Using your own domain for your MailBuild account
Posted by Mathew Patterson on December 28, 2007 4:25 PM
If you are reselling MailBuild as part of your business or if you have thought about doing it, your job just got a bit easier.
Just before Christmas we released a MailBuild update to let you setup custom domain names for your MailBuild account. What does that mean? In the past, your clients would login at a URL like xyzdesign.<genericdomain>.com. Now, you can map email.xyzdesign.com (or anything else) to your MailBuild account, so your clients never need appear to leave your site at all.
How to setup a custom domain name with MailBuild
All you'll need is a domain name you want to use, and access to the DNS records to add a CNAME record for that domain.
1. Select the Customize tab
It's really very easy! Jump into your MailBuild account (as the administrator) and click through to the 'Customize' tab. At the bottom of the page you will spot a new section, 'Custom Domain Name'.
2. Enter your new domain name
Type in the full domain name your clients will login at. This might be a subdomain on your company site, or it could be a totally separate domain, it's up to you.
3. Setup your CNAME record
Depending on the DNS host you use, you may be able to add this record yourself, or you may need your host to add it for you. If you aren't sure, get in touch with your host. Keep in mind that it is possible your web host and your DNS host are different companies. Grab the details of the CNAME record you need to add, and enter it or send it to your DNS host.
4. Verify the DNS record
DNS record changes can take a while to propagate through, so give yourself some time and then click the 'Verify my custom domain' button. MailBuild will go off and check that the record is visible and correct, and then you are done!
Now you and your clients can login via the domain name you entered. Your previous *.<genericdomain>.com subdomain will keep working, but you will want to let your clients know the new login address.
Thanks to everyone who has requested this feature, we hope you enjoy it!
26 total comments:
Fantastic news Matt! How will this affect existing log-in forms we have built into websites?
Brilliant. Thanks!
Thanks guys. Chris, existing login forms will continue to work fine.
Hello,
Great, thanks!
Is there a way we can easily add www.mymailservice.com AND mymailservice.com (without the www) as custom domains?
It would be great, because people often type the URL without the www.
Thanks,
Thomas.
Sure Thomas, once you've set up and verified www.mymailservice.com you can always jump into your DNS admin and add the same server alias for mymailservice.com.
Hello David,
Thanks for the answer.
I've setup a custom domain in the Mailbuid admin, let's say : www.mymailservice.com.
I've configured my www DNS record like this :
www 3600 IN CNAME cname.c/send.com.
And it works.
In order to have the mymailservice.com URL go to Mailbuild too, I've configured my DNS A record like this :
@ 3600 IN A 206.72.127.221
206.72.127.221 is the IP of cname.mailbuild.com, because A records only accept IP address.
When I enter mymailservice.com in a browser, I'm redirected to the "Looking for an account" page.
Could you please tell me how I can solve this problem?
Best regards,
Thomas.
Hey Thomas,
One way to do this would be to setup the a record to point to your own server, and then setup a page on your server to do a redirect to www. You may even be able to do all of this through DNS without having the page, but I can't think how right now - anyone else have a suggestion?
But I do want to make it clear that you shouldn't use the IP address of the server - the MailBuild servers are load balanced and the IP addresses might change over time.
Sweet, only took me a few minutes to setup.
- Tom
Excellent guys - so easy to setup and use. Perfect, well done!
If we use a subdomain (i.e. sub.ourdomain.com), how does this affect the client login pages?
Great work guys.
I'm also keen on knowing if we can update the login scripts to read:
http://clients.customdomain.com/login.aspx
Absolutely Carl, once you log in at your new address, the supplied code for your login form will be updated to reflect this new URL. Feel free to jump in and use that on your site moving forward.
Vince, basically, that sub-domain will be used for your clients to log in. So, once you've made the DNS changes, you can send your clients to sub.ourdomain.com to login.
Hi Dave, thanks for answering. Do clients also get a subdomain as part of their setup; i.e. clientname.customdomain.com
Hi,
I'm a little confused! :(
If I have a website promoting the service at www.mydomain.com and on that page I have a customer login, do I just set-up the cname details for www?
If so, does that cause any problems with people visiting www.mydomain.com?
Sorry if this is a stupid question!
Thanks,
Mark
Hi again!
also, a previous poster mentioned @ 3600 in CNAME - when I look at my current CNAME settings, they're @ 14400 - does that matter?
Thanks
Mark
Hey Mark,
You are right, you should use www as the subdomain and then everyone who visits www.mydomain.com will see your MailBuild account.
You would also want to make sure you setup your site so that http://mydomain.com redirected people to www.mydomain.com too.
Hi Mathew,
thanks - but for some reason I'm not getting this!
Is the purpose of making this change so that the login url on www.mydomain.com can use mydomain.com?
Sorry for the stupid question! ;-)
Thanks
Mark
That's right Mark, using a custom domain not only changes the URL your clients log in at, but also the URL we use for tracking your link clicks and opens. It basically removes any mention of us from the service and makes it much easier to promote as your own service.
Hello Dave,
Not quite removes any mention of your service.
I just sent a campaign to one subscriber, and sure enough the links all point to my sub.domain.com
But the email header still includes:
Received: from m5.campaignmonitor.com (m5.campaignmonitor.com
List-Unsubscribe:
Message-ID:
Previous got stripped.
List-Unsubscribe: unsub.c/send.com/t/1/u/xxxx>
Message-ID:
Vince, well be removing the reference to campaign monitor from the headers very soon. I'll also let the team know about the list-unsubscribe header, thanks for passing that on.
Good to hear David.
I was getting worried because I have spent a lot of time researching before deciding on using MailBuild, so didn't want to start all over again :-)
Just to clarify, so the headers will show our domain name instead of both campaignmonitor and c/send?
Vince, the headers will still show a reference to c/send.com, which is required so we can handle bounces for you. We will also always have an abuse@ address since the mail is sent from our servers and we can be help responsible.
The good news is that c/send.com won't blow your cover at all.
Stupid question, if a client happens to get blacklisted (for sending to people they should've) how does blacklisting work if using a custom domain? Who's domain/IP gets blacklisted?
Not a stupid question at all Walter. There are really 2 kinds of blacklists, once that looks at the sending domain or IP address the email is sent from, and another that looks at the reputation of the links in your email.
So, if your clients email receives lots of complaints to a certain ISP/blacklist provider, your tracking domain may be blacklisted along with it. In most cases however, the originating IP address is what gets blacklisted, which in this case would be a MailBuild server.