Publishing on a Custom Domain (CNAME)

Note: Based on the selected plan, customers are subject to different limitations on the number of subdomains available for publishing via CNAME. These limits can be checked in My Account Admin >> Subscription section.

Publishing your landing page on your own custom domain is one of the best methods to maintain brand unity across your advertising campaigns. You can do this using our CNAME publishing option.

What is a CNAME, and why do I need to use it?

A CNAME is a type of DNS record that you have to create in your domain registrar settings and point it to our servers (secure.pageserve.co). Once the record points to Instapage, you will be able to publish your landing pages on your own custom domain.

Great, what do you need?

You will need to own a domain name and have access to its DNS settings. If you want to purchase a domain, click here: https://d.pr/EmIWrF. If you already own one, you will need to add it into Instapage and go into your domain registrar’s DNS settings and create a new CNAME record. But first, let’s get your domain added to Instapage (so we know what domain to look for when you point it to our servers) before continuing with your registrar.

Adding a subdomain of your website to Instapage

To connect a new subdomain to your Instapage account, follow the instructions in this article https://d.pr/3Ym4FD and come back here afterwards for the next steps of the publishing process.

Adding the main domain to Instapage is done following the same steps only instead of “promo” you have to type “www” in the first field. Using this method will allow you to publish your landing pages as your main website.

Below you can also find our articles with instructions for various registrars on how to connect the CNAME record. Instructions will also be presented in Step 4 in the article linked above. If your registrar is not located below, please follow the generic setup instructions.

  1. Amazon Web Services >> https://d.pr/B88AaD 
  2. BlueHost >> https://d.pr/LBggJR 
  3. DNS Park >> https://d.pr/fKrcB0 
  4. Dream Host >> https://d.pr/KY0f8m 
  5. Gandi >> https://d.pr/m1VXPO 
  6. GoDaddy >> https://d.pr/JVFIbS 
  7. Google >> https://d.pr/XOWrj0 
  8. Homestead >> https://d.pr/s1xKhz 
  9. HostGator >> https://d.pr/eUIx3y 
  10. IONOS (old 1&1 Web Hosting) >> https://d.pr/zDkBd8 
  11. iwantmyname >> https://d.pr/aRMUYM 
  12. Media Temple >> https://d.pr/lX54ZY 
  13. Name.com >> https://d.pr/zHmuo9 
  14. NameCheap >> https://d.pr/FI7qoV 
  15. Network Solutions >> https://d.pr/08A9QG 
  16. No-IP >> https://d.pr/FfMToi 
  17. register.com >> https://d.pr/DJqDDC 
  18. Yahoo Small Business >> https://d.pr/ar3ZgI 
  19. For providers that use cPanel (e.g. LunarHost, Monster Host, SiteCloud, JustHost) you can follow these cPanel set up instructions: https://d.pr/KUqOxa 

 

Creating a CNAME record

 1. Log into your domain registrar and locate the DNS or advanced DNS settings for the domain for which you want to create a subdomain;

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2. Create a new CNAME record;

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3. Now, use the subdomain name you have picked earlier, in our example we used “promo”. Input it in the host field. In the “points to” field, type in our server address: secure.pageserve.co;

Screenshot_on_2023-01-26_at_18-33-38.png

Note: You do not have to edit the TTL field, just leave there the default value assigned by your domain provider, unless you have good reason to know it needs to be different.

NOTE: You do not need to create any other type of record in order to publish on Instapage. You cannot use an A record or any other type of record besides a CNAME. Even if the instructions provided by the domain registrar contradict this, you can only publish using a CNAME record that points to secure.pageserve.co. It is not possible to publish using an IP address or any other method. As long as you do not have other records with the same name, you will be able to create a CNAME and point it to secure.pageserve.co regardless of other settings in your DNS.

 

By adding this entry, you are allowing Instapage to publish landing pages to that specific subdomain. For example, adding a CNAME record for the domain “instapage.com” with the subdomain “promo” will allow you to publish an Instapage landing page on promo.instapage.com. You can also use any other name for your subdomain such as "campaign", "hello" etc. as "promo" is just an example. You can even use "www" if you have nothing else published on it at the moment.

Note that it can take a few hours for your CNAME record to be fully propagated, it is not an instant process.

Important note: You must have at least one page published on a subdomain in order for the SSL certificate to be enabled for that particular subdomain.

NOTE: If you have a CAA record added to your domain, you will need to add an additional CAA record for letsencrypt.org in order for us to be able to apply an SSL certificate to your newly created subdomain. This is not necessary if you don't have an existing CAA record already.

Publishing your landing page

After your record has fully propagated, you are ready to publish a page onto your domain.

Choose a page that you would like to publish and click on Publish Experience then select Custom Domain from the publishing options.

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Next, select your domain from the drop-down list and optionally type in a new subdirectory URL name in the second field. Click Publish and then Confirm and you are done.

Your published page URL should look like this: promo.domain.com/campaign

Please note that you can add as many unique URLs to this subdomain as you’d like. However, to publish to a new subdomain, you will need to add another CNAME entry in your domain registrar.

Note: If you have a website on your domain (usually on the root domain - www) you SHOULD NOT use www for the CNAME you will create for publishing your Instapage landing page, as it will result in your site being offline.