About This Tool
A CAA (Certification Authority Authorization) record is a DNS record that tells Certificate Authorities which CAs are permitted to issue SSL/TLS certificates for your domain. By default, any public CA can issue a certificate for any domain, which means a misconfigured or compromised CA anywhere in the world could issue a valid certificate for your site without your knowledge. A CAA record closes that gap: CAs are required by the CA/Browser Forum baseline requirements to check it before issuing, and to refuse issuance if the record does not list them. Adding a CAA record is one of the simplest, highest-value hardening steps you can take against mis-issuance and certificate-based impersonation.
How to Use
Enter your domain, then add one authorization per rule. Pick a tag: issue authorizes standard certificates, issuewild authorizes wildcard certificates, and iodef sets a mailto: or https:// endpoint where CAs report policy violations. Choose your CA from the dropdown (Let's Encrypt, Google Trust Services, DigiCert, Sectigo/Comodo, GlobalSign, Amazon, Buypass, ZeroSSL) or type a custom CA domain. The tool live-builds the zone-file record and a separate flag, tag, and value breakdown for DNS panels like Cloudflare and cPanel. Click the record to copy it. Use the presets for the two most common setups: allow only Let's Encrypt, or block all issuance with issue ";".
Tips & Best Practices
List every CA you actually use, including for wildcards, since if you use a wildcard certificate you must add an issuewild rule (issue alone does not cover wildcards). Remember that many CAs issue under a different CAA domain than their brand name: ZeroSSL certificates validate against sectigo.com, and Amazon uses amazon.com. To forbid all issuance, use the value ";" on an issue tag rather than trying to "allow none". Set the critical flag (128) only when you want CAs to hard-fail on any tag they do not understand; 0 is the safe default. Add an iodef contact so you are notified of attempted violations. After publishing, re-check your DNS and remember that CAA is only evaluated at issuance time, so it does not affect certificates already issued.