Connect your own domain

Instead of you.drry.com, your community can live at community.yoursite.com or at a domain you own outright.

This needs the Creator plan or higher, and only the community owner can do it. Even an admin on a paid plan is refused, because a domain is closer to owning the business than to running the community.

It is in Settings, in the card called Use your own domain.

Do not own a domain yet? Get a free .com

If you pay full price for Creator or Growth, Drry will register a .com for you and set it up. It is free, and it renews free while your community stays on a full-price Creator or Growth plan. You get one per account, for life. It belongs to you, not to one community, so every community you own can use it.

Only the community owner can get it. It is the top card in Settings, then Domains, called Get a free .com. If you are on Free, the card shows it as something that comes with Creator.

Using it on more than one community

Every community you own shows the same .com card in Settings, then Domains, and the owner can manage it from any of them: its renewal, taking it with you, and its DNS records. Each community puts its own website on it. One community can use the .com itself, such as yourname.com. Another then uses a subdomain, such as community.yourname.com, and the card tells you so. Each community has one website domain.

On the Growth plan, the card also offers Send your community emails from an address on the domain, with a Set it up button. Each community gets its own sending address, and the card shows it. The community's website has to be on the .com, or a subdomain of it, first. See Send from your own domain.

Using the .com is optional: Use a domain from elsewhere sits beside it. Deleting a community leaves your domains with you while you still own another one. If you delete your last community, the delete dialog lists every domain that would be left with nobody and asks you to tick that you will lose access to them and that they will not be renewed, so move them to a registrar of your own first.

More than one domain

Once you have a domain with Drry, Settings, then Domains, shows Your domains: a list with a row for each one. A row says who pays (Free with your plan, Free, on us when Drry has granted you an extra one, Moved in, or a yearly price), when it renews or expires, and where it is live: This community, or the name of another community of yours. Press a row to manage that domain's DNS records, renewal and transfer out. Each community still has one website domain.

The owner adds another with Add a domain, which opens a sheet with two choices:

• Buy a new .com. Before you search, a banner says what your next domain costs. It is Free with your plan while your free .com is unused, Free, on us if Drry has granted you an extra one, and otherwise a yearly add-on. Its price is shown on the banner, on every search result and in the confirm drawer, and you are charged only when you confirm. If the registration fails, the charge is cancelled and refunded in full.

• Move one in. Bring a .com you already own to Drry. It costs the same way: your free .com while it is unused, an extra Drry has granted, or the yearly add-on.

Add your own DNS records

On a domain Drry holds or is moving in for you, the owner can add records of their own. Press the domain’s row, then add, edit or delete a record in the DNS dialog. You can add MX, TXT, CNAME, A, AAAA, NS, SRV and CAA records.

Every record has a TTL, the time other systems may remember it before they look again. It is Auto unless you pick a time, from 1 minute to 1 day.

Each type has what its fields need:

• A points a subdomain at a server by its IPv4 address, and AAAA does the same with an IPv6 address. For example, an A record named app points app.yourdomain.com at the address your host gave you.

• NS hands a subdomain to another service’s name servers, for example when an email or hosting service asks you to delegate a subdomain to it. Add one record for each name server they gave you. The value is a name server’s host name, not an IP address, and not a name inside your own domain.

• SRV tells a service where to connect, as used by some chat and calling tools. The name looks like _service._tcp (_tcp, _udp, _tls or _sctp), with a subdomain after it if you need one. You give a priority, a weight and a port, each from 0 to 65535, and the target’s host name. A single dot as the target says the service is not offered. The target cannot be an IP address.

• CAA says which certificate authorities may issue certificates for a subdomain and everything under it. You pick a tag (issue, issuewild or iodef), flags (0, or 128 to make an authority refuse a tag it does not know), and a value. For issue and issuewild the value is the certificate authority your provider named, optionally with simple name=value settings, or a single semicolon to allow none. For iodef it is where to report, as a mailto: or https:// address. Other CAA values are refused rather than written.

Which records are yours

Drry sets up only the records it needs to connect your domain to your community and to send email from it. Those are marked Drry and locked, because a change could take your community or email offline.

Every other record is yours, whatever its type and wherever it came from. That includes the records Drry copied from your old DNS when you moved a domain in: you can edit or delete them like any record you added. An existing record can be edited in place, even on your main domain or www. Moving it to a different name or type follows the rules below for a new record.

If a record you copied already says exactly what Drry needs when you connect your community, Drry takes it over, and from then on it is locked and marked Drry.

Rules for these records

• A new A, AAAA, NS, SRV or CAA goes on a subdomain only. Your main domain and www are set up by Drry for your community, so they cannot take a new one, and neither can the other names Drry uses, such as mail. A record already on your main domain or www, such as one copied from your old DNS, can still be edited or deleted.

• An NS or a CAA also cannot sit on, or above, a name Drry itself serves for your community. A name server record hands everything under it to other servers, and a CAA record decides who may issue certificates for everything under it, so either one could hide your community or stop its certificate from being issued. Drry tells you when a name is refused for this reason.

• Nothing else can go on a subdomain that has an NS record, or under it, and an NS cannot be added to a name that already has records on it or under it. Two or more NS records on the same name are normal.

• The address on an A or AAAA record has to be public. Private and reserved addresses such as 10.x.x.x, 192.168.x.x or 127.0.0.1 are refused, since they cannot be reached from the internet.

• A name that already has a CNAME cannot also take another record, and the other way round. A name can hold both an A and an AAAA record, and more than one A record. Several CAA records on one name are normal.

You cannot add HTTPS and SVCB records, TLSA, SSHFP, DS, DNSKEY, NAPTR, URI, CERT, PTR and LOC records, or wildcard names. If Drry copied a record of one of those types from your old DNS, it shows in the list and you can delete it, but not edit it.

Move a domain you already own to Drry

You do not have to buy a domain first. On the card in Settings, then Domains, press Move a domain you own under the search. It opens the same sheet on its Move one in tab, and your website’s Your web address panel has the same button. It shows only while a move in is open to you, and only to the owner.

You need a .com you own at another registrar that was registered more than 60 days ago, access to change its nameservers there, and its transfer code, which your registrar may call an auth or EPP code. Drry sets it up and copies its DNS records first, and nothing moves until you switch its nameservers and give the code. You can have up to three move ins open at once.

Renewing and leaving

A yearly add-on renews on its own. On its panel, press Stop renewing to cancel at the end of the paid year, or Turn renewal back on later. If you stop renewing you keep the domain to the end of that year and nothing is refunded. After that it lapses, unless you move it to a registrar of your own or turn renewal back on. A completed transfer out ends the add-on.

If you drop to the free plan, an add-on you already have keeps renewing, but a new one needs a paid plan. If you delete your last community or your account, every add-on ends at the end of its paid period, with no refund.

Let your assistant help

If you have connected Drry to Claude or ChatGPT, it can do most of this for you, with guardrails. As the owner, you can ask it to search for a name and say what your next domain costs, read your DNS records, add an MX, TXT, CNAME, A, AAAA, NS, SRV or CAA record (with a TTL if you say one), point your website at a domain Drry holds for you, and start and check a move in. It never edits or deletes a live record itself. For a change or a removal it opens a link to the DNS dialog in your console with the record highlighted and the new value filled in, and you press Save or Delete. Buying a domain, giving the transfer code, renewal, transferring out and stopping a move in stay in the console. Records copied from your old DNS count as yours, so it can prepare a change or a removal for them too, but it cannot touch the records Drry set up. Your admins can read your domains and records but not change them.

Who owns it, and how to take it with you

• Drry is the registrant. Drry registers the domain in its own name so it can set it up and keep it running. It is yours to use for your community while you are on Creator or Growth.

• After 12 months in a row on a full-price Creator or Growth plan, you can move it to any domain company and register it in your own name, free.

• Before that, you can take it early by paying for the months you have left, never more than $150. The exact amount is shown in your settings.

• If you move to the free plan, your domain sends visitors to your Drry address until you upgrade again, and Drry will not renew it. If you had already finished your 12 months, you must move it out of Drry by the date shown in your settings, which is at most 30 days away, or it will expire.

• A new registration cannot be moved for the first 60 days. That is a rule of the .com registry, not of Drry.