An academy with your brand and your domain: how white label works and where it stops

Your learners did not come to get to know a platform's name. They came for you. If they land on someone else's address, with someone else's logo and a welcome email from a sender they do not recognise, some of the trust you built gets lost along the way. White label exists so that what the learner sees is your academy, not the tool you built it with.

This article explains what can be customised, how to connect your own domain, which plan includes it and, honestly, what still leaves a trace. If you are thinking of launching your project without a technical team, it is one of the pieces of launch your academy without a tech team.

What an academy is

In LearnSuite each academy is a separate space with its own subdomain, courses, learners and look. What another instructor publishes in their academy does not appear in yours. If someone visits an address that does not match any academy, they get a page-not-found error: they are never shown someone else's academy.

What you can customise

From your academy dashboard you can adjust:

• Logo in light and dark versions.
• Favicon (the browser tab icon).
• Colours: primary, accent and surface.
• Fonts.
• Hide the "Powered by" notice of the platform.
• Your own email sender, so that messages arrive under your name.
• Legal details, social networks and authentication domain.
• Home page design templates, editable with your content.

You do not need to touch code. Nor is there a fully free visual editor where you drag anything anywhere: you work on home page templates with your content. If you are looking for a completely free page builder, this is not the tool, and you should know that before deciding.

Connecting your domain, step by step

To make your academy appear at an address of your own (for example, academy.yourbrand.com), the process is:

1. Add the domain from the domain section of the dashboard. You can register up to 3 domains per academy.
2. Create a CNAME record in your domain's DNS pointing to the platform address shown in the dashboard (for a root domain with no subdomain an A record is used).
3. Create a TXT verification record with the value the dashboard gives you. It proves the domain is yours.
4. Wait for verification. The platform checks the DNS on its own. DNS changes can take from minutes to a few hours to propagate.
5. Certificate. Once the domain is verified, the platform sets up secure access and obtains the certificate on demand. You do not have to buy or install it.

If you have never touched DNS, the delicate part is steps 2 and 3. Domain providers have a DNS records section where they are created with three fields (type, name, value). Take ten minutes and copy the values exactly.

A practical tip

Use a subdomain (academy., courses., learn.) instead of your main domain. That way your current website stays where it is and you risk nothing while setting up the academy.

What the learner sees

The learner arrives at your address, sees your logo and colours, receives messages from your sender and does not see the platform notice. Google sign-in stays within your academy's domain, so it does not send them to an unfamiliar site halfway through the process.

Honest limits

This is where white label is less white than its name suggests.

• Google sign-in is not 100 % trace-free. Google's consent screen may still show details that are not your brand. A separate authentication space for each academy is still to be built, and until then we cannot promise you a completely invisible sign-in experience. If your audience is very sensitive to this detail, using email and password sign-in avoids it.
• There is no free editor. You customise templates, colours and texts; you do not design pages from scratch.
• The domain depends on your DNS. If your provider limits the records you can create, or another service is using that name, you will have to sort it out with them.
• Verification is not instant. Allow for propagation time; do not announce the address until you have opened it yourself from a phone while logged out.
• It does not replace your brand website. An academy is a shop and a classroom, not a corporate site with a blog and free-form pages.

And a note on protection: white label changes what the learner sees, not what defends your content. That is what protected video and purchase licences are for.

Which plan includes it

White label with your own domain is a feature of the Institution plan, which costs €697 a month on annual billing (€836.40 paying month to month) and includes up to 2000 active learners and 5 zones. It is also in Enterprise, which starts at €1,990 a month.

The Professional plan (€297 a month on annual billing) does not include white label as a plan feature. All plans have a 14-day trial. See the pricing page for current details.

Is it worth it?

Yes, if:

• You sell on your name and your brand is what people pay for.
• You work with corporate clients, schools or organisations that expect to see their own identity.
• You have several training lines and want separate spaces.

Maybe not yet, if:

• You are validating an idea and your priority is publishing the first course. Start with the basic setup and leave white label for when there are sales.
• You do not have a domain or will not be able to change its DNS.

To decide between your own academy and selling inside a marketplace, see own platform or marketplace.

Summary

White label turns your academy into a space that looks like you: your address, your logo, your colours, your sender. Connecting the domain is five steps and a little patience with DNS. In return you have to accept a couple of limits (Google sign-in is not completely invisible, design is done on templates) and a plan above the basic one.