How to Set up Your Custom Domain in GoDaddy – Thinkific

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:

Before Getting Started

How to Set Up a CNAME Record in GoDaddy

Edit Existing CNAME Record

Next Steps

Access Your Thinkific Site Without WWW

Before Getting Started

Please note that GoDaddy handles a large number of generic websites and 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. Our steps below cover how to set up your custom domain with a CNAME record. A CNAME record is required (rather than an A record, MX record, etc.) in order to set up your custom domain with Thinkific.

Choose Your Subdomain

Before jumping into GoDaddy, you'll first need to decide what you would like your custom domain to be! A subdomain is required to set up your custom domain. 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.

How to Set Up a CNAME Record in GoDaddy

1. Log into your GoDaddy account. After login, you should be on the My Products tab and able to see your domains below in the square icon(s).

3. Click the 3 dots on the upper right of the domain you would like to set up for your Thinkific site. Select Manage DNS from the list that appears:

4. You'll be taken to a new page. You will see DNS Management at the top of the page, and DNS Records directly below. Review your Records for any CNAME records 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 5:

5. From DNS Records, you can add a new CNAME record by clicking Add from the upper right hand corner of your DNS Records:

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

Type: Select CNAME from the dropdown menu.
Name: 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 for learning product sites.
Value: 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. You can also find the URL from your Site Settings.
TTL: This stands for Time to Live. We suggest leaving it as is (Default).

6. Click Add record.

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.
Name: this will be www.
Value: 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. You can also find the URL from your Site Settings.
TTL: This stands for Time to Live. We suggest leaving it as is (Default).

3. Click Add record.

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. Sometimes it can be much quicker too. Once ready, you can now add your custom domain in Thinkific to complete your set up! The custom domain is added to your Site Settings as shown below:

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. On your DNS Management page, scroll down till you see the Forwarding section. Click Add Forwarding 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)