[WARNINIG] Webflow DNS

I first want to apologize for bringing such a negative vibe on to this forum. I enjoy the Webflow community and platform, and have had very positive experiences here. However, I feel this is something that others need to be aware of due to the very real issues something like this can cause and has caused me.

I set up a new site and bought a domain through Webflow with Godaddy, which was a sub-par experience itself. As you probably know, Webflow gives you the option to set a “default domain”. Apparently the root domain can’t be used as the default domain without causing serious redirect issues. This is absolutely not made apparent enough.

Only after contacting the Webflow team was I able to find an article that details this:

You might wonder why this has me so upset and why it should matter to you, simple fix right? Sure, it’s a simple fix but the consequences of it going unnoticed are VERY HIGH and hard to fix.

The following is based off of my personal experience: If you try to run a Facebook (or Instagram) ad campaign and set your destination URL to one that is throwing an ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error, Facebook will DISABLE your ad account completely for “Circumventing their systems”. Redirecting the listed URL on your ad to another website is a tactic that many affiliate marketing ploys use to advertise schemes that Facebook does not allow. They “wide sweep” bans on accounts caught up in this and the level of the offense is one of the highest in Facebook’s eyes.

Our Facebook ads were our largest channel for client acquisition and the simple fact of having them not run even for one day costs me thousands.

Furthermore, to figure out this was the issue in the first place, I had to find and pay an Ex Facebook employee $500 to diagnose why my ad account was disabled, which is how I discovered this.

The amount of money that i’ve lost due to this simple DNS issue, and the amount of money I will lose is incredibly unfortunate – especially during this time. This will likely cost employees of my company their jobs if we can’t get our Facebook ads back up due to the sheer loss of revenue.

Besides the damage already done, I have a huge headache in front of me to get our ads back up (if I can even do it). Due to the severity of an offense like this when running Facebook ads, they’ll likely “black hole” a domain preventing any ads to be ran towards it in the future.

This is my own fault for trusting Webflow’s systems without doing my own diligence but I hope this post can save others from encountering the same issue.

1 Like

Hello @jackwabbit,

Thanks for sharing this. I’m sorry about what happened to your Facebook account. I hope you can get your Facebook ads back up and running soon. Have you tried support on the Facebook end? or maybe even try to get support from Webflow to contact support at Facebook and explain the situation? It is wishful thinking but it might be worth a try. Another thing that I would advise you to try is to mediate the situation through the Better Business Bureau. I have used them on the past against a big corporation and the result was beneficial to me at no extra cost. Good luck!

2 Likes

Hi @jackwabbit, I am sorry to hear of the troubles with the Facebook, that sounds frustrating, I believe that is the first case of something like this happening with Facebok being reported to our team and we are helping to take a look further to see if our documentation could be updated.

As to the actual domain setup, the Root domain can be used as the default domain if the root domain is pointed at Webflow using the CNAME records to point the root domain at Webflow instead of A Records, see this instruction: Set root domain as default domain | Webflow University

I am not sure if that will help, but you might try setting up the root domain as the default domain if Facebook is requiring that for your setup in Facebook.

The Webflow instructions on the DNS setup is pretty straightforward, here is an article that shows how to Troubleshoot your DNS settings

If you need further assistance with the matter, please get in contact with your support team from the Contact page here: Webflow Customer Support | Webflow University