You described the app, it built itself, and it deployed. Now it lives at your-project.vercel.app — a name you did not pick, do not own, and cannot keep.
That last part is the problem. Vercel says it plainly in its own documentation, and most vibe coders only find out after they have tried to put the URL on a business card.
Two promotions are running that make the fix cheap. .my is RM9.90 for the first year and closes on 27 September 2026. .asia is also RM9.90, down from a normal RM78, and runs until 30 October 2026. Both are first-year prices.
Why a vibe coder should own the domain, not rent a vercel.app URL
Vercel assigns you the subdomain automatically:
“When you create a deployment on Vercel, we automatically assign it a domain based on your project name and ending in
.vercel.app.”
Then the sentence worth reading twice:
“Deployment URLs with the domain
.vercel.appare allocated on a first-come, first-served basis and cannot be reserved.”
First come, first served. Not yours to reserve. If someone else registers your project name — or you delete the project and want it back — the address is gone. You are renting a room with no lease, and the landlord has no obligation to hold it.
What AI-built apps actually need from a domain
The usual stack for this is an AI app builder — Lovable, Bolt.new, v0 or Replit Agent on the web side, Cursor and Claude Code for anyone working inside a repo. They get you to a working interface fast. What they do not supply is an identity.
The gap shows up in three places, and all three arrive at once, usually the week the app starts getting used by someone other than you.
- Trust at the point of payment. A checkout on a
.vercel.appsubdomain reads as a demo. Customers hesitate, and payment processors and banks are unimpressed by it. - Email. You cannot run a credible-looking company mailbox on a
vercel.appsubdomain, and Vercel does not provide mailboxes at all — “Vercel does not provide a mail service for domains purchased with or transferred into it.” The domain is the thing you attach mail to; the platform never is. - Search. A subdomain on someone else’s root domain builds authority for that root domain, not for you.
One detail is easy to miss. Vercel’s paid plan includes a free first-year domain, but only on a fixed list of extensions: .app, .dev, .online, .site, .space, .store, .tech and .website. .my and .asia are not on it. So the local registrar is the cheaper route for exactly the two extensions on promotion right now.
What the .my and .asia promotion covers
| Extension | Promo price | Normal price | You save | Promotion ends | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
.my | RM9.90 | RM110 | RM100.10 off | 27 Sep 2026 | Individuals, freelancers, indie builders — the most flexible .my category |
.asia | RM9.90 | RM78 | RM68.10 off | 30 Oct 2026 | Anything aimed at the wider Asia-Pacific market rather than Malaysia alone |
.com.my | RM9.90 | RM75 | RM65.10 off | 27 Sep 2026 | Registered Malaysian companies |
.net.my | RM9.90 | RM75 | RM65.10 off | 27 Sep 2026 | Network and internet-facing services |
.org.my | RM9.90 | RM75 | RM65.10 off | 27 Sep 2026 | Registered societies and non-profits |
The .my discount is the headline: RM110 down to RM9.90 is RM100.10 off the first year. Big Domain states that listed domain prices “are for 1st year only”, so year two renews at the normal rate — RM110 on a .my, RM75 on the other .my categories, RM78 on .asia.
Who can register what
This is where first attempts stall. MYNIC, the sole administrator for names ending in .my, treats registration as verification rather than checkout. Your application sits pending until the documents clear.
| Extension | Intended for | What you will be asked for |
|---|---|---|
.my | Malaysian individuals and organisations — the flexible, catch-all category | Identity or entity documentation, depending on who registers |
.com.my · .biz.my · .net.my | Commercial, MSME and network-related organisations | Business registration evidence matching the entity name |
.org.my | Registered societies and non-profits | Society registration evidence |
.name.my | Individuals building a personal brand | Personal identity documentation |
.edu.my · .gov.my · .mil.my | Educational, government and military bodies only | Official endorsement from the institution |
MYNIC describes .my as the universal category, “perfect for anyone seeking to establish a local or global online presence… whether for personal or business purposes”, with .com.my as the commercial category and .biz.my aimed at MSMEs. The stated reason for the paperwork is blunt: the documents exist “to validate and ensure that it is owned by a Malaysian or a legally operating business”.
Practical read for an indie builder: if the app is yours personally, .my is the category and the paperwork is light. If it will be invoiced through a registered company, register the .com.my against that company. The name on the application has to match the name on the certificate — a mismatch is the usual reason an application bounces back.
How to connect a BigDomain .my or .asia domain to your app
You bought the domain. It does not point anywhere yet. There are two routes, and the choice comes down to whether you want to keep managing DNS at the registrar.
Route A — keep DNS at BigDomain and point the records at your host
This is the simpler option for most people, because your email and any other services stay where they are. In your BigDomain client area, open the domain you registered and find its DNS zone or record management section, then add the records your platform asks for.
| What you are pointing | Record type | Name / host | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
The root domain, e.g. yourapp.my | A | @ (some panels want the full domain) | The IP address shown in your project’s Domains panel |
| The www version | CNAME | www | The CNAME target shown in your project’s Domains panel |
On the Vercel side, that is exactly the flow its documentation describes: an apex domain such as example.com is configured with an A record, and a subdomain with a CNAME record — and, in Vercel’s words, “each project has a unique CNAME record”.
Here is the detail that catches people out. Vercel’s own troubleshooting note says to “use the values shown for your project rather than copying another project’s records”. Copying an A record out of a blog post is the single most common cause of an “Invalid Configuration” warning that will not clear. Open your project, go to Settings, then Domains, and read the values it gives you.
Route B — hand DNS control to Vercel
You can also change the domain’s nameservers at BigDomain so that Vercel becomes authoritative, using ns1.vercel-dns.com and ns2.vercel-dns.com. Vercel then manages the records and the TLS certificate for you, and wildcard subdomains become straightforward.
Do this before you switch, or you will lose email. Vercel’s documentation is explicit: “Before changing nameservers, copy your existing DNS records to Vercel, including MX records for email and any verification TXT records.” Its own troubleshooting table lists “Email stopped arriving after a nameserver change” as a known failure. If you have working mail on the domain, either copy the MX records across first or stay on Route A.
Then verify, and pick one version of the name
- Send the supporting documents the same day you pay. A
.myor.com.myregistration is pending until MYNIC verifies them, so the domain will not resolve until it clears — unlike a.com, which is typically live in minutes. - Add the domain to the project under Settings, then Domains. Vercel’s documentation notes that an apex domain prompts you to add the
wwwprefix as well. - Add the records above at BigDomain, or switch the nameservers if you chose Route B.
- Redirect one to the other. Vercel recommends a redirect rather than serving both the apex and
www. “The apex domain works butwwwdoes not, or the reverse” is on its troubleshooting list — fix it by adding both and redirecting. - Confirm from outside. Query the domain with
digor a public DNS checker, and check that the certificate has issued before you send the link to anyone.
The deadline that matters
The two promotions do not end together, and that is the only scheduling decision here.
.my closes on 27 September 2026 — six days from now. .asia runs to 30 October 2026. If you want the local name, do that one first; the regional one can wait five more weeks, but only if you actually intend to buy it.
Both promotions are live now. Current first-year pricing across the extensions is listed at Big Domain’s domain page, including the .my and .asia offers while they last.
What it costs after year one: renewal and transfer
RM9.90 against a normal RM110 is the steepest cut on the price list — roughly 91% off the first year. It is also, deliberately, a first-year price. Over five years it is the renewal and the transfer fee that decide whether a domain is actually cheap, so here they are beside the promotion.
| Extension | Promo, first year | Renewal | Transfer in |
|---|---|---|---|
.my | RM9.90 | RM110 | RM110 |
.com.my · .net.my · .org.my | RM9.90 | RM75 | RM75 |
.asia | RM9.90 | RM78 | RM78 |
Put the .my renewal next to what the rest of the Malaysian market publishes and the position is easy to check. Two MYNIC-accredited registrars publish an explicit .my rate of RM120 a year, for registration and renewal alike, and one of them publishes .com.my at RM80 a year. An aggregation of accredited-registrar pricing compiled in June 2026 puts .my renewals in an RM80–110 band and .com.my in an RM75–100 band. So a Big Domain .my renewal at RM110 sits at the foot of that published band and RM10 under the RM120 the two registrars above charge, while .com.my at RM75 lands at the bottom of its band.
Transfer is the line where registrars differ most, and some publish a lower transfer fee than their renewal rate. If you are moving a domain you already own rather than buying a new one, compare the transfer fee at both ends before you commit.
And the comparison that matters most of all: a .vercel.app URL costs nothing and is worth roughly the same. It cannot be reserved, it carries no identity, and it reads as a prototype. If the app is a weekend experiment, keep the subdomain and spend nothing. The moment anyone is paying you for it, the domain is the cheapest line on the invoice.
About BD Media
BD Media is the trade and business journal of Big Domain, edited in Penang. We cover the commercial, compliance and technology decisions Malaysian small and medium businesses have to make — with sourced numbers, named documents and dates you can check.
Sources
- Vercel, Working with domains, documentation page, last updated 16 September 2026 — vercel.com/docs/domains/working-with-domains. Quotes on the default
.vercel.appassignment, first-come first-served allocation, the Pro plan’s eligible TLD list, third-party registrars and the absence of a mail service are verbatim from this page. - Vercel, Adding & Configuring a Custom Domain, documentation page, last updated 16 September 2026 — vercel.com/docs/domains/working-with-domains/add-a-domain. Source for the A record / CNAME requirement, the unique-per-project CNAME, the nameserver method and values, the warning to copy MX and TXT records before switching nameservers, and the apex-versus-www troubleshooting entry.
- MYNIC Berhad, Discover .MY: Ten Categories that Define, by Norfaiqah Ramlan, 1 October 2024 — mynic.my. Source for the category descriptions quoted above.
- MYNIC Berhad, .MY Is The True Malaysian Domain, press release — mynic.my/media/press-releases. Source for the statement on why registration documents are required.
- MYNIC Berhad — mynic.my. Source for MYNIC’s role as sole administrator of the
.mynamespace. - Big Domain, domain registration price list — billing.bigdomain.my. Source for every figure in the table:
.mypublished as “HOT PROMO RM9.90 first year ends 27 Sep 2026” against a normal RM110;.com.my,.net.myand.org.myat RM9.90 against RM75, all ending 27 Sep 2026; and.asiaas “SALE PROMO RM9.90 first year ends 30 Oct 2026” against RM78. - Big Domain, domain pages — bigdomain.my/domain/. Source for the
.asianormal price of RM78 and for the statement that listed prices “are for 1st year only”.
.my at RM120.00/yr for registration, transfer and renewal, and .com.my at RM80.00/yr. Opened 21 September 2026..my at 120.00 MYR/year for registration and renewal, and .com.my, .net.my and .biz.my at 80.00 MYR/year. Opened 21 September 2026..my renewal band as RM80–110 per year and .com.my as RM75–100. Used as supporting range, not as the sole basis for any figure.What could not be checked: the exact menu labels in the BigDomain client area could not be confirmed against a published knowledge-base article, so the steps above name the section generically rather than quoting a button label — verify against your own account. Per-category document lists are summarised from MYNIC’s category guide and press material rather than one consolidated current requirements table, and what is requested can vary by applicant type. The IP address and CNAME value differ per project: read them from your own project’s Domains panel.
