Compare
DoDomain with Approximated
Approximated is a proxy for your customers' custom domains: dedicated clusters, a dedicated IP address, certificates handled for you, and framework-specific integration docs (per approximated.app, retrieved 2026-08-26). DoDomain is not another one of those. It is the half that happens first — getting the record created inside the customer's own registrar and proving it is live. This page is about the seam between them. Approximated's details are as published on approximated.app, retrieved 2026-08-26 — check their site for current figures.
Who does which half
| DoDomain | Approximated | |
|---|---|---|
| Gets the customer's DNS records created | Yes — Cloudflare OAuth one-click, Domain Connect where the provider has enabled it, guided per-provider steps everywhere else | No — the customer still has to create the record in their own DNS provider |
| Proves the records are live | Yes — queried at the domain's authoritative nameservers, not a UI checkbox | Handles the domain validation its own certificates require |
| Terminates TLS on the customer's hostname | No, by design — traffic never touches DoDomain | Yes — dedicated proxy clusters and certificates are the product (per approximated.app, retrieved 2026-08-26) |
| Watches for DNS drift after go-live | Yes, with signed events naming the failing records — on every plan, including Free | Not part of a proxy's job |
| Entry price | $0 forever — 50 verified connections/mo, no card | $20/month floor plus per-domain pricing, 7-day trial (per approximated.app, retrieved 2026-08-26) |
| Metered by | Verified connections per month — a connection counts once, on its first verification | Domains proxied (per approximated.app, retrieved 2026-08-26) |
The two meters are not substitutes: one counts the onboarding events you want to succeed, the other counts the hostnames you are serving. A product doing both pays for both, and neither replaces the other.
Wiring them together
Register the customer domain with Approximated exactly as you do today. Take the record values it tells you the customer must create, and pass those same records to POST /api/v1/sessions. Hand your user the returned connectUrl — a hosted page, or the @dodomain/connect widget embedded in your own onboarding, or the @dodomain/react hook around it.
Your customer gets a path instead of a record to copy: a scoped OAuth approval on Cloudflare's own page when their domain is there, a signed Domain Connect apply where their provider has enabled our templates, and otherwise their provider's dashboard link with its host-field quirks and a live status per record.
When the signed connection.verifiedwebhook lands, the records are confirmed at the domain's authoritative nameservers — activate the tenant. Nothing about your proxy configuration changes; DoDomain only replaces the copy-and-paste screen and adds the proof.
What DoDomain keeps doing afterwards
A green check is not the last time anyone should look. DoDomain re-checks every verified connection against authoritative DNS — every 10 minutes for its first day, then hourly for a week, then every 6 hours — and confirms suspected drift before alerting you. When a customer edits or deletes the record months later, connection.failed arrives naming the exact failing records; when they put it back, connection.verified fires with a recovery signal.
That is on every plan, Free included, and it is the difference between learning about a broken customer domain from your webhook handler and learning about it from the customer.
When you don't need DoDomain here
Honest flip side. If your customers are technical and their domains are concentrated on one or two providers, a well-written instructions page plus your proxy's own resolution check may be all you need. If you onboard a handful of customers a year, an engineer on a call is cheaper than any vendor. And DoDomain is genuinely useless for the traffic half: it issues no certificates, serves no requests, and offers no origin routing — that is what a proxy is for, and Approximated is one.
Where it earns its place is self-serve onboarding across many registrars, and the long tail after go-live.
Frequently asked questions
Is DoDomain an alternative to Approximated?
No — they solve different halves of the same problem. Approximated runs the proxy: it terminates TLS on your customer's hostname, manages the certificate, and forwards the request to your app. DoDomain is the step before that: it gets your customer to create the DNS records the proxy needs, applies them one-click where it can, verifies them at the domain's authoritative nameservers, and tells your server when they are live. DoDomain never sits in the request path, so it cannot replace a proxy.
What does Approximated cost?
As published on approximated.app (retrieved 2026-08-26), Approximated starts at a $20/month floor with per-domain pricing on top that decreases with volume, and offers a 7-day trial. Check approximated.app for current figures.
Why use both instead of just the proxy?
Because the proxy cannot create a record inside your customer's registrar — the customer has to do that, and that is where self-serve onboarding stalls. DoDomain turns that step into a one-click OAuth approval on Cloudflare, a signed Domain Connect apply where the provider has enabled it, or provider-specific guided instructions with a live status per record, and then it proves the result rather than trusting a callback.
How do I wire the two together?
Register the customer domain with Approximated as you already do, take the record values it tells you the customer must create, and pass exactly those records to POST /api/v1/sessions. Send your user the returned connectUrl, or embed the @dodomain/connect widget. When the signed connection.verified webhook arrives, the records are confirmed live at the domain's authoritative nameservers and you can activate the tenant.
What does DoDomain add after the domain is live?
Monitoring, on every plan including Free at $0 forever. DoDomain keeps re-checking every verified connection against authoritative DNS — every 10 minutes for the first day, then hourly for a week, then every 6 hours — and sends a signed connection.failed webhook naming the exact failing records when a customer edits or deletes them, then connection.verified again when the records return. A customer who breaks their own DNS six months later becomes an event on your server instead of a support ticket.
Does DoDomain lock me into a vendor?
It cannot: it is never in the request path. DoDomain writes and verifies DNS that points at whatever infrastructure you name, so the records your customers create belong to your architecture, not ours. If you move off Approximated, you change the record values in your session payload and DoDomain guides the same customers through the new ones.