A custom domain for your QR codes: how it works, and the mistake you cannot undo

A dynamic QR code has to point at somebody's short address. By default that address is ours: enqre.com/r/ab12cd. On the Business plan it can be yours instead: qr.yourcompany.com/r/ab12cd. The pattern on the label looks identical. What changes sits in two places, and only one of them is about branding.

What the person scanning actually sees

Phone cameras show the address before they open it. That preview is the whole interaction: a person holding a phone in front of a poster reads a host name and decides in about a second whether to tap.

An unfamiliar short domain is exactly the shape of a link people have been trained to distrust, because it is the shape spam uses. It is not that enqre.com looks dangerous — it is that it looks like nothing, and "nothing" is a bad answer to "who is this?" when the code is stuck to a parking meter. A host carrying the name already printed above it answers the question before it is asked.

Do not expect a dramatic number here. It is a small effect on a large denominator, which for print runs is worth having and is not worth reorganising a project around.

The argument nobody makes, and it is the important one

Printed codes outlive supplier relationships. A menu is reprinted every season, but an asset tag on a pump, a plate riveted to a machine, an engraved plaque, a run of packaging sitting in a warehouse — those stay in the world for years, and they carry whatever host was printed on them.

If that host is enqre.com, then leaving us means reprinting all of it. If that host is qr.yourcompany.com, leaving us means changing one DNS record and answering /r/<code> yourself or at whoever you move to. The codes keep working. Nobody visits a warehouse with a label printer.

That is an argument for taking your business away from us, written by us, because it is the honest reason the feature exists. Anything printed in volume should be printed on an address you own.

Setting it up

Two steps, in this order.

First, the DNS record. At your registrar, create a CNAME:

qr.yourcompany.com.    CNAME    cname.enqre.com.

Use a subdomain — qr., go., s., whatever fits. A CNAME cannot legally sit on a bare domain like yourcompany.com; providers that offer ALIAS or ANAME records work around it, but a subdomain avoids the question and keeps your website where it is.

Then save it in Settings. The order matters: the field checks that the record already resolves to us before accepting the domain. That check is not bureaucracy — it is what stops one account from claiming a hostname it does not control, which would otherwise put every certificate on this server at risk.

There is no verification step after that, and nothing to wait for beyond DNS itself. The certificate is issued during the first handshake, the first time anybody opens the domain.

What happens on our side

Worth knowing, because it explains the failure modes below.

Our proxy holds no certificate for your hostname in advance. When a request arrives for a name it has never seen, it asks the application one question — does this hostname belong to a Business account that claimed it? — and only on a yes does it request a certificate from Let's Encrypt. That is issued in a couple of seconds and then renews on its own.

On your hostname we serve the scan path and nothing else. Anything else — someone typing the bare domain into a browser, a crawler wandering in — is redirected to enqre.com. Your domain never serves our sign-in form or a second copy of our blog, which also means the domain is not a place to send people for anything other than scanning. Pick a subdomain you do not otherwise advertise and this never comes up.

What does not change

Codes you already printed. They carry enqre.com/r/… in the pattern, and that address keeps working exactly as before. Turning on a custom domain does not break anything already in the world — it changes the address used for codes from that point on.

The short code itself. /r/ab12cd stays /r/ab12cd. Both hosts answer it.

Analytics, rules, expiry, passwords. All unchanged. The host is the only thing that moves.

The mistakes

Letting the domain lapse. This is the one that cannot be undone. A forgotten renewal on the domain carrying your asset tags takes every one of those codes with it, and worse — an expired domain gets bought, and someone else then owns the address printed on your equipment. If codes are going onto anything long-lived, put the domain on auto-renew and on whatever list your company keeps of things that must not expire.

Choosing a host name tied to a campaign or a product name. qr. will still make sense after a rebrand. scan-our-spring-menu. will not, and by then it is printed.

Assuming it survives a downgrade. The certificate is issued only while the hostname is claimed by an active Business account. Drop to a lower plan and your hostname stops answering; the codes still work on enqre.com/r/…, but that is not the address printed on the label. This is the least flattering sentence on this page and it belongs here: if you are about to print in volume on your own domain, you are choosing a plan for as long as those codes exist.

Custom domain is not white-label

They get bought together and do different jobs. The domain is what a person reads before tapping. White-label is what they see after — it removes our name from the landing pages your codes open. A vCard or menu code with white-label off shows a small enqre mark; with it on, it does not. Neither setting affects the other, and a code that redirects straight to your own site shows neither, because there is no page of ours in the path at all.

Quick answers

• What record do I create? A CNAME from your subdomain to cname.enqre.com.
• Can I use my bare domain? Only via an ALIAS/ANAME record if your DNS provider offers one. A subdomain is the simpler answer.
• How long until it works? As long as your DNS takes to publish — minutes at most registrars. The certificate is immediate after that.
• Do I need to upload a certificate? No. It is issued and renewed automatically.
• Will my old codes break? No. enqre.com/r/… keeps working permanently.
• Can two accounts use the same hostname? No — a hostname belongs to one account.
• Which plan? Business.