Connect a custom domain

Goal#

Your clients open your landing pages, your booking pages and their portal on your own address, such as https://coaching.example.com, instead of https://coaching-toolkit.com. Coaching Toolkit issues and renews the HTTPS certificate; you create two DNS records once.

Prerequisites#

• Admin of the practice. One domain per practice.
• A subdomain you control, such as coaching.example.com or book.example.co.uk: at least three labels. A bare domain (example.com) is not supported, nor anything under coaching-toolkit.com.
• Access to the DNS settings where the domain is registered or hosted (your registrar, or a DNS host such as Cloudflare, Route 53 or your web host).

1. Add the hostname#

In the app (Admin, web): Settings, Brand and domain, Custom domain, enter the hostname, Add. Optionally pick which published landing page answers at /; without one, the default page of the practice's first Coach who has one answers there.

The app then shows the two DNS records to create (a CNAME and a TXT) and the domain's status, PendingVerification.

2. Create the two DNS records#

At your DNS provider, for the hostname you added:

Type	Name	Value	Why
CNAME	coaching (the hostname without your domain; some providers want the full coaching.example.com)	pages.coaching-toolkit.com	sends visitors to Coaching Toolkit
TXT	_coaching-toolkit.coaching (or the full _coaching-toolkit.coaching.example.com)	the TXT value the app shows for your domain	proves you own the domain

• Leave the TTL at the default.
• If your DNS is at Cloudflare, set the CNAME to DNS only (grey cloud), not proxied.
• A hostname that already has other records (an A record, for example) cannot also be a CNAME: remove them first.

Records usually resolve within minutes; some providers take up to a few hours.

3. Verify#

In the app: Verify. It looks both records up; when both resolve, Coaching Toolkit starts issuing the certificate and the domain is Verifying.

If a record is not found yet, the app names which ones (CNAME, TXT); fix them and verify again.

4. Wait for the certificate#

The certificate is usually issued within a few minutes. Check status in the app. When the domain shows Active with an active certificate, the domain serves your pages. Coaching Toolkit also checks every hour by itself.

What the domain serves#

On https://coaching.example.com	What
/	the landing page you picked, else the practice's default page
/{slug}	your practice's landing pages (without the practice slug that leads them on https://coaching-toolkit.com)
/book/{slug}, /pay/{slug}/{offerId}	your practice's booking and pay-only pages (served on the same host)
/book/manage/{token}	the cancel and reschedule link in booking mails
/portal/...	your clients' portal
/sitemap.xml	your home page and landing pages

Not served there: the coach app, the coach API, the documentation, other practices' pages; each answers 404. Coaches keep signing in at https://coaching-toolkit.com/login.

Once the domain is Active, every link Coaching Toolkit sends your clients uses it: portal links, booking confirmations and their manage links, "add to calendar" downloads, and the booking and landing page URLs shown in the app and in your embed snippets. A client signed in to the portal on https://coaching-toolkit.com needs a new portal link to sign in on your domain.

Change the home page or remove the domain#

In Settings, Brand and domain, Custom domain, pick another published landing page for /, or none to go back to the default page. Remove deletes the domain at once; links already sent on it stop working, so remove the DNS records afterwards, not before.

Verify it worked#

curl -sI https://coaching.example.com/
curl -sI https://coaching.example.com/docs

The first answers 200 with your page; the second answers 404. In the app the domain shows Active, and your booking pages show their links on your domain.

Failure cases#

What you see	Why
Hostname invalid	not a subdomain of at least three labels (letters, digits, hyphens), or an IP address
Hostname reserved	a Coaching Toolkit domain, or a development domain such as localhost
Hostname taken	another practice (or this one) already connected it
Domain limit reached	the practice already has a domain; remove it first
Landing page invalid	the chosen page is not a published landing page of the practice
DNS not ready	the app names the records not found yet
Domain not verified	checking status before a successful verify
Certificate service rejected the hostname	for example because it is connected to another service using the same provider
Certificate service unavailable	it did not answer; try again in a few minutes
Custom domains not set up	custom domains are not set up on this Coaching Toolkit installation

The domain turns Failed when its records disappear later (the practice's Admins get a mail, and your pages answer on https://coaching-toolkit.com meanwhile) or when no certificate was issued within 7 days. Fix the records and press Verify again.