Dynamic multitenancy and custom domain management for deployed applications

[Frusadev]

Objective

Enable applications deployed on Dokploy to support multitenancy through dynamically managed custom domains. This would allow SaaS applications to let their customers connect their own domains to the same deployed application, without requiring a redeployment whenever a domain is added or removed.

Use case

A SaaS application deployed on Dokploy may serve multiple customers from a single application instance. Each customer can have their own custom domain, such as app.customer.com, pointing to that shared application.

The application should be able to communicate directly with Dokploy through an API to:

• Add a customer's custom domain dynamically.

• Remove a customer's custom domain when they disconnect their account.

• Retrieve the domains currently associated with the application.

• Check the provisioning and TLS status of each domain.

These operations should take effect without rebuilding or redeploying the application.

Proposed implementation

• Dynamic domain management API: Expose endpoints that allow deployed applications to programmatically add, retrieve and remove their associated custom domains.

• Dynamic Traefik routing: Update routing rules at runtime so that newly added domains become accessible without restarting the proxy or redeploying the application.

• Automatic TLS provisioning: Support automatic HTTPS for customer domains, potentially through Cloudflare for SaaS.

• Domain lifecycle management: Track domain verification, provisioning, certificate issuance and removal.

• Authentication: Secure the API so that applications can only manage domains associated with their own deployment.

Intended audience

This feature would primarily benefit small SaaS applications and self-hosted platforms that need basic multitenancy without maintaining separate deployments for individual customers.

It is not intended to replace dedicated multitenancy infrastructure for large-scale deployments. Rather, it would provide a relatively simple solution for applications with modest domain management requirements.

Expected outcome

A deployed application could manage its customers' custom domains programmatically through Dokploy, making it possible to implement basic multitenancy without redeployments or a separate domain provisioning service.

[imrja8]

For applications this already works, you can add domains dynamically and traefik picks them up in real time without any redeploy. Compose works a little different. Will investigate it and think about that for sure.