Domain and email

Draft · being tested on pilot workspaces (05/10/2026)

In Settings > Domain and email you connect your school's domain to Aladia. There are two independent tracks, which you can turn on whenever you want, even at different times:

• Site: your academy opens on the main domain yourschool.com or on a subdomain such as app.yourschool.com, with your brand, your Marketplace and your courses.
• Email: your academy's emails go out from Academy name <notification@mail.yourschool.com>.

At the top of the section the summary says where each one stands, for example "Site: live · Email: verifying". Your school mail stays where it is (emails use the mail subdomain). Your school website stays where it is if you pick a subdomain; with the main domain the academy takes its place.

You need the Pro or Enterprise plan. On a smaller plan the section shows a lock and a link to Plans. Owners and Admins set it up. The sender name and the reply-to are set separately and work without a domain too: see Sender and reply-to.

Domain ownership

The first track you set up asks for a TXT record _aladia with an aladia-verify=… value. It proves the domain is yours and is valid for both tracks: you add it only once. Until it's there neither track moves on, and nobody can book someone else's domain.

Where to add the records

Aladia reads who manages the domain's DNS and tells you where to go: Squarespace, Aruba, Register.it, GoDaddy, Cloudflare, Google Cloud DNS, OVH, Namecheap, Vercel, or generic instructions for the others. Next to it there's Open the DNS panel, and every name and value has its own Copy.

• The name is relative to the domain: if the panel appends yourschool.com by itself, type only the first part (_aladia, app, www). The main domain is written @ (some panels leave it empty).
• The main domain uses an A record: a CNAME is not allowed there. Some providers (Cloudflare, Vercel DNS) also accept ALIAS or "CNAME flattening": that works too.
• On Cloudflare turn the CNAME proxy off (grey cloud, "DNS only").
• If the domain has CAA records, they must allow letsencrypt.org.

If someone else adds the records, Send the instructions to your IT: they get the records, the link to the panel and the zone file to paste, and their replies come to you. Up to 5 a day.

Site track

1. Press Connect the site and type the domain (yourschool.com).
2. Choose where the academy opens:
   • Main domain (yourschool.com): recommended if you promote the academy pages (ads, social, search engines). We always connect www.yourschool.com too, which leads to yourschool.com. If your website is already on this domain, the academy will replace it: the preview tells you what the domain answers today.
   • Subdomain (app.yourschool.com by default, or any name, for example academy): the website you already have stays where it is. www can't be used, it belongs to the main site.
3. Add the records shown:
   • the _aladia TXT, if the ownership isn't verified yet;
   • with the main domain: an A record on @ with the IP shown (usually 76.76.21.21) and a www CNAME ending in vercel-dns….com;
   • with a subdomain: a CNAME (app) with the value shown, ending in vercel-dns….com.
4. Press I added the records, verify, or I'll do it later.

The track shows three steps: Ownership, Routing (the A record or the CNAME) and SSL (the HTTPS certificate, which starts by itself after the DNS). If a value is wrong the row says so, for example "Found CNAME ghs.google.com, expected …". When everything is in place the track says Live and the Owner gets the email "yourschool.com is live". With the main domain, the www.yourschool.com row shows below with Redirects to yourschool.com.

On the site:

• the app is locked on your academy, with your brand, as on name.aladia.io;
• top left, on the storefront, course pages, sign-in and invitations, there are the academy's logo and name, which lead back to the storefront;
• the browser tab shows the academy's name and its logo as the icon, also when the site is added to a phone's Home screen; if the academy has no logo, the icon stays Aladia's. A changed logo shows up within an hour;
• signed-out visitors see your Marketplace storefront, with your courses only;
• with Members-only access the root goes to sign-in;
• file uploads work from there too (Aladia adds the domain by itself).

Changing domain without losing links

From the ⋯ menu of the site domain choose Change domain. You can move to another subdomain, to the main domain (for example from app.yourschool.com to yourschool.com) or even to another domain (for example from yourschool.com to newschool.com).

1. Choose the new domain as on the first connection and add the records shown. On another domain its _aladia TXT is needed too: ownership is verified again.
2. Meanwhile the site stays on the previous domain: nothing stops. The new one shows below as New domain, with its steps.
3. When the new one has DNS and SSL, the site moves there by itself and the Owner gets the email "… is live". From then on email links, previews, the main address for search engines, Apple Pay and Google Pay payments and uploads use the new domain.
4. The previous domain redirects to the new one (permanent 308 redirect, with the same path and parameters): links already shared, bookmarks and indexed pages keep working. In the section it shows as Redirects to ….

Until the new one is live you can go back with ⋯ > Cancel the change.

A domain that redirects can be deleted at any time (⋯ > Delete): from then on old links with that address stop working, so keep it while there are links around. The domain the site is on can't be deleted alone: it only goes with ⋯ > Remove the custom domain, and the site goes back to name.aladia.io.

What happens to sign-in, SSO and email

• Sign-in: sign-in is tied to the domain, so after the move people signed in on the old domain will have to sign in once more on the new one (same email and password). The wizard reminds you before saving.
• Sign-in from your product (SSO): if the academy uses customer SSO, update the login and return address in your product to the new domain. The old one keeps working while it redirects.
• Email: the sender (notification@mail.yourschool.com) doesn't change. If the site moves to another domain, emails keep going out from the previous domain until you set the sender up again (remove it and set it up on the new domain): the Email track flags it.

Signing in and out on your domain

• Sign-in: on app.yourschool.com people sign in with email and password, sign up, reset their password and open invitation links, all on your domain and with your brand. It works on Safari (iPhone and Mac), Firefox, Chrome and Edge. Continue with Google isn't there yet: whoever only uses Google sets a password from Forgot password?, with the same email.
• Separate session: signing in on app.yourschool.com is separate from app.aladia.io. The account's device list shows them as two sign-ins, and signing out of one doesn't sign you out of the other.
• Sign out: you stay on your domain. You land on the academy storefront, or on sign-in if Members-only access is on. On app.aladia.io, Sign out goes to the Aladia website as always.
• Session expired: your domain's sign-in page shows up and, once signed in, you're back on the page you were on.
• Chat, notifications and the document editor update in real time from your domain too.
• On the name.aladia.io address the session is the same as app.aladia.io: signing out there also signs you out of app.aladia.io in the same browser.
• Sign-in from your product: if the academy is part of a product with its own users, they can enter with their product account: see Customer SSO.

Link previews and SEO

When someone pastes a link to the site (on WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, LinkedIn, in an email) the preview talks about your academy only, never about Aladia. It works on the custom domain and on name.aladia.io.

• Storefront, sign-in, sign-up and invitations: title = the academy's name (inner pages become "Sign in — Academy name"); description = the public profile's Bio, otherwise the short description or the About text, and if there's nothing "Courses and classes by Academy name"; image = the Cover, otherwise the Logo. You change them in Settings > Branding (public profile): see Public profile and branding.
• Course page (/courses/…): title "Course name — Academy name", the course description (roughly the first 160 characters) and its cover (if the course has none, the academy's). Only for the academy's public, published courses: for a private or draft course the preview shows the academy, never the course's data.
• Address and search engines: every page declares as its main address (canonical) the live site's: the custom domain when it's live, otherwise name.aladia.io.
• The tab icon stays the Branding favicon or logo.
• With Members-only access course pages ask to sign in: the preview shows the sign-in page with the academy's name, bio and cover.

New texts and images reach previews within 15 minutes. WhatsApp, Facebook and LinkedIn, however, keep a link's preview cached for days: whoever already saw it keeps seeing the old one. To refresh it:

• Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp: open Meta's Sharing Debugger, paste the link and press Scrape Again. WhatsApp may take a little longer to catch up; a link never shared before (for example with ?v=2 at the end) shows the new preview right away.
• LinkedIn: Post Inspector, paste the link and press Inspect.

Email track

1. Press Set up the sender and type the domain. The sender is notification@mail.yourschool.com: the part before the @ can change, but not to "no-reply" (recipients must be able to reply). The mail subdomain changes only from Change the subdomain (advanced), and never to the root of the domain.
2. Add the _aladia TXT (if it isn't there yet).
3. The domain needs a DMARC record, at least p=none. If it's missing, the flow shows the exact _dmarc TXT to add.
4. After saving and the ownership, the three DKIM and SPF CNAMEs show up (em…, s1._domainkey.mail, s2._domainkey.mail): add them like the others.

The track shows three steps: Ownership, DKIM and SPF and DMARC. When they're all in place the track says Live and the Owner gets an email. Then Send a test email sends a real email from notification@mail.yourschool.com, to see how it arrives.

If the track says Coming soon, Aladia's sending account is still being activated: the sender is saved and starts by itself when ready. Meanwhile emails go out from notification@aladia.io with your academy name.

Checks and notices

• Aladia checks again by itself: every 10 minutes for the first two hours, then hourly, then daily. Check again does it now, up to 10 times an hour. DNS changes can take a few hours to show up.
• Every day Aladia checks that the site records are still there. If the domain stops pointing to Aladia it stays live for 7 days; then the track says Needs fixing and the Owner gets an email; after 30 days the domain is disconnected and links go back to app.aladia.io.
• If the email records stop being valid, emails go back to Aladia right away.

Removing

• Site: ⋯ > Remove the custom domain disconnects the site domain and the ones that redirect; the site goes back to name.aladia.io and signed-in people will have to sign in again. A single domain that redirects is deleted with ⋯ > Delete.
• Email: the bin disconnects the sender.

The ownership stays while the other track uses it. Removing always works, even if the plan changed in the meantime.

Not there yet

• Continue with Google on the custom domain comes in a later release. Until then: email and password.
• With the Site track live, email links (invitations, reset, receipts, lessons) lead to your domain; with the Email track live, password reset, code, welcome and invitations leave from your domain. The other emails (lessons, receipts, cancellations) still leave from notification@aladia.io with the academy name: details in Your academy's emails.