What is CNAME?
CNAME is a type of record in the Domain Name System (DNS), that specifies that one domain name is an alias of another domain name.
When you use our native click and open tracking, our system automatically changes your links a bit to see the prospect’s activity. As we don’t have direct access to your DNS records, these links by default are not associated with your domain. The CNAME record will allow you to customize them and is crucial if you want to keep your email deliverability perfect.
The feature will allow you to set up a custom domain that will be used in all links so that they look more like this: “track.yourdomain.com/xxxx”. Thanks to the feature, you’ll be able to customize your emails a bit more and increase deliverability.
Setting CNAME record on your domain
First of all, you need to add a CNAME record in your domain's DNS settings (you can ask your IT administrator for help) which will specify which URL should be visible in your links and point to our tracking domain. It should look like this:
| Record type | Label/Host field | Time To Live (TTL) | Destination/Target field/Points to |
| CNAME | track | 7200 | trackgb.com |
Where:
- CNAME is the DNS record type,
- track is the host (the prefix of your subdomain, which will ultimately look like this: track.yourdomain.com)
- trackgb.com is our tracking domain to which your subdomain should point,
- 7200 is Time To Live.
Example: Let's say your domain name is abcd.com. The correct setup would be:
| Record type | Label/Host field | Time To Live (TTL) | Destination/Target field/Points to |
| CNAME | track.abcd.com | 7200 | trackgb.com |
Please note that in most of the DNS hosting providers' settings, your domain is added automatically, hence you just need to put "track" in the label/host field.
Which prefix do we recommend?
It’s up to you and can vary on a case by case basis (because you may already be using a subdomain we suggest), but prefixes we recommend are "track", "images", "img", "resources", "gb".
NOTE: If you're using GoDaddy, in the Host field you should just put "track".
Here’s how you can set up a CNAME record for most popular providers:
Google
Office 365
1&1 (IONOS)
Bluehost
CloudFlare
Digital Ocean
DreamHost
Dynadot
GoDaddy
InMotion Hosting
Name.com
Namecheap
Adding CNAME record in Growbots
Once you create a customized CNAME record and configure this in your domain’s DNS records, you’ll need to go to Settings -> Organization and type the CNAME record so we can verify and connect it to Growbots.
The system will automatically check if the CNAME is set up correctly and show the confirmation status. If something went wrong, contact our support team and they’ll investigate the issue. This setting works for the entire organization.
NOTE: Bear in mind that connecting your CNAME record to Growbots may take up to 24 hours.
