Heroku & DNS: Can http://nakeddomain.com aim at my heroku app?

Question

So, I've been reading quite some content about this. The latest one being here, and the heroku doc.

At the end, nobody answers the question clearly:

Is it possible to have http://nakeddomain.com aiming at a heroku app?

Here's what I know:

• It is easy to redirect http://nakeddomain.com to http://www.nakeddomain.com to CNAME http://myapp.herokuapp.com : I don't want to do that
• It is sometimes possible to ANAME (or ALIAS, or CNAME depending on the DNS provider vocabulary) apex name to another record. But in that case, all records are CNAMEd or ANAMEd (even the MX for mail delivery) which makes mail@nakeddomain.com unroutable as redirected to heroku app which certainly doesn't handle it by default.

So I'm going to reformulate

Is it possible to have http://nakeddomain.com aiming at a heroku app while using mails@nakeddomain.com?

• How? Which services to use?
• How much does it costs if there are extras to pay?
• Should I stick on CNAMing apex name and move the mailer to another service (Google Apps, or Sendgrid as some suggest in Stackoverflow) or is it making it worse?

Subsidary questions:

• Been reading Cloudflare is quite nice. How does it help me?
• We are using 1and1 as a DNS provider currently? Does it make it easier/harder anyhow?
• Been also reading DNSimple allows more features than other DNS providers. Which one?
• Since we send automatic mails from our app, SPAM filtering is also a concern from mails@nakeddomain.com, if that has to do with the required configuration.

Thanks for support

Answer 1

EDIT:

Cloudflare seems to be the good solution for me: brings CDN and naked domain through changing DNS servers to their own and they have a free plan.

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I'm going to answer point by point to explain what I've done:

Is it possible to have http://nakeddomain.com aiming at a heroku app while using mails@nakeddomain.com?

Yes

• How? Which services to use?

Only using DNSimple or DNS made easy, as they handle ALIAS/ANAME records.

• How much does it costs if there are extras to pay?

Cheapest is DNS made easy with $30/year

• Should I stick on CNAMing apex name and move the mailer to another service (Google Apps, or Sendgrid as some suggest in Stackoverflow) or is it making it worse?

Haven't explored this option much, but if your domain provider has decent mail services, no reason to move out of it. It probably costs more money for this service...

Subsidary questions:

• Been reading Cloudflare is quite nice. How does it help me?

Finally did not end up using it...

• We are using 1and1 as a DNS provider currently? Does it make it easier/harder anyhow?

1and1 doesn't have ALIAS/ANAME records. So I had to use extra service (DNS made easy in my case), they give you a list of dns hosts that need to be replaced in the 1and1 interface and then it takes care of the rest.

Careful: For beginners reading this, updating these entries won't assign changes all over the web at once as DNS is based a lot on caching. You need to take this in account when doing changes, if you have production services. You could end up with weird behaviors between like infinite redirects, cdn not properly redirecting, or OAuth redirects broken for a while ...

• Been also reading DNSimple allows more features than other DNS providers. Which one?

More customization is possible with DNS made easy. Interface will be more user-friendly also.

Eg. 301 redirects instead of 302 for 1and1, PTR records and other newest DNS records

• Since we send automatic mails from our app, SPAM filtering is also a concern from mails@nakeddomain.com, if that has to do with the required configuration.

I read PTR records were good to prevent SPAM, but as far as I understood, it doesn't make sense when using heroku because the whole point of this record is to aim IP-Address to nakeddomain.com which is not possible as heroku doesn't provide fixed IP-addresses.

Hope it helps.

Answer 2

Apex domains have no impact on using the naked domain for emails - completely different types of record. I have domains using DNSimple CNAMEs and the same domain for email. One is a cname, the other is an MX reocrd.

I would suggest using DNSimple or the cheaper option DNS made easy - both support ALIAS records, with the $30 a year plan you get 10 domains. I typically using one or the other and Google Apps for email which works just fine. For applications to send email I use Sendgrid.

CloudFlare is a caching layer. To use them you have to move your DNS to them.

You can use 1&1 as your registrar but you then use one of the previously mentioned to host the DNS - they have far superior services. Both provide CNAME but also redirection at DNS level so you can have www.domain.com redirected to domain.com at DNS level and not in your application. If you use Sendgrid for sending emails I'm sure they have a SPF record you can put on your domain to help keep emails out of spam folders.