How to Use Custom Domains

Use your own domain to serve the RudderStack Javascript SDK and send events to your own domain.

This guide contains the steps to use your own domain to route the events or proxy the RudderStack JavaScript SDK via your own CDN.

You will need access to your domain’s DNS settings as well as your CDN settings.

The examples in this guide use CloudFront. However, the settings should be similar regardless of your CDN.

Endpoint details

The following table lists the three endpoints to be proxied via your own CDN to route the events:

Endpoint	Description
cdn.rudderlabs.com	Loads the JavaScript SDK.
api.rudderlabs.com	Fetches the source configuration based on your source write key.
<DATA_PLANE_URL>	Required for sending the events to RudderStack.

To use your own domain for these endpoints, you will need to route the traffic through your CDN.

You will incur CDN charges for this traffic if you choose to use your own domain.

For each endpoint, you will need to create a CDN distribution and add a CNAME record in your domain for the distribution domain. This guide shows you how to do that.

Setup for serving the SDK

To serve the JavaScript SDK, start by creating a new distribution. The following sections highlight the required distribution settings.

Origin

Field	Setting
Origin domain	cdn.rudderlabs.com
Protocol	HTTPS Only
HTTPS port	443
Minimum origin SSL protocol	TLSv1
Name	cdn.rudderlabs.com
Enable Origin Shield	No

Default cache behavior settings

Field	Setting
Compress objects automatically	Yes
Viewer protocol policy	Redirect HTTP to HTTPS
Allowed HTTP methods	GET, HEAD, OPTIONS, PUT, POST, PATCH, DELETE
Restrict viewer access	No

Cache key and origin requests

Field	Setting
Cache and origin request settings	Cache policy and origin request policy
Cache policy	CachingOptimized

Click on Create policy and refer to the settings in the Create policy section below.

Additional distribution settings

Field	Setting
Price class	Use all edge locations(best performance)
Alternate domain name(CNAME)	<subdomain.yourdomain.com>
SSL Certificate	Add your custom SSL Certificate. Refer to the Using custom SSL certificates section below for more information.
Supported HTTP versions	HTTP/2
Standard logging	Off
IPv6	On

Finally, click on Create distribution and wait for CloudFront to be deployed, as shown:

Create cache policy settings

Field	Setting
Name	<YOUR_CACHE_POLICY_NAME>
Description	<CACHE_POLICY_DESCRIPTION>

TTL settings

Field	Setting
Minimum TTL	1
Maxmimum TTL	31536000
Default TTL	86400

Cache key settings

Field	Setting
Headers	Include the following headers
Add header	Select Authorization from the dropdown list.
Query strings	None
Cookies	None

Adding CNAME Record to DNS

Once your distribution is deployed, you will need to create a CNAME record in your domain for the subdomain you wish to use, along with the distribution URL.

Name	Value
Subdomain you wish to use (used in the creation of the distribution). This will vary based on your DNS provider but will typically be just the subdomain. For example: for cdn.yourdomain.com you would use cdn.	The CDN URL for the created distribution created. Example: d3jlkfchu4u.cloudfront.net

Serving the SDK

Once the setup and DNS propagation is completed, you will be able to change the SDK URL, as shown:

Before:

 <script src="https://cdn.rudderlabs.com/v1.1/rudder-analytics.min.js"></script>

After:

<script src="https://subdomain.yourdomain.com/v1.1/rudder-analytics.min.js"></script>

If you are using an older version of the JavaScript SDK (v1), refer to the Version Migration Guide to migrate to v1.1.

Setup for sending events

Normally, all the tracked events are sent to RudderStack via your data plane URL. To have events routed through your own domain, you will need to setup a proxy to that and then use your own URL as the data plane URL when initializing the SDK.

Required settings

The settings for sending the events will be the same as the settings for serving the JavaScript SDK, except for the following:

Field	Setting
Origin Domain Name	<DATA_PLANE_URL>
Alternate Domain Names (CNAMEs)	<subdomain.yourdomain.com>

Adding CNAME record to DNS

The settings for the CNAME record will be the same as the settings for serving the JavaScript SDK. You will need to use the newly created distribution domain and the subdomain you set for it.

Sending events

Once the setup and DNS propagation is completed, you can use the newly created URL as the data plane URL when initializing the SDK, as shown:

Before:

rudderanalytics.load( 
  <WRITE_KEY> ,
  "https://hosted.rudderlabs.com"
)

After:

rudderanalytics.load(
  <WRITE_KEY>,
  "https://subdomain.yourdomain.com"
)

You should be able to confirm that the events are routed through your own domain and not the rudderstack.com domain in the network tab of your browser console.

Refer to this JavaScript SDK FAQ for more information on verifying the flow of events.

Setup for fetching source configuration

When the JavaScript SDK is loaded, it uses the source write key to fetch the required configuration from RudderStack. This determines which native SDKs may be needed and which destinations are used.

The call to fetch the source configuration is sent to api.rudderstack.com with the source WRITE_KEY used as an authorization header. For this reason, this distribution will be slightly different as you will need to explicitly whitelist the Authorization header to make sure it is sent along with each request.

Required settings

The settings for sending events will be the same as the settings for serving the JavaScript SDK except for the following:

Field	Setting
Origin Domain Name	api.rudderlabs.com
Alternate Domain Names (CNAMEs)	<subdomain.yourdomain.com>

You will also need to whitelist the Authorization header in Cache key settings by following the steps below:

1. Under Headers, choose Include the following headers from the dropdown.

2. In the Add header field, select Authorization from the list of options.

Adding CNAME record to DNS

The settings for the CNAME record will be the same as the settings for serving the JavaScript SDK. You will need to use the newly created distribution domain and the subdomain you set for it.

Fetching the source configuration

To use a custom URL to fetch the source configuration, add it as an option when loading the JavaScript SDK, as shown:

rudderanalytics.load(
  <SOURCE_WRITE_KEY>,
  "https://hosted.rudderlabs.com",
  {
    configUrl: "https://subdomain.yourdomain.com",
  }
)

Using custom SSL certificates

To use your own domain, you can request or import a SSL certificate with your CDN provider. Note that this is an optional setting.

To use the AWS Certificate Manager with CloudFront, choose the relevant ACM/IAM certificate in the Custom SSL certificate field, as shown:

You can choose your subdomain or use a wildcard domain *.yourdomain.com to set up multiple subdomains.

The AWS Certificate Manager will guide you through the verification by email or DNS TXT records. You will be able to choose your own domain for SSL certificates once verified.

Contact us

For queries on any of the sections covered in this guide, you can contact us or start a conversation in our Slack community.