How to Set up Your Custom Domain in GoDaddy

Replace your thinkific.com URL with a branded GoDaddy domain! See Custom Domains for more general information or if you have a different domain host.

This article will cover:

How to Set Up a CNAME Record in GoDaddy

Edit Existing CNAME Record

Next Steps

Access Your Thinkific Site Without WWW

As GoDaddy handles a large number of generic websites, their advice and support may not agree with our steps listed below. Generally GoDaddy will request information such as IP Addresses and Nameservers. Since we use cloud-based servers, our IP addresses may change periodically, so we are unable to provide an IP address. This is why a CNAME record is required (rather than an A record, MX record, etc.)

How to Set Up a CNAME Record in GoDaddy

1. First make sure to decide what you would like your custom domain to be! When setting up your custom domain, a subdomain is required. A subdomain precedes your main domain name. For example in www.yoursite.com, www is the subdomain. www, learn, or courses are popular subdomain choices.

2. Log into your GoDaddy account

3. Click on My Products in the main menu. Beside the domain that you'd like to set up your Thinkific site under, click on DNS:

4. Review your Records page for any CNAME record that currently has your desired subdomain. If you would like www for example, sometimes this record already exists by default. If so, see Edit Existing CNAME Record. If not, continue to step 4.

5. On your Records page, you can add a new CNAME record by clicking the Add in the lower right hand corner:

6. In the form that appears, apply the following:

Type: Select CNAME
Host: This will be your desired subdomain. A subdomain precedes your main domain name. For example in www.yoursite.com, www is the subdomain. What you enter here will affect which URL your Thinkific site will be available at. www, learn, or courses are popular subdomain choices.
Points to: This will be your Thinkific URL. You will want to copy the exact URL of your Thinkific site, which will be formatted as: yoursite.thinkific.com.

6. Click Save

7. Continue to Next Steps

Edit Existing CNAME Record

When adding a CNAME record, a subdomain is required. A subdomain precedes your main domain name. www is a popular subdomain choice and sometimes www will already have a CNAME record in GoDaddy. If this is not currently being used, you can edit the existing record instead of creating a new one. You might see this in GoDaddy for example:

1. You can edit this record, by selecting the pencil icon to the right of the record:

2. In the form that appears, apply the following:

Type: leave CNAME selected
Host: this will be www
Points to: This will be your Thinkific URL. You will want to copy the exact URL of your Thinkific site, which will be formatted as: yoursite.thinkific.com.

3. Click Save

Next Steps

Once you have created your CNAME record, you will likely need to wait at least 1hr for the changes to propagate and this can take up to 24 hours. Then you can add your custom domain in Thinkific to complete your set up!

Please refer to the following for testing out your changes and setting your custom domain as the primary domain for your site!

How to Test Your CNAME Record

How to Add Your Custom Domain to Thinkific

How to Test Your Custom Domain

Access Your Thinkific Site Without WWW

If you've set up your Thinkific site at the www address of your custom domain, sometimes you'd like to be able to access your Thinkific site with or without the www portion. To do so, you can simply use GoDaddy's domain forwarding feature to set this up.

1. In your DNS settings, scroll to the bottom and look for the Forwarding section. Click Add beside the domain:

2. You can now create the domain forwarding with the following settings:

Forward to: Choose https:// from the dropdown make sure you have SSL enabled on your Thinkific site. In the text field, enter your new custom domain that you just created, for example: www.customdomain.com
Forward Type: Permanent (301)
Settings: Forward only
Update my nameservers and DNS settings: leave this unchecked