Custom domains

Setting up a custom domain may seem daunting for those that have never done it before. But if you follow these simple steps you’ll have your custom email domain setup in no time.

Why set up a custom domain and tracking subdomain?

Setting up a custom domain for email only or for email and tracking provides different benefits, depending on your needs.

Email only

A custom domain means that your emails will be sent on behalf of your domain. Instead of your emails sending via @autopilotmail.com they will appear to the subscriber like any other email you send, e.g. you@yourbrand.com.

There are many benefits to setting up a custom email domain and it is highly recommended as:

• your emails are more likely to reach the inbox,
• you may achieve higher open rates, and
• your subscribers will know the email is from your trusted brand.

Learn more about how a custom domain name can help with your sender authentication in Understanding email deliverability.

Email delivery and tracking

In addition to the benefits of setting up a custom domain for email delivery, adding a tracking subdomain provides you with custom tracking links in your email messages, and a customized tracking code for capture widgets and Talk Messenger.

Tracking links in emails

When you configure a custom domain for email delivery and tracking, your custom domain is used as the sending domain (the From email address) and is added to links that a recipient can click within the email. In the example below, the "Read more" button takes recipients to a blog post on your website (e.g. mybrand.com/blog). However, when someone clicks "Read more", they will visit the blog page via the tracking subdomain (e.g. track.mybrand.com).

Having your custom domain integrated with your email messages can help to improve email deliverability and prevent your email being blocked or landing in your recipient’s spam folder. The custom domain adds authenticity to you as a sender, which helps email providers (like Gmail and Apple Mail) to recognize you as a legitimate sender.

As your tracked subdomain will be used as the initial destination for links contained in the email message, this helps recipients recognize and trust the links as belonging to you/your brand. Using the example above, the recipient can hover over the "Read more" button before clicking it and see that the link is associated with your brand.



Learn more about authentication and careful link usage in Understanding email deliverability.

Tracking code for capture widgets

The tracking subdomain you setup in your Ortto account is added to the tracking code of any capture widgets you configure (once your custom domain is set up).

Having a custom domain included in your capture tracking code allows tracking data to be collected and processed even if website visitors are using an ad blocker browser extension, because the ad blocker can see that the tracking code belongs to the webpage (the domain names match), so is unlikely to block it.

Knowledge base hosting

Allowing knowledge base hosting for your custom domain enables you to have consistent branding in your knowledge base URL, so that it matches your organization’s domain (rather than containing "ortto").

Once you’ve added your custom domain with knowledge base hosting enabled you can select it at Settings > Knowledge base > Settings > Domain.

Set up a custom domain name and tracking subdomain

To do so:

1. Navigate to Settings > Custom domains.
2. Under Custom domain name click Add domain.
3. Enter your Domain name (e.g. yourbrand.com) and select your Domain provider.
4. If required:
   • Select Enable this domain for activity tracking and widget hosting to set a custom tracking subdomain. And/or,
   • Select Allow hosting your knowledge base on this domain to set a custom knowledge base subdomain. Or,
   • Leave both tracking subdomain and knowledge base subdomain options un-checked if you only want to set a custom email domain.
5. Click Ok.
6. You will be given a series of CNAME records (3 for email only or 4 for email and tracking) you need to add to the settings of where you registered your domain.
7. Next, navigate to the the settings of your registered domain. Here are links to instructions for adding the CNAME records to some of the common domain providers:
   • Google Domains,
   • GoDaddy and
   • Namecheap

If you use one of these providers click on the link to see the specific instructions. If you don’t use one of these providers, we recommend doing a quick Google search for "<DOMAIN PROVIDER> how to add CNAME records". Once you find the instructions, follow them to add the CNAME records.

NOTE: If you're using Cloudflare DNS, you'll need to disable Cloudflare proxying by setting the "Proxy status" for all of your CNAME records to "DNS only".

An example of this is shown in the Ortto video guide to configuring a custom domain, (starting at 1:02 in the timeline for CNAME record settings). Watch the video below.

Once you have completed the custom domain name setup, you can add another custom domain name by clicking Add domain and repeating the process.

Set up an SMS domain

Setting up a custom domain to use in SMS messages enables you to use a separate tracking domain to the one you use for your email messages. 

It also allows you to add your branding to a short URL to help with brand recognition and trustworthiness, and to keep the length of your SMS messages to a minimum.

When you have an SMS domain set up (e.g. “https://yrbrnd.co”), the opt-out link and any other links you add to an SMS message will be replaced with your SMS domain. For example, a link like “www.yourbrand.com/product/demo/how-to-start-investing” will be changed to “https://yrbrnd.co/-AB1cDEFgHI2j”.

You can add one custom domain for SMS. To do so:

1. Navigate to Settings > Custom domains.
2. Under SMS domains click Add domain.
3. Enter your Domain name (e.g. brand.co) and select your Domain provider.
4. Click Add domain.
5. You will be given a CNAME record that you need to add to the settings of where you registered your domain.
6. Follow step 7 above, for adding a custom domain (including the note about Cloudflare, if applicable).

When you’ve added your SMS domain, you can test it to verify the setup.

Custom domains and Talk

Ortto’s Talk feature includes an option to configure email auto-forwarding so that emails sent to your mailbox can be created as conversation messages in your Talk inbox.

If you are using email auto-forwarding, it’s recommended that your domain settings include DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) signatures and a sender policy framework (SPF) record.

The DKIM signatures are covered when you set up up your custom domain, as the CNAME records we provide include 2 DKIM signatures (e.g. ap3._domainkey.mybrand.com) which help the email server verify that messages sent from your domain are authentic.

Your domain’s SPF record identifies the specific mail servers that are allowed to send mail on behalf of your domain. You may need to add a new SPF record (if you don’t already have one) or edit an existing SPF .txt record to include Ortto’s mail server (autopilotmail.com), similar to the following:

v=spf1 a mx include:_spf.google.com include:autopilotmail.com ~all

Here are links to instructions for adding/editing the SPF record for of the common domain providers:

• Google Domains
• GoDaddy
• Namecheap.

Using your tracking domains

For each custom domain name you setup for email delivery and tracking, you will need a tracking subdomain that matches the email domain. For example, if you wish to send emails from mybrand.com, your tracking subdomain should match, like track.mybrand.com. Or if you want to send emails from a subdomain app.mybrand.com, your tracking subdomain should include the subdomain, like track.app.mybrand.com.

When it comes to using your tracking subdomain in the tracking code that you insert into your webpage/s, you can use any of the tracking subdomains you have setup across all your subdomains. For example, where you have app.mybrand.com and blog.mybrand.com, you can add a tracking code containing the tracking subdomain track.app.mybrand.com in the <head> section of both app.mybrand.com and blog.mybrand.com.

Test your new custom domain

After you have added the CNAME records it’s time to test.

1. Navigate to Settings > Custom domains.
2. Under the domain name click Verify setup to test everything is working.
   • If it is, congratulations your email domain name is now set up.
   • If it isn’t, please create a support ticket by clicking Get help in Ortto and we will assist you.

Edit and delete your custom domain name and tracking subdomain

Once you have setup a custom domain name, you can edit the settings by clicking the 

 more icon then Edit. This is where you can set a domain as the default.

Delete a custom domain name by clicking the trash icon and confirming your choice. Deleting a custom domain name means that any emails you send will revert to the default autopilotmail.com domain.

Domain certification

A domain owner with a certification authority authorization (CAA) record can specify which certificate authorities are allowed to issue certificates for their domain.

The authority that Ortto uses to issue certificates to authenticate your custom domain is called ZeroSSL (sectigo.com).

When you add a custom domain, Ortto automatically creates a CAA record that allows ZeroSSL to issue a certificate to us on your behalf (to authenticate your domain and complete the domain setup) so you don’t need to.

However, if you have a custom configuration which prevents this, please speak with your IT team about allowing ZeroSSL.

Domain statuses

The below table describes the domain statuses you may see.