My domain is not working
Nearly every domain that does not work is one of five things, and Settings → Domains usually names which. Start with what it says.
Read the status first
Each domain in Settings → Domains is in one of four states, with the reason underneath when it is not live:
- Waiting for DNS — the name does not reach Solta yet, or the
TXTrecord that proves it is yours has not been found. - Almost there — DNS is right and the certificate is being issued.
- Live — done.
- Not working — it was live, and the name has stopped pointing at Solta.
We check every five minutes on our own; Check now checks straight away after you have changed a record.
The proxy must be off
The most common cause by far. If your DNS is at Cloudflare, the record pointing at Solta has to be DNS only — the grey cloud, not the orange one. Proxied, the name reaches Cloudflare instead of us, and we cannot issue a certificate for a name we never see. The status says so: the name “points at Solta, but reaches” other addresses.
Cloudflare's error 1014 (“CNAME Cross-User Banned”) on the domain means the same thing from the other side: a proxied record pointing at a name outside your Cloudflare account. Turn the proxy off on that record and it goes away. Other DNS hosts with a proxy or “web forwarding” feature need it off too.
A bare domain: CNAME or A and AAAA
A subdomain such as tools.acme.com takes the CNAME shown. A bare domain, acme.com itself, is where DNS hosts differ: Cloudflare accepts a CNAME there, and many registrars refuse one. If yours refuses it, add the A and AAAA records shown under it instead — not both a CNAME and addresses.
Remove any other A or AAAA record on the same name, such as a registrar's parking page. Every address the name has must be Solta's, because a visitor's browser and the certificate authority each pick one, and the one that isn't ours fails.
The record points somewhere else
“Points at … not …” means the record exists with another value — often an older one left from a previous host, or the name typed into the wrong field. At most DNS hosts the name field takes only the part before your domain (tools, or @ for the domain itself); typing tools.acme.com there creates tools.acme.com.acme.com. Copy each field from the settings page as shown.
“Doesn't point anywhere yet” means no record was found at all. Changes can take minutes to a few hours to reach everyone, depending on the record's TTL; if it is still missing after that, check the record was saved under the zone that is actually in use — the nameservers your registrar lists.
Live, but not in my browser
If the domain says Live and another device opens it, your browser is remembering the old answer. A domain that used to redirect somewhere else is the usual case: browsers keep a permanent redirect for a long time. Try a private window; if that works, clear the site's data for that domain, or wait. Your computer's own DNS cache can hold the old address for the length of the old record's TTL as well.
The certificate is issued on the first visit after the domain is live, which takes a few seconds. A certificate warning on that very first request is that, and goes on reload.
Setting one up from the start: Your own domain. Still stuck? Contact support with the domain and what the status says.