When you create a help center with HelpCenter.io, you always get a subdomain of your choosing like mybrand.helpcenter.io. However, in certain cases you may wish to place your help center on your own domain name like support.mywebsite.com. Here's how you can do this.

Create a CNAME DNS record with your DNS provider

First, you have to create a CNAME DNS record for your custom domain name with your DNS provider.

The value of the CNAME record should be the current subdomain of your help center (e.g. awesome.helpcenter.io) - the one that you automatically got form us and the key would be the place you would like for your help center to live under your own domain.

For example let's assume your own domain name is awesome.com. You would like your help center to appear on help.awesome.com and you created the "awesome" help center with us, then your CNAME DNS record would be look like this:

             Key                 |                 Value
------------------------------------------------------------------------
      help(.awesome.com)         |          awesome.helpcenter.io

If you are unsure how to do this and we have a guide for your DNS provider, check it out. Otherwise, look for a guide in their knowledge bases for "create CNAME record" or contact us. We might be able to help.

Namecheap

CloudFlare (coming soon)

AWS Route53 (coming soon)

GoDaddy

Attach your domain to your help center

Now that you've properly set up the DNS record, you can configure your custom domain with your help center.

1. Navigate to the Settings page of your help center dashboard.

2. On the Settings page scroll down until you reach the Advanced Settings section. There, into the Custom Domain field type the custom domain name you would like. The one we've set up the CNAME DNS record form. It will get automatically saved.

3. If a warning appears saying that you need to set up a CNAME DNS record, it means that the DNS setting have not been properly updated or need more time to propagate. Please consult the guide above or contact us.

4. Otherwise, if everything with the DNS record of your custom domain is alright and you have added it to your settings, there's nothing more you should do. We are going to take it from there and automatically issue an SSL certificate with Let's Encrypt and your help center can shine on your own domain name.

It might take several minutes for the SSL certificate and everything else with your custom domain to get properly configured.