BOARDHERALDDocs
// platform.custom_domains

Custom domains & white-label

Run BoardHerald on your own domain, with your logo, colours, and email branding. Every tenant starts on a shared subdomain; most eventually graduate to full white-label.

Three layers of rebrand

"White-label" on BoardHerald spans three independent layers. You turn them on in any order; you don't have to do all three to look legitimate.

1. Branding (visible everywhere)

  • App name — replaces "BoardHerald" in the navbar, browser tab title, and email subjects.
  • Logo — PNG/SVG upload. Shown in the navbar and on email headers.
  • Favicon — independent upload for the browser tab icon.
  • Colour theme — pick one of the built-in presets (Gold Rains, Professional, Matrix, Apple) or drop to the custom editor which exposes colour slots (primary, accent, success, danger, surface, muted, etc.) with hex pickers.
  • Custom CSS — paste your own rules if the colour slots don't cover everything. Scoped to your tenant only. Power users only.
  • Email chrome — tenant-specific logo height and header padding for branded email notifications.

All of the above go under Settings → Branding. Takes effect immediately for you and propagates within seconds for your members.

2. Custom domain

By default, your tenant lives on the shared platform host app.boardherald.com — your sign-in scopes you to your own organization, so the same hostname serves every non-whitelabel tenant cleanly. Upgrading to a tier that includes a custom domain lets you move the address bar to your own hostname (e.g. board.acme.com) in four steps:

  1. Open Settings → Custom domain. Enter the hostname you want (e.g. board.acme.com).
  2. BoardHerald displays a CNAME target for you to add to your DNS. Copy it.
  3. Add the CNAME at your DNS provider:
dns
board.acme.com.   IN   CNAME   app.boardherald.com.
  1. Come back to BoardHerald and hit Verify. BoardHerald provisions an SSL certificate (via Cloudflare Custom Hostnames) and, once DNS has propagated, flips the status to Active. Typical time: 5–30 minutes depending on your DNS TTL.

Once active, your custom hostname board.acme.com is the canonical address for your tenant — new email links, magic-link sign-ins, and the URL members see in the address bar all point there. The shared platform host app.boardherald.com keeps working for any member who lands on it directly (their session still resolves to your organization), so nothing breaks during the rollover.

SSL comes included
You don't provision an SSL certificate yourself. BoardHerald handles it via Cloudflare. Status polling on the Custom domain panel shows DNS pending → Verifying → Active. If it sticks on DNS pending for more than an hour, your DNS likely isn't propagating — double-check the CNAME on dnschecker.org.

3. Email domain

By default, email notifications come from noreply@boardherald.com with a reply-to matching the sender in your tenant. You can move the actual sending domain to yours — so your board members see board@acme.com in their inbox, no "boardherald" anywhere.

Setup under Settings → Branding → Email domain:

  1. Enter the domain you want to send from.
  2. BoardHerald shows you the SPF, DKIM, and verification CNAME records to add to your DNS.
  3. Add them and hit Verify. Status polling tracks each record independently — so you can diagnose which one is wrong if verification fails.
  4. Once all three are green, your tenant sends email from your domain. Existing queued emails finish on the old domain; new ones switch immediately.
Email deliverability is a whole discipline
SPF + DKIM don't guarantee your mail lands in the inbox — spam filters also look at sending history, domain age, volume patterns, and dozens of heuristics. If you're moving to a freshly-registered domain, warm it up for a few days before routing all your board mail through it. Ask us for guidance if you're unsure.

When the full white-label matters

Usually: when a portfolio company wants their board to feel like their own product, not like a tool someone bought. Also: when an outside law firm runs BoardHerald on behalf of a client and needs the surface to look like the firm, not like a third-party SaaS. Also: when fundraising — a custom domain and clean email signals seriousness.

It doesn't matter for early-stage pre-seed boards where everyone knows everyone. Start on the subdomain; upgrade when it starts mattering.