Help and Status on the same base domain

The most common Custom Domains pattern: both your help center and your status page on subdomains of your main brand domain. Customers see help.example.com for support content and status.example.com for live system health — both clearly part of example.com, both running through Atender.

This recipe walks through both setups in parallel so you can do them in one sitting.

What you’ll end up with

• help.example.com → your Atender Knowledge Base portal
• status.example.com → your Atender Status page
• Both serving HTTPS with TLS certificates that auto-renew
• Both managed from the same Settings → Custom Domains page
• The default Atender URLs still work as backups but customers see your branded domains

Before you start

• DNS access to your root domain (in this example, example.com).
• A role with the Custom Domains permission in Atender.
• Plan to spend 15–20 minutes total, plus DNS propagation time per record.

Step 1 — Add both domains in Atender

Open Settings → Custom Domains and add the two entries one after the other.

Entry 1 — the help center:

1. Click Add domain.
2. Hostname: help.example.com.
3. Product: Knowledge Base.
4. Save.

Entry 2 — the status page:

1. Click Add domain again.
2. Hostname: status.example.com.
3. Product: Status page.
4. Save.

You now have two rows in the list, each with Awaiting DNS status, each showing its own set of DNS records to add.

Step 2 — Add the DNS records for both

Open your DNS provider for example.com. Treat the two subdomains as completely independent — they each have their own record set returned by Atender.

For each domain in turn:

1. In Atender, expand the domain row to see the DNS records.
2. For each record (typically one A record plus one or two DCV records — TXT or CNAME), use the Copy buttons to grab the Name and Value.
3. In your DNS provider, create the record at the matching name with the matching value and type.

When you finish, your DNS provider has the records for both help.example.com and status.example.com in place.

A few tips for doing them together:

• Use the same TTL across both. 600 seconds (10 minutes) keeps iteration fast while you wait for propagation.
• If you’re on Cloudflare, every record for both hostnames goes to DNS only (gray cloud), never proxied. The records use the same setting; do them all at once.
• Don’t reuse a record name. Each subdomain has its own set — help.* records aren’t shared with status.* records. Add every one.

Step 3 — Watch both reach Active

Back in Settings → Custom Domains, both rows progress through Awaiting DNS → Issuing certificate → Active independently. They don’t need to be done in order; they advance as their own DNS records become visible.

Use Re-check DNS on either row to push it along — it’s per-domain and rate-limited to about every 30 seconds.

Both rows typically reach Active within 10–15 minutes once DNS is in place.

Step 4 — Test

• https://help.example.com/ — Your help center home, with HTTPS
• https://help.example.com/articles/<some-slug> — The specific article, same as on the default tenant URL
• https://status.example.com/ — Your status page with current incidents and components

If either URL gives a certificate warning, the cert hasn’t finished issuing — check the row status in Atender, wait, and retry.

Step 5 — Link to them from your product

The point of branded domains is to use them, not to hide them. Make sure:

• Your in-product “Help” link points to help.example.com.
• Your status page link in marketing pages, support replies, and uptime notifications uses status.example.com.
• Your status widget embed (if you use one) is updated to reference status.example.com so the embed loads from your domain too.

The old Atender tenant URLs still work, but every reference you control should point at your branded domains now.

Variations on this recipe

• Different root domain for each. If your help center sits under support.example.com and your status page sits under status.example.co (different TLD), the setup is identical — add both as separate domains, each with their own records at their respective providers. Atender doesn’t require the hostnames to share a root.
• Multiple hostnames for the same product. You can connect more than one hostname to the same product. For example, help.example.com AND support.example.com both serving the help center. Add each as its own row.
• Migrating from an old setup. If you previously had a different vendor at help.example.com, the cutover is just swapping the DNS records. Old records → Atender records. Once DNS propagates, requests start hitting Atender. There’s no flip in Atender itself.

See also

• What are Custom Domains?
• Add a custom domain
• Troubleshoot a failed domain