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Custom Domains

CareLaunch offers two separate ways to give your practice a branded web address:

  • Claim a managed portal subdomain (your-practice.launch.care) — a self-serve option for solo-tier practices. No DNS work required. See below.
  • Bring your own domain with self-managed DNS — for practices that want to point their own domain (e.g. portal.yourclinic.com) at CareLaunch. See Managing Your Own DNS below.

These are independent. Most solo practices only need the managed subdomain.

🌐 Claiming a Managed Portal Subdomain (Solo tier)​

Solo-tier practices can claim and manage a managed portal subdomain — a ready-to-use web address of the form your-practice.launch.care that your patients use to reach your registration and portal. There's nothing to configure in DNS; CareLaunch hosts and secures the address for you.

ℹ️ This self-serve option is available to Solo-tier practices. Team, Professional, and Enterprise practices are routed to Support to set up their address (or can use self-managed DNS below).

✅ Checking availability​

Before you commit to an address, CareLaunch checks whether it's available and tells you why if it isn't. An address may be unavailable because it's:

  • Already in use by another practice,
  • On the reserved list (see below), or
  • Temporarily held after being recently released by another practice.

You'll see a live "available" / "not available" result as you type, so you can settle on an address before claiming it.

🔤 Address format rules​

A portal subdomain must:

  • Be 3–30 characters long.
  • Use only lowercase letters (a–z), digits (0–9), and hyphens (-).
  • Start and end with a letter or digit (no leading or trailing hyphen).
  • Contain no consecutive hyphens (--).
  • Use standard ASCII characters only (no accented or internationalized characters).
  • Not be entirely digits.

Some words are also blocked as reserved — this includes system names (such as admin, api, www, support, portal, status), the CareLaunch brand, and well-known healthcare brand names. Reserved and otherwise-unavailable names are simply reported as "not available."

🔁 Changing your address later​

Your first portal address — the one you pick during setup — is free to claim. After that, a change policy protects your brand and patient trust by preventing rapid subdomain cycling:

  • You get one free rename after the initial address.
  • Once that free rename is used, further changes are subject to a cooldown period (currently 90 days) before you can change again.
  • When you move off an address, the old one is held for a period (currently 180 days) so it can't immediately be taken by another practice. You can always re-claim your own previous address during that window.

You can claim or change your portal address during onboarding (the "Claim your portal URL" step), from the Launch Your Practice hub on your Home screen, or later from your instance's Settings. Your practice keeps its current address until you confirm a new one.

💬 Need an address that's reserved, or need to change more often than the policy allows? Contact [email protected].

🔧 Managing Your Own DNS​

If you'd prefer to retain full control over your domain and DNS records, no problem, CareLaunch fully supports self-managed DNS. This allows you to point specific subdomains to our infrastructure while keeping all other domain settings (email, security, etc.) under your control.

✅ When to Use This Option​

Self-managing DNS is ideal if:

  • Your domain is used for multiple purposes beyond CareLaunch (e.g. corporate website, email, other apps).
  • Your IT or devops team prefers to maintain DNS configurations directly.
  • You’re working within strict compliance or security guidelines that prevent delegation.

🛠️ How to Configure DNS Records for CareLaunch​

For each environment or app instance hosted by CareLaunch, you'll need to create a CNAME record that points your subdomain to our load balancer. Reach out to your CareLaunch representative for the specific load balancer address.

CNAME Record Format​

Type:    CNAME  
Name:    [subdomain]  (e.g. blue, green, red, zinc, copper.)  
Value:   CARELAUNCH_LOADBALANCER_ADDRESS  
TTL:     300

💡 Example:
To route intake.care.launch to CareLaunch, you'd configure:

Type:    CNAME  
Name:    intake  
Value:   CARELAUNCH_LOADBALANCER_ADDRESS

Repeat this process for each subdomain you’d like CareLaunch to manage.

🔒 SSL / HTTPS Configuration (Certificate Validation)​

To enable secure HTTPS for each subdomain requires domain owners to validate each subdomain via DNS.

Here’s the process:

  1. CareLaunch requests an SSL certificate for each subdomain.
  2. We’ll provide you with a TXT record for each subdomain to prove domain ownership.
  3. You create the TXT record in your DNS settings as provided.
  4. Once the record is verified (typically within minutes), the certificate will be active and HTTPS will be enforced.

🚨 You must keep the TXT record in place for as long as the cert is active. If it's removed, the cert may fail to renew.

🔁 Need to Update or Add More Subdomains Later?​

No problem, just let us know. We’ll generate the necessary CNAME and TXT validation records for any future additions or changes.

💬 Still Have Questions?​

We’re happy to assist or review your DNS configuration. Contact [email protected] or your implementation contact for direct help.