

One thing this does not do

Setting up your own domain is a portability safeguard — it means you, not only PassportCraft, control where your codes point — but it is not, on its own, a separate backup copy of your passport data. If your product category requires you to keep an independent way of making a passport's information available (for example, as your own record of the data, held outside PassportCraft), attaching your own domain does not satisfy that on its own — your passport is still hosted by PassportCraft either way, just reachable at a domain you control. Check what your product category's rules actually require.

Related

• Organization settings and team roles for the rest of what lives in Settings, including who can make changes as an owner or administrator.
• Downloading and printing QR codes for how the domain you set up here reaches the codes you actually print.