Guides

How Unhid Works

Unhid sits between your domain's DNS and your hosting provider. When a request comes in:

• Human visitors are forwarded directly to your origin (Lovable, Netlify, Vercel, etc.). They experience your site exactly as before.
• Bots (search engines, AI crawlers, social media scrapers) are intercepted. Unhid renders your page with a headless browser and returns the full HTML to the bot.

This means bots see fully rendered content — meta tags, text, links — instead of an empty SPA shell. Your SEO improves, your pages appear in AI answers, and social media previews work correctly.

Setup Guide

1. Create your account

   Sign up at unhid.ai/signup. You'll need an email address and password, or you can use Google sign-in.

2. Choose a plan and subscribe

   Select a plan that matches your expected bot traffic. You can upgrade or downgrade at any time. You'll need an active plan before you can add sites.

3. Add your domain and origin

   In the dashboard, click "+ Add site" and enter your website's public domain with the www prefix (e.g. www.coolsite.com) and your origin URL — where your site is actually hosted (e.g. https://coolsite.netlify.app).

   Why www? DNS rules don't allow CNAME records on apex/root domains (like coolsite.com). Using www.coolsite.com lets you add the required CNAME records at any registrar. If you enter an apex domain, Unhid will automatically register it as www. for you.

4. Add DNS records

   ⚠️ Expect a brief downtime

   When you change your DNS records, your domain will point away from your current hosting and toward Unhid. Until Unhid finishes verifying your domain and issuing a TLS certificate, visitors may see an error page. Think of it like changing the address on a mailbox — there's a short gap between removing the old address and the new one becoming active.

   This typically lasts 5–15 minutes, but in some cases can take up to an hour depending on how fast DNS propagates and how quickly the certificate is issued.

   Tip: If you want to minimize downtime, make these changes during a low-traffic period for your site.

   Questions or need help? Reach out at support@unhid.ai or join our Slack community.

   After adding your site, the dashboard will show you two CNAME records to add in your domain registrar's DNS settings:

   Record 1 — Verify domain ownership

   This is a validation CNAME used to prove you own the domain and issue a TLS certificate. The name and value are unique to your site and shown in your dashboard.

   Type: CNAME
Name: (the validation name shown in your dashboard)
Value: (the validation value shown in your dashboard)

   Record 2 — Route traffic through Unhid

   This points your domain to the Unhid CDN so we can intercept bot requests.

   Type: CNAME
Name: www
Value: (the CloudFront endpoint shown in your dashboard)

   Record 3 — Redirect your root domain

   Set up a redirect from your apex domain to www so visitors who type the bare domain still reach your site:

   • GoDaddy: Domain Settings → Forwarding → add coolsite.com → forward to https://www.coolsite.com (301 Permanent)
   • Namecheap: Domain → Redirect Domain → https://www.coolsite.com
   • Cloudflare: You can use a CNAME on the apex directly (Cloudflare flattens it automatically). No redirect needed.
   • Route 53: Create an A record with Alias pointing to the CloudFront endpoint. No redirect needed.

5. Disconnect your domain from previous hosting

   If your domain was previously configured as a custom domain in another service (e.g. Lovable, Netlify, Vercel), you need to remove it from that service before Unhid can take over. Otherwise the old service will still claim your domain and block activation.

   • Lovable: Go to your project settings → Custom Domain → disconnect or remove your domain.
   • Netlify: Go to Domain management → remove the custom domain from your site.
   • Vercel: Go to Project Settings → Domains → remove the domain.

   Your site will still be accessible at its original URL (e.g. yoursite.lovable.app) — that's the origin URL you entered in step 3. You're only removing the custom domain mapping, not deleting your site.

6. Verify activation

   Once you've added both DNS records and disconnected the domain from any previous service, click the "Check status" button in your dashboard. If everything is connected, you'll see a green "Live ✓" badge. If not, wait a minute and try again — DNS propagation can take a few minutes, sometimes up to an hour.

Troubleshooting

My registrar won't let me add a CNAME record

This usually means an existing A record is already using the same name. For example, if your domain was previously connected to Lovable, there may be A records pointing to their servers. Delete those A records first, then try adding the CNAME records again.

Status still shows "Pending" after adding DNS records

If your domain was previously connected to another service (like Lovable), that service might still be claiming your domain. Log in to that service, find the custom domain settings, and disconnect/remove your domain. Then come back and click "Check status" again — it may take a few minutes for the change to take effect.

I entered my domain without "www"

No problem — Unhid automatically registers it as www. for you. Just make sure to set up a redirect from the bare domain to the www version in your registrar.

Supported Bots

Unhid detects 50+ bot signatures, including:

FAQ

Does Unhid slow down my site for visitors?

No. Human visitors are forwarded directly to your origin with no processing. They never interact with the rendering layer.

What if the renderer fails?

Unhid uses graceful fallthrough. If rendering fails for any reason, the bot request is passed to your origin. The bot sees your SPA shell — not ideal, but never an error page.

Do I need to install anything on my site?

No. Unhid works entirely at the DNS/CDN layer. No code changes, no middleware, no server-side configuration.

How fresh is the cached content?

Cache TTL depends on your plan (24h for Starter, 12h for Pro, custom for Enterprise). You can also manually purge pages from the dashboard at any time.

Can I see what bots are seeing?

The dashboard shows all cached pages with timestamps. A render preview feature is coming in a future update.