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Custom Domain and Branding

Point your own domain, upload your logo and favicon, tune the design tokens, and send branded emails so members never see Seedly.

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Seedly Communities is meant to disappear behind your brand. Because you own the source, there is no vendor chrome to work around and no plan tier that unlocks "white-label" later. Every surface your members touch - the web app, the emails, the login screen, the mobile app icon - carries your name, your colors, and your domain. This page covers how to make that happen.

Point a Custom Domain#

Your community should live on your own domain, not a default platform URL. The web app deploys to your Vercel account, and Vercel handles the domain attachment and the certificate for you.

There are two shapes of domain, and the DNS record differs.

  • A subdomain such as community.yourbrand.com uses a CNAME record pointing at your Vercel deployment. This is the simplest path and the one most operators use.
  • An apex (root) domain such as yourbrand.com cannot use a CNAME at the root. Point it with the A or ALIAS record your host provides, or move the domain's nameservers so the host can manage the apex for you.

Add the domain in your Vercel project, create the DNS record your registrar asks for, and wait for the certificate to issue. Once the domain resolves, set it as the community's canonical URL in the admin Settings tab so links, invites, and emails all use it. The default deployment URL then redirects to your domain, so any early links keep working and search rankings consolidate on one address.

For where the app and backend actually run, see Backups and Data Ownership.

Upload Your Logo and Favicon#

The Community Branding section of the admin Settings tab takes your logo and favicon directly. No code edit is required for the common case.

  • Logo - one upload, used across the app. Use a transparent PNG or SVG so it sits cleanly on any background. A separate banner image covers the community home.
  • Favicon - the small icon in the browser tab and on the mobile header bar. Upload a square icon; it is used as-is, so a crisp square source looks best.

Set your community name and tagline in the same place. Those strings flow into page titles, the header, invite emails, and the mobile app shell.

Your community's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy pages name the business that runs the community and the place whose laws govern the Terms. Since v2.2.0 you set both in the Legal Details card in Admin > Settings: Legal business name and Governing law. Leave the business name blank and those pages use your community name, and since v2.2.1 the Terms then say the Platform is owned by the operator of your community. Leave governing law blank and the Terms name no place: they say the laws of wherever your business, or the operator of your community, is established apply.

Tune the Design Tokens#

Branding goes deeper than a logo. The design token editor in the admin Design tab controls the actual color system the whole app renders from, with a live preview as you change values.

  • Colors - primary, accent, success, warning, destructive, and the neutral ramp. Set these to your brand palette and every button, badge, link, and surface updates together.
  • Shape - border radius that sets how soft or tight the interface feels.
  • Custom CSS - an escape hatch for anything the tokens do not cover.

Because these are tokens and not one-off overrides, a single change cascades everywhere - the feed, the classroom, the member directory, and the emails all inherit it. That consistency is what makes an owned instance feel like a real product rather than a themed template.

Branded Transactional Emails#

The emails your members receive - verification, password reset, invites, notifications, digests, and billing notices - are built from a block-based template system that inherits your design tokens. When you change your palette, the emails change with it, so an invite looks like it came from your brand and not from a generic system address.

Send those emails from your own domain by configuring your email provider and verifying your sending domain (SPF and DKIM at your DNS host). That verification is what keeps branded mail landing in the inbox and keeps your brand, not a shared sender, in the From line. See Troubleshooting and FAQ if a test email does not arrive.

Members Never See Seedly#

Put the pieces together and the result is a community that is entirely yours. Members sign in at your domain, see your logo and colors on every screen, install a mobile app with your icon and name, and receive email from your address. There is no "Powered by Seedly" footer to buy your way out of, because you own the source and Seedly is simply the codebase you started from.

This is the ownership story in practice. The brand is fully yours because the code is fully yours.

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