Putting Your Portal on Your Own Domain

You can run on a Pental subdomain, which is live immediately and needs no DNS, or on your own hostname, which is what clients should see. The choice is not permanent: you can move to your own domain later, or switch back.

Pick the hostname

Most firms use something like portal.yourdomain.com. A subdomain is the simpler case because it takes a CNAME. A root domain works too, but root domains cannot use a CNAME, so it takes an A record instead. The setup screen shows you exactly which record type, name and target to add for the hostname you typed, so there is nothing to work out.

Add the record

The screen has step-by-step instructions for the common registrars, including Cloudflare, GoDaddy, Namecheap, IONOS, 123 Reg, Squarespace, Wix, Vercel and Route 53, with a link straight into the right page of your own DNS dashboard. Add the record exactly as shown, then leave the page open: it checks on its own and moves on when the record appears.

On Cloudflare, click the orange cloud so it turns grey (DNS only). Left orange, the record is proxied, verification never completes, and nothing in the error will tell you that is why.

When it does not verify

• An old record on the same name. Delete any existing A, AAAA or CNAME on that host first. Many providers happily keep both, and the old one wins.
• Proxying still on, which is the Cloudflare case above and the single most common cause.
• Propagation. Most providers are quick, but some take longer than their own documentation claims. The check keeps running.

After it goes live

• Load the portal on the new hostname in a private window and confirm the certificate and your branding.
• Send yourself an invitation and check the links in that email point at your hostname.
• Add the hostname to your own asset inventory. It is production infrastructure carrying client data.
• Tell your clients the address once, in writing, so a lookalike domain in a future phishing attempt has something to fail against.