When I started Cushion, I knew I wanted to keep the marketing website and the web app separate. I’ve worked on apps in the past where the marketing site is baked into the app code, so any change—even a typo—required a deploy of the entire app. This approach would make me think twice about updating the marketing site—it turned a simple task into a daunting one. Because of this experience, I deliberately separated the two, hosting the marketing site at the root domain while the app lived on a subdomain
Separation of concerns. This is a good idea. Curious about SEO implications though
Someone suggested get.cushionapp.com when I was looking for subdomain suggestions, but I dismissed it. I’m not a fan of the “get” prefix when you’ve already signed up for the app, but “get” does make sense for the sign up process, though.
At the time, I was also wrapping up the referral system for Cushion. Once I considered get.cushionapp.com, everything became crystal clear. I would use get.cushionapp.com for the sign up page, and the referral links could be get.cushionapp.com/REFERRAL_CODE. Now, the “get” prefix makes sense and reads well, too—“get cushion app”.
I couldn’t be happier with the combination of get.cushionapp.com and my.cushionapp.com. The simplicity and casual feel matches perfectly with the tone I’ve been trying to convey with Cushion. Everything seems to be falling into place, and I’m so relieved to finally be over the hurdle of this transition. Cushion has officially graduated and I’m so excited to see where it goes next.