Staging, admin and internal hosts must not be the brand website
The requirementstatement
Non-production hosts — staging, dev, preview, admin, internal — are not acceptable brand websites.
- Severityseverity
- BlockingBLOCKINGBreaking this rule gets the submission rejected. There is no partial credit.
- When it bitesphase
- Gates approvalapprovalGet this wrong and the brand or campaign is refused at registration.
- What is checkedobject
- brand.website
- Where it liveslayer
- WebsiteWEBSITE
- How Ekas settles itdetectability
- DeterministicDETERMINISTIC
- Settled in code from the values you submitted. No model involved, no judgement call, same answer every time.
- What the fix involvesfailureClass
- Fix the fieldRETRY_FIELD
- A better value in the form fixes it. Ekas can rewrite it and re-check.
- Who requires itauthorities
- TCRTwilioBandwidth
- When it appliesapplicabilityText
- Applies to every 10DLC registration.
Why this rule existsrationale
A staging host is not the business's public presence, is frequently access-gated, and often disappears between submission and review. Submitting one usually means someone pasted the URL they had open rather than the live site.
How to fix itremediation
Submit the public production URL customers actually visit. If the staging host is the only one currently live, launch the production site before registering — the vetter will re-fetch this URL days later and a staging box is usually gone by then.
A compliant exampleexample
https://acmecoffee.com rather than https://staging.acmecoffee.com
Rules you will hit next
6 other rules read brand.website. Fixing one field to satisfy a single rule is how a resubmission trades one rejection for another, so read these before you change anything.
BRD-125The website URL must carry an explicit schemeBlockingBLOCKINGBRD-135A website may back only one brandBlockingBLOCKINGWEB-001A brand website URL is requiredBlockingBLOCKINGWEB-009The website must resolve and return contentBlockingBLOCKINGBRD-126The brand website is the root domain, not a page inside itMediumMEDIUMWEB-004The website value must fit the provider field limitMediumMEDIUM
WEB-014 is one of 93 website rules in the 915-rule 10DLC registry. Free to cite under CC BY 4.0.