Hosting a Calculator on Your Domain via CNAME

Using CNAME, you can use your own domain with your Outgrow calculators/quizzes and not worry about hosting them on your own server.

Account owners/admins can also set up custom domains so that their calculator or quizzes are served from a URL on their own domains — like calculator.mycompany.com/xyz (instead of https://mycompany.outgrow.co/xyz).

Using our Automated SSL Certificate

We have recently made updates to how you can use an SSL Certificate to setup 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 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 the one in your DNS records.)

4. In the next step you need to sign in to your Domain Hosting Service for validating the domain that you have specified in Outgrow, and also for pointing 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 will be made to point towards your Custom Domain or Sub Domain.

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

6. In Step 3 specify the Root URL and Error URL for your account.

Root domain and error domain

Let's suppose you have set up the following custom domain - mycalculators.mywebsite.com on your Outgrow account. Outgrow experiences that you create will automatically take URL like - mycalculators.mywebsite.com/ROIcalculator1. Now 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. Now, you can use this to showcase your landing page and your product. For example, your website is mywebsite.com then you can add mywebsite.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 then 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.

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.