Hosting a Calculator on Your Domain via CNAME

Using CNAME, you can use your domain (Example: www.outgrow.com) with your Outgrow calculators/quizzes and not worry about hosting them on your server.

Account owners/admins can also set up custom domains to serve their calculator or quizzes from a URL on their own domains — like calculator.mycompany.com/xyz (instead of mycompany.outgrow.co/xyz).

Using our Automated SSL Certificate

We have recently updated how you can use an SSL Certificate to set up CNAME in Outgrow. You can opt for our Automated SSL Certificate. When you opt for our Automated SSL Certificate for configuring CNAME, your domain will be pointed to *cname-ssl.outgrow.co. This document will help you understand how to configure CNAME in your account:

1. Login to your Outgrow dashboard and click on your name in the top right corner. Click on Billings & Settings.

2. Navigate to the Custom Domain sub-tab under Billings & Settings.

3. Specify your Custom Domain or Sub Domain in Step 1 and click on Verify. (NOTE: The sub-domain entered in the Host Field should be the same as in your DNS records.)

4. In the next step, you need to sign in to your Domain Hosting Service to validate the domain specified in Outgrow and point CNAME to cname-ssl.outgrow.co. Here are the steps you can follow:

4.1. Sign in to your domain hosting service.
4.2. Navigate to your DNS management page.

4.3. Find the CNAME record settings, and open the respective CNAME record in edit mode.

4.4. In the Points To or Destination/Address Field, enter cname-ssl.outgrow.co. Click on Save to save the settings.

5. Once the Custom Domain or Sub Domain will be verified, in Step 2, your Automated SSL will be validated and made to point towards your Custom Domain or Sub Domain.

NOTE: You will see the status as Verified once the SSL is verified.

6. In Step 3, specify your account's Root URL and Error URL.

Root domain and error domain

Suppose you have set up the following custom domain - mycalculators.mywebsite.com on your Outgrow account. Outgrow experiences that you create will automatically take URLs like - mycalculators.mywebsite.com/ROIcalculator1. Now, the user comes to this calculator link and then wants to check your website, so he changes it to mycalculators.mywebsite.com, but by default, this URL points to the Outgrow website. You can use this to showcase your landing page and product. For example, if your website is website.com, you can add website.com to the Root URL. So when users go on URL mycalculators.mywebsite.com, they will see your webpage instead of the Outgrow website.

Similarly, for error URL, if you have a page set up on your website for 404 error, you can add it while setting up Custom Domain. So when a calculator or quiz is not found on a given URL, your error page shows up instead of the default Outgrow error page.

Important Note

Two key things for having the CNAME as the address of your main website are:

1. Host / Subdomain is WWW for CNAME.
2. When adding in outgrow include www. in the URL.

Setting up CNAME on a Naked or Root Domain

Some hosting providers allow you to add a CNAME record on the Naked Domain (Example: website.Com), but some providers do not, as they require IP Address binding on the Naked Domain. An example of such a provider is Google. Here is what you can do in this case:

1. In this case, we are taking an example of the Root Domain as example.com. You can forward the Root Domain website.com to www.website.com.

2. In the second step, add a CNAME record where the Host will be www and the value will be cname-ssl.outgrow.co.

3. In the next step in Outgrow, you need to add www.website.com as the Host in Step 2 (Add Host Records) under Custom Domain in the Account Settings section.

4. In the last step, post adding a CNAME record, you must navigate to this page to check the record. You can add www.abc.com and click on lookup. If this returns a record that shows value as cname-ssl.outgrow.co then your setup is correct and now you can add www.website.com on the Outgrow setting. Once we show verified, please wait a few minutes for a certificate to be generated on the server.

In case you still have any questions or concerns please reach out to us at [email protected] and we will be happy to asst you further.