How to Redirect Your Domain After Shutting Down Your Product

When you shut down your product, your domain should redirect somewhere useful. Here's how to set that up, regardless of your technical setup.

The options

There are three main approaches to redirecting a shut-down domain:

1. DNS-level redirect (CNAME or A record) — fastest, simplest if you're using a service like ExitPage.one
2. Web server redirect — full control, requires maintaining a server
3. Static hosting with a redirect — free, easy, reliable

Let's walk through each.

Option 1: CNAME redirect to a shutdown page service

If you're using ExitPage.one or a similar service, this is the simplest path.

At your domain registrar or DNS provider:

1. Log in to your DNS management dashboard (Cloudflare, Namecheap, GoDaddy, Route 53, etc.)
2. Find or create a CNAME record for your root domain or www subdomain
3. Point it to myapp.exitpage.one

Example CNAME record:

Type:  CNAME
Name:  www
Value: myapp.exitpage.one
TTL:   Auto (or 3600)

For root domain (@) pointing: Most DNS providers don't support CNAME for root domains. Use one of these alternatives:

• Cloudflare: Use their "CNAME flattening" feature — add a CNAME for @
• Other providers: Use an ALIAS or ANAME record if supported, or redirect the root to www first

DNS propagation

After updating your DNS records, changes can take up to 48 hours to fully propagate worldwide. Usually it's faster — 15 minutes to a few hours with Cloudflare. During propagation, some visitors may still see your old site.

Option 2: Web server redirect (if you're maintaining a server)

If your product ran on a server you control and you're keeping it running temporarily, you can set up a 301 redirect at the web server level.

Nginx

server {
    listen 80;
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name myapp.com www.myapp.com;

    return 301 https://myapp.exitpage.one$request_uri;
}

Apache

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName myapp.com
    Redirect permanent / https://myapp.exitpage.one/
</VirtualHost>

Caddy

myapp.com {
    redir https://myapp.exitpage.one{uri} permanent
}

A 301 redirect (permanent) tells search engines that the move is permanent. This is what you want — it passes any SEO authority from your old domain to the destination and tells crawlers to update their indexes.

Option 3: Static hosting with redirect

If you want to keep things simple without maintaining a server:

Cloudflare Pages + redirect rule

1. Deploy any static file to Cloudflare Pages
2. Add a bulk redirect rule: myapp.com/* → https://myapp.exitpage.one/$1

Netlify

Create a _redirects file in your static site root:

/*    https://myapp.exitpage.one/:splat    301

Vercel

Create a vercel.json:

{
  "redirects": [
    {
      "source": "/(.*)",
      "destination": "https://myapp.exitpage.one/$1",
      "permanent": true
    }
  ]
}

All three platforms have free tiers that are more than sufficient for serving redirects.

Handling subdomains

If your product had multiple subdomains (app.myapp.com, api.myapp.com, docs.myapp.com), you need to handle each one:

• app.myapp.com → redirect to your main shutdown page
• api.myapp.com → redirect to a specific section of your shutdown page that explains the API is gone, or return a JSON error with a link to the shutdown notice
• docs.myapp.com → redirect to your main page or archive the docs somewhere (like GitHub)

Don't let subdomains expire and become dangling CNAME records — they can be hijacked.

The SEO consideration

If your product had any SEO authority, a permanent 301 redirect from your old domain to wherever your shutdown page lives will pass some of that authority along. This isn't a major concern for most shutdowns, but it's worth doing correctly.

Make sure your exit page has basic SEO metadata (title, description, canonical URL) so search engines understand what the page is and can update their indexes appropriately.

ExitPage.one makes the destination easy. Create your exit page in five minutes — then just point your domain there.