Your website address and custom domains

Your site always has a Mattersimple address, and you can connect your own domain, such as www.yourfirm.com, so clients find you there. Adding and managing domains needs the Update firm settings permission, and adding one needs the website on your plan.

Your Mattersimple address#

Your site is at your-subdomain.mattersimple.com, with the subdomain you chose at signup. It's shown under Firm settings → General → Domains. It can't be changed or removed, and it keeps working after you connect a custom domain.

Add a custom domain#

1. Go to Firm settings → General → Domains and click Add custom domain.
2. Enter the domain, for example yourfirm.com or www.yourfirm.com, and save. Typing www.yourfirm.com is the same as yourfirm.com: both are set up together.
3. Click DNS setup next to the domain to see the records to add.
4. Add them where you manage DNS for the domain (usually your registrar or DNS host). The domain shows Waiting for DNS until they're in place.

Mattersimple checks the domain automatically and issues its SSL certificate. It shows Issuing certificate while that happens, then Live. DNS changes can take up to 24 hours to show up. To check again sooner, open the domain's ⋯ menu and choose Retry verification.

If you don't see Add custom domain, either your plan doesn't include the website, or custom domains aren't offered on this platform. Ask support if you're not sure which.

The DNS records#

• A subdomain such as www.yourfirm.com or law.yourfirm.com needs one CNAME record pointing at the target shown in DNS setup.
• A root domain such as yourfirm.com needs two records: a CNAME for www and an ALIAS (also called ANAME or flattened CNAME) for the root, @. If your DNS provider has no ALIAS type, skip the root record and set up a redirect from yourfirm.com to https://www.yourfirm.com in your registrar's settings instead.

Tips for common providers:

• Cloudflare: set each record to DNS only (the grey cloud), not proxied. Cloudflare flattens a root CNAME on its own, so add the root as a CNAME there.
• Namecheap and DNSimple: use their ALIAS record type for the root.
• GoDaddy: there's no ALIAS type. Add the www record, then use Forwarding to send the root to https://www.yourfirm.com.
• Anywhere else: look for ALIAS, ANAME or CNAME flattening in your provider's help. If there's none, use forwarding as for GoDaddy.

Make a domain primary#

Once a domain is Live, open its ⋯ menu and choose Set as primary. Your site, client portal links and the links in emails then use that domain, and search engines are pointed at it. Only one domain is primary at a time. If a primary domain stops pointing at Mattersimple, your site falls back to your Mattersimple address on its own.

Remove a domain#

Open the domain's ⋯ menu and choose Remove. The domain stops showing your site, and you can add it again later. You can't remove the primary domain: make another one primary first.

Rules worth knowing#

• A firm can connect up to 5 custom domains.
• A domain that never goes live is removed automatically 30 days after it was added, so the name isn't held for nobody. A domain that was live and later stops working is kept.
• A domain can be connected to only one firm.

If you've been emailed DNS instructions for a domain, follow them, or contact support for help.