A custom domain — book.yourproperty.com instead of a generic Ownia URL — makes your booking page look and feel like your own website, and it’s worth doing before you start sending traffic to it from ads, social, or search.
Where to connect a domain
Go to Web Store → Store Settings and find the Custom domain section.
Choosing a domain
Enter a subdomain such as www.yourdomain.com or book.yourdomain.com. A bare root domain (just yourdomain.com, with nothing in front of it) isn’t supported — you’ll need a subdomain, which is also generally the safer and more flexible choice for a DNS setup anyway. If you use www, you can still send visitors who type your bare domain to your booking page — see the last section of this article.
Click Configure. Ownia will generate the DNS records you need.
Adding the DNS records
You’ll be shown a CNAME record (a Name/Value pair) and, in most cases, a TXT record used to verify you actually own the domain. Log in to wherever you manage DNS for your domain — this is usually your domain registrar (GoDaddy, Namecheap, etc.) or a DNS provider like Cloudflare — and add both records exactly as shown.
A few things that save time here:
- DNS changes can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to propagate, depending on your provider.
- Don’t delete or edit unrelated existing DNS records for your domain — only add the new ones Ownia gives you.
- Double-check you copied the CNAME target value exactly; a trailing character or typo is the most common reason verification doesn’t go through.
Disconnecting a previous website
If your domain was already connected to a website — built with GoDaddy, Wix, Squarespace or a similar website builder — disconnect it from that website first. Otherwise the old website keeps answering for your domain, even when your DNS records are correct: verification stays pending, and visitors see the old site or a “Coming soon” page instead of your booking page.
With GoDaddy, for example, open your website in Websites + Marketing and remove your domain from it, or delete the website if you no longer need it. Keep the CNAME and TXT records you added for Ownia.
Verifying the domain
Once you’ve added the records, come back to the Custom domain section and click Check now. If DNS hasn’t finished propagating yet, wait a bit and check again — there’s no need to reconfigure anything in the meantime.
While your domain is pending, Ownia shows the reason reported by our domain provider, if there is one, under the pending status. If verification hasn’t gone through after a few hours, check that reason first.
Once verified, your Web Store is reachable at your own domain, and it’s what you should use in any marketing, ads, or listings you control going forward — including the direct booking links you share instead of routing guests through Airbnb or Booking.com.
Redirecting your bare domain
Your booking page is connected to the subdomain you entered, for example www.yourdomain.com. Visitors who type just yourdomain.com won’t reach it: they’ll see whatever your registrar shows for that address, often a parking page.
To fix this, set up forwarding at your registrar from yourdomain.com to https://www.yourdomain.com. Choose a permanent (301) redirect, and don’t enable “forward with masking”. With GoDaddy, this is under your domain’s DNS settings → Forwarding. Don’t change the www CNAME record while doing this.