Custom Domain on Retool Cloud: Options & Workarounds

If you're trying to set up a custom domain on Retool Cloud, you've probably already hit the wall: your apps sit on yourcompany.retool.com, and there's no native setting to change that. This is one of the most frequently requested features in the Retool community, and the answer — at least for cloud users — is more nuanced than a simple yes or no. Here's what you need to know, what your real options are, and how teams are working around it today.

Does Retool Cloud Support Custom Domains?

As of now, custom URLs and custom domains are not natively supported on Retool Cloud. Every cloud-hosted Retool instance is served from the retool.com domain under your organization's subdomain (e.g., acme.retool.com). You cannot point tools.acme.com directly at Retool Cloud the way you would with a self-hosted SaaS product. This has been a long-standing feature request from the community, with teams citing onboarding friction, branding consistency, and professionalism as the main pain points.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

It might sound like a minor cosmetic issue, but the URL your users see has real operational impact:

• Onboarding friction: Telling a new employee to go to yourcompany.retool.com is a stumble. A URL like tools.yourcompany.com is instantly recognizable and trusted.
• Branding and perception: Internal tools that look and feel like part of your product stack get adopted faster. A retool.com subdomain signals "third-party tool" to end users.
• Public embeds: Public app URLs on Retool Cloud include long, unreadable UUIDs by default (e.g., acme.retool.com/embedded/public/44adk-321-das21-42d3-7dadsaki329), making them hard to share or remember.

The One Setup That Does Support Custom Domains: Retool On-Prem

If a custom domain is non-negotiable for your organization, Retool on-premises (self-hosted) is the only path that gives you full control out of the box. When you deploy Retool on your own infrastructure, you configure your own domain, SSL certificates, and DNS records. Your users access Retool entirely on your domain — retool.com never appears anywhere in the URL.

On-prem also includes custom branding options, making it the cleanest solution for teams that need white-labeled internal tooling. The trade-off is obvious: you're responsible for provisioning, maintaining, and securing the infrastructure. For lean engineering teams, that overhead is often not worth it just for a custom URL.

Workarounds for Custom Domains on Retool Cloud

If you want to stay on Retool Cloud but still give users a cleaner URL experience, here are the practical options teams are using today:

Option 1: Subdomain Redirect

The simplest workaround. Set up a DNS redirect from your own subdomain to your Retool Cloud URL. For example, point tools.yourcompany.com to yourcompany.retool.com using a CNAME record or an HTTP 301 redirect at your DNS provider or reverse proxy. Users type your URL, get redirected to Retool Cloud. The Retool URL still shows in the browser bar after redirect, but the entry point is branded.

• Set a CNAME record: tools.yourcompany.com → yourcompany.retool.com
• Or configure an HTTP redirect rule in Cloudflare, Nginx, or your CDN of choice
• Share only the branded URL internally — most users won't notice the redirect

Option 2: Embed via iframe

Retool supports embedding apps as iframes inside your own web properties. This means you can host a page at tools.yourcompany.com and render a Retool app inside it. The user never sees the Retool URL directly.

• Enable embedding in your Retool app's share settings
• Use the generated embed URL inside an <iframe> tag on your domain
• Handle authentication carefully — public embeds skip Retool login, while private embeds require SSO or token-based auth

The downside: iframes add complexity, can break in certain browser security contexts, and don't give you a fully native navigation experience.

Option 3: Retool Embed SDK

For teams with a React or JavaScript frontend, the @tryretool/custom-component-collections SDK and Retool's embedding APIs let you mount Retool apps programmatically inside your own application shell. This is more work than an iframe but gives you tighter control over layout, auth, and the surrounding UI — all served from your own domain.

What to Ask Retool Support About

Retool's feature roadmap evolves regularly. If custom domain support on Cloud is important to your team, it's worth doing two things: submit a feature request through the Retool Community or your account manager, and explicitly ask whether any enterprise plan options include custom domain configuration. Enterprise agreements sometimes unlock capabilities not available on standard cloud plans.

Bottom Line

Right now, a true custom domain on Retool Cloud isn't possible without moving to on-prem. But a subdomain redirect is fast to set up, costs nothing, and solves the onboarding problem for most teams. If you need deeper branding or URL control, iframe embedding or the Retool SDK gets you most of the way there — without leaving the cloud. And if you're already managing infrastructure anyway, on-prem is worth a serious look for the full white-label experience.