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Comment by dylanbfox | Hacker News Reader

Sure! Your site is hosted by ClaimYourName, which is hosted on Heroku. The domain is purchased through Namecheap, and we use its API to configure the domain's zone file to point to your site hosted on ClaimYourName.

The $10.99/year charge is pretty much exactly the cost Namecheap charges us for the 1 year domain registration. We just pass this cost directly on to you. The $6.99/month is "our" charge for a subscription and hosting your site.

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Does your setup solve the awkwardness with configuring the root domain at http://example.com to point to Heroku?

Does the hosting autoscale or is it a basic one dyno (or share of a limited number of dynos) setup?

Nope! Customers don't have to do any setup. All of it is handled automatically. We use Namecheap's API to forward your root domain to www, and then point your www CNAME to a subdomain on claimyourname. That configuration tells the app which site to serve up.

So it doesn't support root domains? Using a root domain on Herkou requires configuring some non-standard record (I think it is ANAME).

It's something that annoyed me about Heroku because a lot of people prefer the non-www version of their domain as canonical these days.

How are you handling the Namecheap API's requirement of an IP address whitelist?

Good question! I set up a microservice hosted on a static IP that talks to my Heroku app. If you're trying to do the same and want some help let me know!

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