SaaS and legacy domain redirects

I’m interested in how others are handling redirect strategies for legacy domains in the SaaS environment.

In private cloud setups, we’ve typically relied on existing edge infrastructure (e.g. Cloudflare, Azure Front Door) to manage legacy domain redirects. However, for clients moving fully to the SaaS model and looking to decommission those services, the approach becomes less clear.

The documentation (https://docs.kentico.com/documentation/developers-and-admins/configuration/website-channel-management#manage-channel-domains-in-xperience-portal) notes that domain limits apply per channel, with the option to request increases via sales.

Given that constraint, what strategies are you using in practice?

  • Requesting additional domains purely for redirect handling
  • Retaining a third-party service such as Cloudflare
  • Using an alternative approach

Interested to hear how others are balancing simplicity, cost, and maintainability here.

Environment

  • Execution environment: SaaS
Tags:
SaaS Website channels Xperience Portal

Answers

I would reach out to sales first - if the cost is negligible, problem solved.

After that you can decide if an externally hosted redirect solution is a better option.

Ben,

I'll be the devils advocate here, for something like domain management why wouldn't you want or NEED to keep services like Cloudflare? You may not use some of the functionality of it but definitely can take advantage of other features and primarily DNS management. If you move away from these services, where will you manage your domain?

Many services like Cloudflare offer free tiers so cost isn't even an issue. And it's a simple place to manage your domains and their functionality whereas most places you purchase a domain are limited in the services they offer.

Good points Brenden,

I manage my personal domain through Cloudflare, which I also use for CDN services. It's great for these things.

The Pro tier ($20 USD/mo) gives you 225 CDN rules + 25K Bulk Redirects. That should cover any organization's backlog of legacy domains, acquisitions, and redirects.

Is it another service that needs managed by someone? Yes, but the domain registration is already being managed by some service provider that likely doesn't do that great a job and tries to sell your clients a bunch of products they don't need. Cloudflare provides domain registration at-cost.

I agree Brendan, Cloudflare is such a simple solution but it is unfortunately still an additional service that the client would then only be keeping around for managing the redirects.

As for moving domains to Cloudflare, I don't believe they do registration of .au domains meaning they don't have the option to replace their existing registrar either.

For this particular client, it is very important for them that they reduce their overall service adoption down to as minimal as possible.

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