Executive Brief — DNS Provider¶
Part of the Domain Connect Knowledge Base · Product Edition: DNS Providers
The 60-Second Pitch¶
Our customers buy domains to connect them to Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Shopify and hundreds of other services. Today that means typing DNS records by hand — and about half of them fail. Those failures become support tickets, and domains that never get used renew at ~70% instead of ~90%.
Domain Connect is an open standard, in production since 2016 and now on the IETF Standards Track, that turns this into a one-click, customer-approved step on our own consent screen. 294 DNS providers — GoDaddy, IONOS, Cloudflare among them — already support it. We build it once, and 2,207 ready-made templates from 1,436 service providers become available to our customers without a single partner integration.
I'm asking for a scoped Phase 1: the synchronous flow and our top templates, with a pilot to measure ticket deflection and activation before we scale.
One-Page Brief¶
Problem. Connecting a domain to a third-party service requires manual DNS configuration. ~50% of users fail (Microsoft 365 data). Failed connections drive support load and leave domains unused; unused domains renew ~20 points lower than domains with content (CENTR 2024).
Proposal. Implement Domain Connect as a DNS provider: discovery endpoints, a consent flow on our existing login, a template engine, and a template review process.
Why us, why now.
- Service providers already check every domain for Domain Connect support; supporting it switches on their "Connect automatically" button for our customers
- The templates our customers need already exist and are community-reviewed
- IETF standardization (DCONN WG, Oct 2025) removes the "proprietary protocol" risk
- Domain growth is flat; retention is the growth lever
Investment. One-time build, front-loaded; reference library available for the complex logic. Ongoing cost is a template-review process, not a team. [Insert engineering sizing from Phase 0.]
Expected outcomes. [Insert figures from the business-case worksheet.]
- Fewer third-party DNS setup tickets for services we cover
- More domains with a connected service within 90 days of registration
- Higher renewal rate for connected domains
Risks and controls. Every change requires a template we approved, a customer logged in with us, and explicit approval on our consent screen. We require signed requests for templates that redirect web traffic.
Decision requested. Approve Phase 0 (sizing and vetting policy) and Phase 1 (synchronous flow and top templates), with a go/no-go on Phase 2 based on pilot KPIs.
Tailoring the Message¶
| Audience | Lead with | Bring |
|---|---|---|
| CEO | Renewal and activation; competitive experience | The 60-second pitch, the numbers table, DNS Provider CEO story |
| Engineering | Defined scope, reuse of the reference library, no per-partner work | Scope of Work, Getting Started, DNS Provider developer story |
| Security | Three-control trust model; your vetting policy | Security Model, Risks & Objections |
| Support | Ticket deflection; simpler escalations | DNS Provider support story |
| Finance | Worksheet with your own data; pilot before scale | Business Case |
Your First Steps After Approval¶
- Run Phase 0: ticket analysis, zone scan, engineering spike, vetting policy
- Join the community: domainconnect.org/getting-started
- Hand engineering Getting Started: DNS Provider and the Implementers Edition
- Try the flow from the service-provider side at exampleservice.domainconnect.org against an existing DNS provider, so the team sees the target experience
- Set up the KPI dashboard before launch, so the baseline is measured
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