About domains

A domain (sometimes called a domain name) is a unique, human-readable address, typically typed in a web browser, that ensures requests for information or services provided through the internet (the "traffic" of the internet) gets to and from the right location. Routing your domain's traffic through Fastly allows you to store cached copies of important information as close to your users as possible, helping to speed up its delivery to them.

To route your traffic through Fastly, you add the domain name that visitors use to access your website or application to a Fastly service. Adding a domain that you own, like www.example.com, blog.example.com, or even something with wildcards such as *.example.com ensures that others cannot serve requests to your domain. Once you've tested everything to make sure things are working the way you expect, you'll be ready to route production traffic for your domain through Fastly. You'll do that by updating your DNS records so that user requests are routed to your Fastly service and processed using the service configurations you specify.

Before you begin

Be sure you learn about the web interface controls and how to work with services before you start working with your domains.

Domain creation limits

Domains can only be associated with a single service at a time and each service has a limited number of domains that can be associated with it.

Domains can only be associated with one service at a time

If a domain is in use by another service within your account, you can delete the domain and add it to the other service. However, if a domain is used by a service in another Fastly account, it can't be used without being delegated.

If you try to create a domain that is already associated with another service, you may get error messages like:

Domain [domain name] is already taken by service [service name].

In this case, follow the steps to delete a domain from your service before creating the domain on your new service.

If you try to create a domain that is already owned by another customer, you may get error messages like:

Domain [domain name] is taken by another customer. Domain [domain name] is owned by another customer.

If you receive one of these errors when adding a domain that you rightfully should have access to, or if you need to delegate a domain to another account or customer (for example, delegating a domain from a test account to a production account), contact support to help you delegate the domain to the correct account.

Services are limited to a set number of domains

We set a limit on the number of domains you can create per service by default based on your account type and any packaged offering you've purchased.

Once you reach that limit, error messages may appear that look something like this:

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{
  "msg": "An error occurred while connecting to the fastly API, please try your request again.",
  "detail": "Exceeding max number of domains: 10"
}

If you're receiving a limit message and need to create more services or domains, contact support for assistance. Fastly support engineers can not only increase the number of services that you can use, they can suggest other ways to design what you are trying to achieve.

What's next

Once you understand how domains work and their limits, add a domain to Fastly.