Custom Domain for Video Review Links: Put Your Brand in the URL
Most advice treats a branded review URL as a DNS chore. What a custom share domain actually changes for clients, how the record works, what it costs, and how I roll it out.
The CNAME record behind a custom domain for video review links is one line in your DNS panel, the word review in the host field and a target hostname pasted into the value field, and to be very honest it takes about ten minutes, right, so I spend far more of my thinking on the decision around it, because whose name sits in that address bar is what actually changes how a client sees your agency.
In my agency the review link is the most forwarded thing we produce, far ahead of the invoice or the proposal, right, because the marketing manager forwards it to her head of brand, the head of brand forwards it to legal, and legal sends it on to the founder's office. By the fourth forward nobody remembers which email it arrived in, all they have is a URL in a chat window, so the person signing off might meet my agency for the first and only time through that one link, and whose name sits on it stops being a cosmetic detail.
So if you run an agency or a post house and you're weighing up review links on your own domain, I'll start with what changes for the client and only then get to the DNS record, because that's the order the decision should be made in, right.
What a custom domain on review links changes for clients
Basically, a custom share domain swaps the address your client sees. Without it every cut lives on the review tool's domain with a string of characters after it. With it the same cut opens at something like review.yourbrand.com, so your name sits in the address bar, in the preview card WhatsApp or Slack draws under the link, and in the autocomplete when the client comes back three weeks later hunting for the approved 30-second cutdown.
What it doesn't change matters just as much, right. The client still opens the link in a browser with no account and no install, clicks the exact moment, leaves a comment that sticks to that frame and draws on it to circle the logo that's too small. The domain isn't a security layer either, so on an unreleased campaign the password on the link and instant revoking are what protect it, a trade-off I went through in private links versus passwords.
The part nobody writes about is the hesitation moment. Clients in banking, pharma or anything with a cautious IT team tend to squint at unfamiliar domains, and I'm pretty sure every agency owner has had the reply "is this safe to open?" at least once. You could try to fix that with a friendlier email, but actually the fix is a friendlier link, because a link on the same domain as your email signature answers the question before anyone asks it, and that consistency across every touchpoint is basically the whole idea behind brand management.
the client sees a software company's name on your work and has to trust an address they have never heard of
review.yourbrand.com matches your email signature, so the link reads as yours from the first forward to the last
How a review subdomain works in plain terms
I'll give you the version I'd give a producer who has never opened a DNS panel. Your domain is basically an entry in the internet's phone book, and right now it points at your website, which stays exactly as it is. A subdomain is a second entry under the same name, review.yourbrand.com, and you point that one at your review platform, usually with a CNAME record whose value the review tool gives you. The platform sees a request arrive for that name, serves your review page there, and in most setups issues a security certificate for it, which is the padlock your client sees.
What the record actually looks like
For a worked example, say your domain is yourbrand.com and your review tool shows a target hostname on its setup screen. In your DNS panel you add one new record, set the type to CNAME, type only the word review in the name or host field, paste the target exactly as given into the value field, and leave TTL on automatic. Most panels add your domain to the host field for you, so if you type the full review.yourbrand.com there you end up with review.yourbrand.com.yourbrand.com, and that one mistake is the broken setup I've seen most often.
Two more things catch people. If something already uses that name, for instance an old record from a tool you tried two years ago, the new record will clash with it, so remove the old one first. And if your DNS runs through Cloudflare with the proxy switched on, the review tool may not be able to issue its certificate, so I set that record to DNS only unless the tool's own instructions say otherwise. To check it, a free DNS lookup site will show review.yourbrand.com pointing at the target you pasted, and once that shows up the padlock usually follows.
The catch here is usually human, right. In a lot of small agencies the domain login sits with the freelancer who built the website three years ago, or a co-founder who left, or an inbox nobody checks, and so on. The day you decide to do this is usually the day you discover nobody knows the password, so I find the DNS login first, and since record changes can take anything from minutes to a few hours to reach everyone, I do it a week before I need it, never on a delivery morning.
On the name, keep it short enough to say on a call without spelling it, so review or watch works fine, and I use one subdomain for the whole agency rather than one per client, right, so every client sees the same familiar address on every project.
Custom share domain plus white label branding
This is where a lot of setups fall short, right. A branded URL that opens onto a page covered in someone else's logo is like putting your name on the office door and having reception greet the client on another company's letterhead, and the client feels the mismatch even when they can't name it. The domain puts your name in the address bar, white label branding takes the vendor's name off the page, and you really really want both, because each one alone tells half a story.
In PlayPause both sit on Enterprise, meaning the custom share domain plus white label that removes PlayPause branding, while SSO and SAML are coming in February 2027 and aren't available yet. I've covered the look and feel side in building a white label review portal and in a branded client portal for post houses, and our client review portal page shows what clients actually see, so here I'll stay on the URL.
One detail that matters more than people expect is link expiry. Share links last 30 days on Creator and 90 days on Agency, and on Enterprise they never expire, so a link on review.yourbrand.com sent in March still opens in December when the client's new marketing hire needs the approved master. A branded link that dies after a month quietly teaches the client your links are temporary, which is the opposite of what the domain is there to say, and I laid out how link life differs by plan in video review pricing and tiers.
The review link is the one piece of your agency that gets forwarded to people you will never meet, so it should carry your name all the way through.
Who actually needs a branded review URL
Let me be very honest, because I'd rather lose a sale than sell someone a feature they don't need. If you're a solo freelance editor with four or five clients, and the person who hired you is the person who reviews the cut, you don't need a custom domain, because they already trust you and they'll click whatever you send, and Creator at $9 a month covers that relationship.
It starts to matter when the approver is not the person who hired you. Ad agencies selling to brand marketing teams hit this first, because one campaign cut travels through brand and legal before it reaches anyone regional, which is why our page for advertising and creative agencies leans so hard on client-facing review. Post-production houses hit it next, since their clients are networks and brands with procurement teams that notice whose domain is on the work.
My quick test is two questions, will people I've never spoken to open this link, and does a moment of hesitation on their side cost me something. If both answers are yes you want the domain, and if the link goes to one founder over WhatsApp you can save the money, does that make sense, right.
If people you have never spoken to will open the link and a moment of hesitation costs you real money, put your review links on your own domain.
What custom domains cost across review tools
I'll stick to what I can verify here. Frame.io bills per individual seat, from $15 per user per month, and its custom share domain sits only on its Enterprise tier. So say you're a 12-person agency, and as illustrative math that's $180 a month at the entry per-seat price, and you still aren't on the tier with the custom domain. The full picture is on our PlayPause vs Frame.io comparison, and if you're shopping for SSO plus a branded domain together, my post on a Frame.io Enterprise alternative goes deeper, though our own SSO and SAML are coming in February 2027 and aren't available yet.
For any other tool, check which tier the custom domain sits on and price the jump to that tier, because at the end of the day that jump is the number that matters, right, far more than the entry price on the homepage.
PlayPause Enterprise is $27 a month, or $299 a year, which saves 8%, and it's flat per workspace rather than per person. That covers 150 members, 1 TB of storage, unlimited projects, share links that never expire, white label and the custom share domain, while SAML single sign-on is coming in February 2027 and isn't available yet. So the same 12-person agency pays $27, and at 40 people it still pays $27. That's the whole reason we priced it per workspace, right, because a branded review URL shouldn't be something only a hundred-person post house can justify.
Rolling out branded review links to your clients
Once the domain works, the rollout is mostly about not confusing anyone. I switch at a project boundary, so new projects start on the branded domain from kickoff while anything already mid-round finishes on the links the client already has, because nobody halfway through notes on MV2 should get a surprise new address. In the kickoff email I add one plain line, "your review links will come from review.youragency.com", and the same subdomain goes in my email signature so it's familiar before the first cut lands.
Say we're making a product launch film for a fintech client, right, and MV1 goes out from review.youragency.com with a password because the product isn't public yet. The marketing lead forwards it to compliance and the founder's office. Compliance sees our domain rather than a stranger's, opens it without a nervous email first, and leaves a note on the disclaimer at the exact frame it appears. When MV2 is ready I upload it onto the same card, so it stacks on top and the client reuses the link they already have, which I covered in my post on shareable links clients can comment on.
Before I chase anyone, I check who watched, when and from which city, which tells me whether the founder's office actually opened it, and I wrote about reading that data in seeing who watched your video. By MV4 the approval sits on the same link on our domain. Because Enterprise links never expire it's still the answer six months later when someone asks where the final cut lives, you see what I mean here, the link keeps doing brand work long after the invoice is paid.
- DNS login found and written down somewhere safe
- Host field holds only the subdomain word
- Proxy off and padlock showing on the review subdomain
- Test link opened on a phone and a laptop
- Subdomain in your email signature and kickoff email
- Passwords set on links for unreleased work
Frequently asked questions
Can I use my main domain instead of a subdomain?
You really shouldn't, right. Your main domain, yourbrand.com, already points at your website, and repointing it at a review tool would take the website down, so the clean way is a subdomain such as review.yourbrand.com that sits under your brand without touching anything else. Clients read it as yours just the same, because the part of an address people actually recognise is the brand name, and the word in front of it barely registers.
Is a custom share domain the same thing as white label?
They're two separate pieces that work best together. The custom share domain changes the address the client sees, so the link reads review.yourbrand.com, while white label removes PlayPause branding from the page the client lands on. On PlayPause both come with Enterprise, so you aren't buying them separately, and while SSO and SAML are coming in February 2027 and aren't available yet, the domain and white label work today, and I'd set them up together, because a branded URL opening onto a vendor-branded page only finishes half the job.
Do my clients have to do anything differently?
Nothing at all, and trust me on any level, that's the point of it. They still get one link, open it in a browser with no account and no install, click the exact frame, leave a comment, draw on it and reply in threads. The only thing that changes for them is the name in the address bar, which is now yours, so the link feels like part of working with you rather than one more tool to trust.
Which PlayPause plan includes a custom share domain?
Enterprise, which is $27 a month or $299 a year, flat per workspace, with 150 members, 1 TB of storage and share links that never expire, plus white label, while SSO and SAML are coming in February 2027 and aren't available yet. Creator and Agency don't include the custom share domain, though they cover everything else a client does on a review link, for instance frame-accurate comments and password-protected links, and every plan starts with a 7-day free trial.
If your review links are about to travel around a client's company to people you'll never meet, I'd put them on your own domain before the next campaign goes out, and you can see Enterprise beside the other plans on our pricing page, with a 7-day free trial on every plan.
So yeah. That's my way of saying it.
Saumyajit co-founded PlayPause after years watching review and approval quietly eat creative teams' deadlines. He writes about the workflow side of video, feedback, versioning, and getting to a clean sign-off.
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