Custom Domains

Connect your own domain name to your store so customers see your brand — not a FirearmCart subdomain. Setup is a single CNAME record at your domain registrar. No nameserver changes, no DNS takeover.

Why Use a Custom Domain?

  • Professional appearance — your own brand, not FirearmCart's
  • Customer trust — customers recognize your domain
  • SEO benefits — build authority on your own domain
  • Keep your existing DNS — email, blog, redirects, and other records stay exactly where they are
  • Multiple domains supported — connect as many as you want and pick one as primary

Connecting Your Domain

What You'll Need

  • A domain you own (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare, Google Domains, etc.)
  • Access to your domain's DNS settings at that registrar

Step 1: Add Your Domain

  1. Go to Settings → Domains
  2. Click Connect existing domain
  3. Enter your domain (e.g. shop.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com)
  4. Click Connect domain

You'll immediately see the DNS record you need to add at your registrar.

Step 2: Add the CNAME at Your Registrar

At your DNS provider, add a single CNAME record:

Type Host Points to
CNAME shop.yourdomain.com (or @ for the root) stores.firearmcart.com

That's the entire DNS setup. Save the record at your registrar.

Using Cloudflare for your DNS? Make sure the proxy status is DNS only (grey cloud, not orange). Proxied CNAMEs will prevent verification.

Step 3: Wait for Verification

FirearmCart polls Cloudflare in the background and updates your domain's DNS Status automatically:

  1. Verifying DNS — waiting for the CNAME to propagate (usually a few minutes)
  2. SSL pending — CNAME found, SSL certificate being issued
  3. Connected — domain is live and serving your store

You can hit Refresh status from the domain's action menu if you don't want to wait for the next background poll. Full verification typically completes within 5–30 minutes.

Understanding the Two Status Columns

The domains table shows two independent status columns:

  • DNS Status — the state of your DNS/SSL setup at Cloudflare. Values: Connected, Verifying DNS, SSL pending, Disconnected. You don't control this directly; it reflects what the internet sees.
  • Status — a merchant-controlled on/off switch. Values: Active, Inactive. Use it to take a domain offline without removing it (see Activating & Deactivating below).

Multiple Domains & Choosing a Primary

You can connect as many domains as you want to the same store. One of them is always marked Primary:

  • The primary domain is the canonical URL customers see in links, emails, and shared pages.
  • Non-primary domains still work — any visitor hitting them is 301-redirected to the primary.
  • The first domain you add is automatically set as primary.
  • Use Set as primary on any verified domain's row to switch.

The primary must be verified before it can be set — this prevents a half-configured domain from taking over your store's public identity.

Activating & Deactivating

Any connected domain can be activated or deactivated without removing it.

What Deactivating Does

  • The domain stops serving your storefront — visitors are redirected to firearmcart.com.
  • DNS and SSL setup stay intact at Cloudflare — you can reactivate any time with one click.
  • Branded email records for the domain (if any) remain in place; they're just unused while the domain is inactive.
  • The primary flag is preserved, but a deactivated primary is ignored for outgoing email sender identity and canonical URL generation.

Why You'd Deactivate a Domain

The most common reason: SEO duplicate-content prevention. If you own several domains (brand.com, brand.net, brand.store, etc.) all CNAMEd to your store, having them all serve the same storefront hurts your search rankings because Google sees identical content on multiple URLs.

Setting one as primary and deactivating the others means:

  • Search engines crawl only your primary domain's content
  • The other domains become "parked" redirects to the FirearmCart marketing site, which Google won't flag as duplicate content
  • You can still reactivate any of them later (e.g. to use as a campaign-specific landing domain)

How to Activate or Deactivate

  1. Go to Settings → Domains
  2. Open the action menu on the domain's row
  3. Click Deactivate domain or Activate domain

The change takes effect immediately.

Browser cache note: Once a browser has received a redirect from a domain, it may cache that redirect aggressively. If you're testing the change and the old behavior persists, try an incognito window or clear your browser cache.

Branded Email (Optional)

By default, transactional emails (order confirmations, receipts, etc.) send from a shared FirearmCart sending address with your store name as the display name:

Acme Guns <[email protected]>

Deliverability is perfect out of the box — no setup needed. Replies go to your store email.

If you want emails to come from your own domain (e.g. [email protected]), enable branded email:

Setting Up Branded Email

  1. On your primary domain's row in Settings → Domains, open the action menu and click Set up branded email
  2. Three CNAME records are generated and displayed — copy each into your DNS provider
  3. Make sure the records are DNS only if your DNS is on Cloudflare (grey cloud)
  4. Once the records have propagated, click Verify
  5. The domain's "Branded email" badge turns green — your outgoing emails now send from your own domain

How the From Address Is Chosen

  • If your Store Email setting matches your primary domain (e.g. [email protected]), emails send from [email protected] — matching the inbox you've set up.
  • Otherwise, emails send from [email protected] (the most recognizable default for ecommerce).
  • Replies always go to your configured Store Email, regardless of the sending address.

Turning Branded Email Off

Open the same modal and click Disable. The records are cleaned up on both sides and your emails revert to the shared FirearmCart sender. No downtime.

Only the primary domain's branded email setup is used. If you have a non-primary domain with branded email configured, it won't affect outgoing mail until you make that domain primary.

Removing a Domain

To disconnect a domain:

  1. Go to Settings → Domains
  2. Open the action menu on the domain's row → Remove domain
  3. Confirm removal

Removing a domain:

  • Disconnects it from your store (the CNAME at your registrar becomes inert)
  • Cleans up any branded email records that were set up for it

You can't remove the primary domain while other domains exist. Set another domain as primary first, then remove it.

Troubleshooting

DNS Status Still Shows "Verifying DNS"

  • Confirm the CNAME at your registrar matches exactly — stores.firearmcart.com (no trailing dot, no typos)
  • If your DNS is on Cloudflare, ensure the proxy is off (grey cloud)
  • Use dig yourdomain.com CNAME or whatsmydns.net to verify propagation
  • Click Refresh status in the action menu to re-check immediately

Site Shows "Not Secure" or a Connection Error

  • SSL takes a few minutes after DNS verification — wait up to an hour
  • Clear your browser cache / try incognito

Branded Email Verification Fails

  • Reopen the modal — record hosts are fetched live from our email provider, so they always match what's expected
  • Make sure all three CNAMEs are DNS only (not proxied)
  • Run dig on each host to confirm it resolves all the way through
  • DNS can take up to an hour; the background verifier will keep trying

Unknown Domain Redirects to firearmcart.com

This happens when someone visits a domain whose CNAME points at stores.firearmcart.com but either isn't configured in your store, or has been deactivated. Add or reactivate the domain in Settings → Domains to restore the storefront.