Overview

Giving your customers a seamless experience is important. If you want to host your Help Center on your own subdomain because you don't want your customers to feel they are on another website when submitting tickets, it can be done in Kayako. You can configure Kayako to work with a custom domain. So instead of pointing your customers to a default Kayako URL, like[yourcompany].kayako.com, you can host your Help Center at your own subdomain, likesupport.[yourcompany].com.

 

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Diagnosis

You can map your own domain name to the Kayako domain for a specific Brand. This is called host mapping and involves some DNS configuration work. 

To start using a custom domain, you'll need to do a little bit of setup with your hosting provider, and then add the details for the domain to Kayako. If you don't do this, end-users might get the following error when trying to access your custom domain:

"Either this Kayako instance does not exist, or we are facing temporary problems. Please try again in a few minutes."

Also, since SSL is required to run Kayako securely, you'll need an SSL certificate for your domain. Kayako SSL certificate is not valid for custom subdomains as it only covers all '.kayako.com' instances.

NOTES:

• If you're running multiple brands from your Kayako, you can set up custom domains for each brand.
• If you are adding an Email channel to your new Custom Domain and would like to use that channel as the default channel for sending responses through Kayako, you will need to communicate to your customers to start sending emails to that Email channel.

 

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Prerequisites

• To add a custom domain in Kayako, you will need an administrator account with the 'Manage brands' permission.
• To associate a custom domain to your Help Center, you'll need administrative access to the domain you want to use, as well as an SSL certificate associated with that domain.
• If you're updating or replacing an SSL certificate, we recommend doing this at least 24 hours before your current one expires to ensure a smooth changeover.
• You need to get a new certificate for your subdomain, or get a new wildcard certificate to cover your entire domain (You cannot reuse your main domain's SSL certificate unless it is a wildcard certificate).

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Solution

To add a custom domain:

1. First, you'll need to sign in to your domain host and navigate to the DNS records for your site.
2. Here, you should be able to create or select the subdomain you want to use for your Kayako Help Center.
3. You'll also want to set the TTL (Time To Live) for your domain as low as it will go. This will help the changes to propagate more quickly.
4. Next, you’ll need to create a new CName record to point your custom subdomain to your Kayako support domain. The steps for this process will vary, depending on your host, but the new CName record should look something like this:
   • Record Name: support.[yourcompany].com
   • CName Host: [yourcompany].kayako.com
5. Once you’ve created the new record, it can take 24-48 hours for the DNS changes to propagate. If you’ve set the TTL as low as you can that will help speed things up.
6. Before signing out of your domain host, find your SSL certificate, and make a local copy of the certificate as well as the private key.

   • NOTE: The private key needs to be in PEM (Privacy Enhanced Mail) format, otherwise, the certificate will not be accepted.

     -----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----
     encrypted text
     -----END PRIVATE KEY-----

7. Once your DNS changes have propagated, then you're ready to make the switch in Kayako. Sign in to Kayako and go to the admin area.
   • NOTE: There is no definitive way to tell when propagation is complete for you as it depends on several factors but you may use online DNS checkers in order to track if the DNS record information has propagated.
8. Click Brands in the sidebar.
9. Hover over the brand you want to add a custom domain for and click the Edit link that appears.
   
   
10. Scroll down to the Custom Domain field and add the subdomain that you've set up to point to Kayako.
11. Click the Check DNS configuration button to make sure your changes have finished propagating.
12. Next, in the 'Custom SSL' section, click the Set certificate button.
    
    
13. Paste in your SSL certificate followed by your private key.
14. When you're done, click the Save button to start displaying your Help Center at your custom domain.
    
    

 

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Confirmation

Once you're done configuring your custom domain, your Help Center will be hosted at your own subdomain, e.g.,support.[yourcompany].cominstead of the default[yourcompany].kayako.com. So if your customers visit your custom domain, they will be redirected to your Kayako Help Center.

 

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