How to Connect a Custom Domain to Your Sales Page
Learn how to connect a purchased domain to your sales page: DNS setup, CNAME record, SSL certificate, and propagation, step by step.
What you need before you start
Connecting a custom domain to your sales page comes down to three things: a purchased domain, access to the DNS panel where you bought it, and two records to create (a CNAME and a TXT). The process takes anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours because of propagation. Beyond that, you're just copying and pasting values into the right place.
Most page builders don't sell domains. They host your site on a generic subdomain and let you plug your own on top. So the first move is buying the domain from any registrar. Buy it wherever it's cheapest, wherever you already have an account, it doesn't matter. What matters is having access to the DNS panel afterward.
How the site starts on a subdomain
When you create the page inside the platform, it already goes live on its own subdomain. Something like yourproject.platform.com. That page already works, even blank, even with nothing published. It exists and it responds.
That subdomain is the key to everything. Keep it, because that's the value you'll point your nice domain to. The custom domain doesn't replace the subdomain: it points on top of the subdomain. The one doing the work of serving the page is still the original address. Your domain just becomes the storefront.
Inside the platform there's usually a chain-link button, or something that looks like a link. That's where you paste the domain you bought and click connect. From there it spits out instructions for what to create in the DNS.
Where the DNS records live
You go to the site where you bought the domain and look for the DNS area. It's the same place your payment platform sometimes asks you to create a CNAME, or where you've already had to set up a pointer for checkout, email, whatever. Different name, same panel.
Inside you'll find the record types: A, CNAME, TXT, MX, and others. To connect the sales page you touch two: the CNAME and the TXT. Nothing else.
One detail that trips a lot of people up: after you create or edit a record, nothing happens right away. DNS needs to propagate. That takes minutes to hours. If you set everything up correctly and the site didn't load, most of the time you just have to wait.
CNAME record with www
The first record is a CNAME with the name www. Here's how it works: you're going to create or edit a CNAME whose name is www and whose value is that platform subdomain.
In practice, this is what happens. You open the list of records and check whether a www CNAME already exists. It almost always does, because a new domain comes with that record already created out of the box. If it exists, click edit. If it doesn't, create it from scratch.
Filling it in is straightforward:
- Record name:
www - Value: the subdomain the platform gave you (
yourproject.platform.com)
Copy the subdomain, paste it into the value field, save. Once that's done, go back to the platform and click verify. The address will switch from the subdomain to your custom domain. At that point, the padlock that was green turns open and red.
Relax. A red padlock here is an expected step, not an error. It's red because the SSL certificate is missing, and that's what the next record fixes.
SSL validation with a TXT record
Click that red padlock. The platform will show you a second pointer to create: a TXT record.
This TXT has a name that starts with _acm-challenge followed by www (something like _acm-challenge.www), and the value is a big code, a long string of characters the platform generates for you. Copy that entire code, without cutting anything, and paste it into the value field of a new TXT record in your DNS.
What this TXT does: it proves to the certificate authority that you really own the domain. Without that validation, no SSL. And without SSL, the browser flags the page as not secure. A sales page without a green padlock kills conversion. Nobody enters a card on a page Chrome warns is dangerous.
Once the TXT propagates, the certificate is issued and the padlock turns green. Now you can reach the site through your domain, with https, everything working.
How long propagation takes
There's no fixed number. It could be five minutes, it could be a few hours. DNS spreads the information across servers worldwide and each one updates at its own pace. A fast registrar resolves in minutes. Some take longer.
Rule of thumb: if you confirmed the www CNAME and the _acm-challenge TXT are saved with the right values, the work is done. The rest is waiting. Don't keep recreating records thinking it'll speed things up, that just makes a mess. Create once, check, wait.
If it goes past 24 hours without working, then it's worth reviewing value by value. A common error is an extra space stuck to the value, or the record name with the domain duplicated at the end (some panels add the domain automatically).
And when you run several pages at once
One domain per sales page is easy to set up by hand. The problem shows up when you run dozens of offers, each with its own domain, each with a CNAME and TXT to create, and you still need to spread all of that across several ad accounts without mixing them up. That's where manual work starts eating your afternoon.
The page and DNS part you do once per offer. But the ad part, launching the campaign that sends traffic to that domain across several accounts, scales fast into chaos. Media buyers running many offers in parallel usually lean on that step with platforms like DirectAds to standardize naming and setup across accounts, because building 40 ad sets pointing to the right domains by hand is exactly where human error in targeting and naming creeps in.
Takeaways
- Buy the domain from any registrar and connect it in the platform through the link button. The platform doesn't sell domains, it just takes yours.
- Create or edit the
wwwCNAME pointing to the subdomain the platform gave you. Name iswww, value is the subdomain. - After the padlock turns red, create the
_acm-challenge.wwwTXT record with the code the platform generates. That's what unlocks the SSL. - Saved both records with the right values? Wait for propagation. Minutes to hours is normal. Don't recreate out of anxiety.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to buy the domain on the same platform as the page?
No. Most page builders don't sell domains. You buy it wherever you want, at the cheapest registrar or where you already have an account, and connect it later by creating the DNS records.
The padlock turned red after I created the CNAME. Is that an error?
No. A red padlock at this step is expected. It's red because the SSL certificate is still missing. You fix it by creating the _acm-challenge TXT record the platform shows when you click the padlock.
Why won't the site load even after I created the records?
Most of the time it's propagation. DNS takes anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to update. If it's been more than 24 hours, check that the values have no extra spaces and that the record name doesn't have the domain duplicated at the end.
There's already a www CNAME on my domain. Do I create another?
No. If one already exists, you edit the existing one and put the platform's subdomain in the value field. A new domain almost always comes with the www CNAME created out of the box.
Does the TXT need the entire code?
Yes. Copy the full string the platform generates, without cutting a single character. That code is what proves domain ownership to the certificate authority and unlocks the SSL.
