Provisioning Dedicated IPs

As part of the Primary Custom Domain setup process, Files.com automatically provisions 2 dedicated IP addresses that are exclusive to your site and act as static IP addresses. If you have users who restrict outbound access via a firewall, they only need to allow those addresses to access your site via the Primary Custom Domain, rather than allowing our owned and legacy IP addresses.

Additional Custom Domains use SNI by default. To give one its own addresses, use Add Dedicated IPs and choose one or two addresses. Allocating these addresses is separate from creating its certificate. Each domain's addresses support inbound connections to that domain and allow it to present its own SFTP host keys.

You can retrieve your site's dedicated addresses through the /ip_addresses endpoint shown in our API documentation. To identify the addresses assigned to one additional domain, use the ip_addresses array in its Custom Domain response, or view the Dedicated IP Addresses column in the Custom Domains table.

Your dedicated IPs are designed to remain the same, and we work to avoid changing them. In practice, dedicated IPs for our customers have remained the same for the past several years. If we ever have to make changes to your IP addresses, we will provide advance notice when possible.

Releasing IP Addresses

Dedicated IP addresses for the Primary Custom Domain will be released and reassigned to other customers unless they are actively being used to support that domain and its associated SSL Certificate. If you follow the steps listed in Removing Your Custom Domain, those dedicated IP addresses will be released after 5 days.

Those addresses will also be released if you enable proxying on your Primary Custom Domain's DNS records. Files.com does not support being wholly behind a proxy on your custom domain: a proxy prevents Files.com from confirming that traffic is reaching your site directly through your dedicated IPs.

If you are following the steps for Changing an Existing Custom Domain you'll need to update your DNS entries and complete your setup within a 5-day period to keep the same dedicated IP addresses. If the DNS entries for your custom domain are not set up properly within that 5-day period, your dedicated IPs will be released to be used by other customers.

For addresses explicitly allocated to an additional Custom Domain, deleting that domain releases its addresses. Changing its destination to Unassigned does not release them. There is no separate action to release those addresses while keeping the domain.

Retaining The Primary IPs of Your Subdomain

If your site has been active for a while, you likely have established file flows with customers and other businesses. Requiring those partners to use new, dedicated IP addresses is often impractical, because many companies find it hard to update their firewall or network settings. You can use a custom domain for rebranding and still retain your site's current IP addresses.

When you provide your own SSL certificate, your subdomain address (<your-subdomain>.files.com) will use the general pool of Files.com IP addresses. This allows any existing configuration using your old connection information to remain in place. Dedicated IP addresses will be allocated for your site, and your custom domain will use those addresses.

First, obtain an SSL certificate from a trusted certificate authority.

Upload the certificate to your Files.com site, and then activate the certificate.

Update your site's custom domain settings to use the domain of your SSL certificate.

When using your own SSL certificate, you are responsible for renewing and updating the certificate to avoid any interruptions.