Summary
Railway, a cloud deployment platform, integrated the name.com API to let users search, buy, and manage domains without leaving the product. One engineer built the bulk of the integration in two weeks. Within the first quarter, Railway users were purchasing 1,700+ domains per month. The integration was fully self-serve, the pricing was predictable, and the partnership scaled to include domain transfers, custom nameservers, and a tailored SLA.
At a glance
Company | Railway |
Industry | Cloud provider |
Use case | Domain storefront; domain registration in deploy flow |
Integration time | ~2 weeks (1 week to integrate, 1 week to polish the user-facing experience) |
How they built it | Fully self-serve — one product engineer, API docs fed to an AI coding agent |
Business impact | 1,700 domains/month within the first quarter of rollout (May 2026) and growing, with no dedicated marketing push |
About Railway
Railway is a cloud provider that lets developers and agents go from code to production in seconds. For Q1 2026, the team set out to let users buy and manage domains entirely through Railway, removing one of the last friction points between deploying an app and putting it on a custom domain.
The problem: Domain setup was a drop-off point
Before integrating the name.com API, custom domain setup at Railway was a multi-step, external process requiring users to leave the platform, purchase from a third party, and manually configure DNS records, which generated support tickets and friction at the configuration stage.
Why name.com: Predictable pricing, simple integration
Railway wanted to support as many TLDs as possible from day one, with no restrictions and no tiered access gates. The name.com API offered a simple integration and broad TLD coverage with transparent pricing: no per-TLD tier complexity, no application process, and no sales calls required to start reselling domains.
There was not much more that I could have asked for. name.com's cost and pricing was very predictable, so that made the decision easy.
The build: One engineer, two weeks, AI-assisted
Railway built its domains feature with a single product engineer on the project. The team fed the name.com API documentation directly to an AI coding agent, walked through the endpoints and schemas, and built from there.
The API integration itself was the straightforward part. Most of the engineering time went into product decisions: designing search to work across multiple surfaces in the Railway app (including Railway's in-app AI agent), building caching layers for instant type-ahead results, and aligning subscription billing with domain renewal cycles.
Total time to launch: roughly two weeks. One week for the core integration, one week to polish the user-facing experience, and then shipped to production.
The power of in-product domains
Railway's domain registration volume has grown to more than 1,700 domains per month within the first quarter of rollout, without any dedicated marketing push. Railway passes its domain registration cost to users with no markup, treating domains as an acquisition lever rather than a margin line.
Since launch, the team has shipped domain transfers and custom nameserver support, expanding in-product domains from a purchase feature into full domain management.
Self-serve first, human when it counts
The integration was about halfway built before Railway ever talked to anyone at name.com. The team found the API, created an account, and worked from the documentation, reaching out as launch approached.
"All of the actual implementation was fully self-serve," Jake said. "I reached out to name.com when I was setting up the reseller program — I just wanted a point of contact to make sure we were using it properly."
The name.com team recommended the Zone Check endpoint for higher-throughput availability lookups, bumped rate limits to support Railway's type-ahead search, enabled the refunds endpoint, and proactively adjusted Railway's pricing tier based on expected volume.
As the integration matured, the partnership deepened beyond onboarding support. Railway and name.com now partner under a streamlined operating model, with name.com handling the regulatory and operational complexity that comes with reselling domains at scale, and Railway's team stays focused on their product.
Integration speed | ~2 weeks — one engineer, start to finish. One week for the core API integration, one week for UX polish and billing alignment. |
Developer experience | Fully self-serve. API docs fed directly to an AI coding agent. No reverse-engineering, no undocumented behavior. |
User impact | Domain purchase moved entirely in-product. Users search, buy, and connect domains without leaving Railway or entering new payment details. |
Traction | 1,700+ domains per month, no marketing push. |
Partnership | Tailored SLA — name.com absorbs domain operations complexity so Railway doesn't have to. |
What this means for builders
One engineer, two weeks, 1,700+ domains per month with no marketing. Railway turned domain purchase from a drop-off point into a growth lever — because the API was simple enough to hand to an AI coding agent, the pricing was predictable enough to absorb into the product, and the partnership handled everything else.
Any platform where users deploy, publish, or launch can do the same.
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