Table of contents

1. 1. What is the difference between a subdomain and a subdirectory?
2. 2. How many subdomains and subdirectories should I use?
3. 3. Transitioning to using fewer subdomains and more subdirectories

What is the difference between a subdomain and a subdirectory?

You will learn in this article some of the best practices on how to use subdomains in Instapage. 

A URL is https://subdomain.domainname.com/subdirectory, where the subdomain can be www. or promo.​ for example, or anything else. Basically, everything between the protocol (https://) and  domainname.com is a subdomain, and everything after .com/ is a subdirectory. 

A subdirectory, also known as a subfolder, is like a subpage of a particular subdomain. As shown in this article: https://d.pr/CiZldD, you must create at least one subdomain that points to our servers. Once you have a subdomain connected, you can publish pages on subdirectories straight from the publishing screen, without the need to define them beforehand, as seen in the GIF below.

This also means that if you already have your main website content on www.domainname.com, you cannot publish an Instapage landing page on a subdirectory, for example, www.domainname.com/promotion using the custom domain method, because you need to connect it to our servers and your website already points to a different server.

All the landing pages are hosted on our servers and there is no possible way to move them over to your hosting. Therefore, you need to create at least one separate subdomain pointing to secure.pageserve.co in order to publish your landing pages.

How many subdomains and subdirectories should I use?

Each subscription comes with a limited number of subdomains that you can add to your account, along with a limited number of published landing pages. The good news is that, similarly to how you can have as many unpublished landing pages as you need, you can also use as many subdirectories as you need. 

Additionally, each individual subdomain benefits from its own SSL (https://) certificate, meaning that all the subdirectories of that subdomain will use the one certificate, reducing the need to wait for SSL activation when you want to use a new URL.

We recommend making use of all the subdomains that your plan permits, but relying more on subdirectories in order to assign unique URLs to your landing pages and publish them. To see how many subdomains you can add to your account, go to Account Admin > Subscription.

Transitioning to using fewer subdomains and more subdirectories

You might need to part with some of your currently-in-use subdomains due to the limit imposed by your subscription. This section of the article will guide you through doing that with minimal impact by using more subdirectories instead. 

In the example below, I am using the "get" and "engage" subdomains for two landing pages, and then dedicated subdomains "Halloween" and "Thanksgiving" for dedicated campaigns, totaling four subdomains. 

Now, let's consider the scenario where I changed my subscription and now have a limit of two subdomains per account. I will need to decide which two subdomains to keep and how to alter the URLs of the pages that used a different one. Since "get" and "engage" are more general subdomains that can fit with more varied content, I will keep those ones and unite the remaining pages under them. 

The GIF below shows the steps for changing the URL accordingly:

The end result will look like this, using two subdomains instead of four:

In case you need to add more subdomains to your workspace, please follow this guide: https://d.pr/ChQ0YU 

To reduce the number of subdomains counted towards your subscription, you can delete the ones you do not use from "My Account Admin" >> "Global domains" >> click on "EDIT" >> select the domains in question and click on "DISCONNECT". This action will remove the domain from all of your workspaces.
If you do not own the domain, you can delete it by accessing Workspace Settings >> Domains in all workspaces where the subdomain was connected. 
Note that if you delete a subdomain from your account, any pages published on that subdomain will be unpublished. 

If your site is built with a CMS and you wish to publish your page on a subdirectory of your main website, for example, http://www.domainname.com/promotion, you can use our WordPress plugin as mentioned here: https://d.pr/8HcdPo or the Drupal plugin as shown in our article here: https://d.pr/y60Nsj.