Connecting a domain you own

By default your booking page is at catchlinehq.com/book/your-business. With your own domain the same page answers at an address that carries your name, such as book.yourbusiness.com. It is included in Growth, Pro and the free trial. You need a domain you already own and access to its DNS settings, usually at the registrar where you bought it.

What you can connect

• A subdomain, such as book.example.com or appointments.example.com. This is the recommended option: it leaves your existing website alone.
• A bare domain you are not using for anything else, if your registrar can point the root of a domain at another name (often called ALIAS, ANAME or CNAME flattening). A root that resolves to the same address as catchlinehq.com passes the check too.
• One domain per business, and a domain nobody else has connected. Your website and your booking page cannot share one address.

Connect it

1. 1

   Open Settings, Your domain, type the address exactly as customers should see it, and save. Capitals, https:// and anything after the name are tidied away.

2. 2

   The page now shows two DNS records to create: a CNAME record for your address that points at catchlinehq.com, and a TXT record at _catchline. followed by your address, whose value starts with catchline-verify=. Copy both from the page rather than retyping them.

3. 3

   Add the two records where you bought the domain (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare and others call this DNS records; the table below says where). Some registrars want the name without your domain on the end: book instead of book.example.com, and _catchline.book for the TXT record. The page shows that form as a hint.

4. 4

   Press Check now. The status moves from Waiting for DNS to Records found, and then to Live once the page has loaded over HTTPS. DNS changes can take up to an hour to spread, and every connected domain is re-checked automatically about once an hour, so it goes live without you pressing anything.

5. 5

   When it says Live, share the address shown under Booking page address. The certificate is requested on the first visit and usually takes under a minute.

Good to know

• Only the booking page and the change-or-cancel links from confirmation texts are served on your domain. Signing in to Catchline stays on catchlinehq.com; a dashboard address typed on your domain is sent to the right place.
• The TXT record proves the domain is yours. Without it nobody can point a domain at Catchline and pretend to be you, and no certificate is fetched for a name that has not been verified. Keep it in place: it is re-checked regularly. If it disappears the status becomes Not working, visitors are sent to your catchlinehq.com address, and you get one text about it if System problems alerts are on.
• Using Cloudflare? Set the CNAME to DNS only (grey cloud). With the orange-cloud proxy on, the record does not point at Catchline and no certificate can be issued for it.
• Your catchlinehq.com address keeps working the whole time. Once your domain is Live, the links in your texts and the address on the Bookings page use your domain instead.
• Remove domain on the records card takes the domain offline within a minute. Saving a different name gives you new records and takes the old name down at once.
• If your plan stops including a custom domain, the name stays saved and visitors are sent to your catchlinehq.com address until it does again.