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Your branding, and your own web address

Put your business name, colour and logo in front of your students, and point your own web address at Strivli.

The short version Open Branding from your student list. Set a business name, a colour and a logo, then press Save — your students' app, your printed reports and the weekly parent email all carry it from that moment. If you also want your students practising at your own web address rather than strivli.co.uk, that is the one part of Strivli that asks you to do something at your domain provider: two records, then press Verify now.

Branding sits along the top of your student list, beside Library and Groups. Everything on that screen is optional — a business name on its own is a perfectly good place to stop.

Business name Up to 80 characters. Shown instead of your own name on reports and invitations.
Accent colour Picked from a colour box. Used for headings, the logo mark and the report's trend line.
Contact email Optional. Appears in one place only — see below.
Contact phone Optional. The same one place.
Logo PNG, JPEG or WebP, under 750KB.

Press Save and the message under the form reads "Saved." There is no publish step and nothing to push out: the next time a child opens the app, or you print a report, it is already there.

Your contact details go to parents, not to children The contact email and phone appear in the footer of the weekly parent email, on a line reading "Sent by your business name". They are not on the printed report, not in the app, and not in the parent portal. If you would rather parents reply to you rather than wonder who sent the email, that line is the reason to fill them in.

Two other buttons sit beside Save. Remove logo only appears once you have a logo, and takes it off without touching anything else. Reset to unbranded is the bigger one.

Reset to unbranded also removes your web address It clears the whole record in one go: name, colour, logo, contact details — and your custom domain along with its verification. Your students go back to strivli.co.uk and you would have to claim and verify the address again from scratch. It does not ask you to confirm first, so treat it as a deliberate "start again", not as a way to clear one field.

If more than one person signs in to your business, only the owner of the account can change any of this. The Branding button is still on their screen, but saving comes back with "You do not have permission to do that." Nothing is broken — branding is an account-wide setting, so it stays with the account holder.

Choosing a colour that stays readable

Some colours are refused, with this message:

What you will see "That colour is too close to white to read clearly on a report or screen — try something a little darker or more saturated."

Your colour is not only used for large blocks. On a printed report your business name is set in it, in small spaced capitals, and the trend chart's line is drawn in it. A pale mint or a soft lemon that looks gentle and expensive on your own bright screen can come off a parent's home printer as very nearly nothing at all.

So the colour is measured against white before it is saved. Very pale pastels, light yellows and near-white greys will not pass; a mid or deep version of the same shade will. If the one you want is refused, darken it rather than abandoning it — the family of the colour is usually what you are attached to, not the exact value.

This is a floor, not a verdict on your taste The check exists to catch "this is functionally invisible", not to police your palette. It is deliberately generous, and it only tests against white — anything you pass it with is yours to use.

Choosing a logo the product will accept

Three things are checked, and each has its own message:

Under 750KB "That image is too large — try one under 750KB."
No side longer than 2000 pixels "That image's dimensions are larger than we can use — try one under 2000×2000px."
PNG, JPEG or WebP "Try a PNG, JPEG or WebP image."

The size and the dimensions are two separate limits, so a heavily compressed file can be small enough and still too big across. Both are easy to fix in whatever you used to make the logo: export it again at a smaller size.

The format is read from inside the file rather than from its name, so renaming logo.heic to logo.png will not get it through — it is still the same picture inside. Export or "save as" in one of the three formats instead.

How big does it actually need to be? It is always shown small: about 56 pixels tall at the top of a printed report, 40 in the weekly email, and a small square in the app's own header. Something around 600 pixels wide is plenty. A wide logo with a transparent background sits best in all three.

One thing worth knowing before you upload: on a printed report the logo replaces your business name at the top rather than sitting above it. If your logo does not have your name in it, the report will not carry your name either. The weekly email shows both.

If a logo is refused, anything else you changed on the form was already saved — the message is about the picture only. Pick a different file and press Save again.

Seeing where your branding appears

Your students' app Your name in the header, your logo in place of the mark beside it, your colour throughout, and your name on the browser tab. Any child enrolled on your account sees this, wherever they opened it from.
Printed reports Your logo, or your business name if you have not set one, at the top; your colour on the brand line and the trend chart. The report you print from a student's page and the one a child prints from their own device are built by the same code, so they cannot disagree.
The weekly parent email Your logo, your name, a short bar in your colour, and the "Sent by" line with your contact details.
The parent portal Your business name appears against each child, as "with your business name". The page's own header still reads Strivli.
Guardian invitations Your business name is in the subject line and the first sentence — "your business would like you to be able to see Ava's progress". The email itself keeps Strivli's plain layout.
The Strivli line at the foot of a report disappears An unbranded report ends with "Printed from Strivli SEAG Practice." As soon as you have saved any one of a name, a colour or a logo, that sentence is gone and the report is simply yours.

Two limits are worth knowing before a parent asks you about them.

The weekly email only takes your full branding when every child that parent is linked to is one of yours. A parent with one child working with you and another child working with a different tutor gets the plain Strivli email instead, with "with your business name" beside your child's section. That is deliberate — two tutors' colours in one email would look like a mistake by both of you.

And every email leaves from Strivli's own sending address, whatever your branding says. Your name can reach the subject line and the body of the message; it cannot reach the "from" address. That is a requirement of getting email delivered at all rather than a setting, so a parent looking closely will see a Strivli address behind your name.

Your address on Strivli

Every tutoring account can have its own address under strivli.co.uk — if your business is TransferTutor, that is transfertutor.strivli.co.uk. You are offered it when you sign up, and you can claim or change it any time afterwards from Branding → Your address on Strivli.

There is nothing to set up, nothing to pay for and nothing to do at a domain provider. It works the moment you save it.

What changes Families who open your address see your business name, colour and logo straight away — before anyone has signed in or joined a device. Every invitation and weekly email you send from then on points at your address rather than the plain one.
What does not change Your own console stays at strivli.co.uk. That is deliberate: it is where you sign in, and it does not move when your address does. Your students' practice, their history and their devices are all untouched — the address is a front door, not a separate account.
Who can see what Nothing about who can see which child depends on the address. Somebody who opens your address without an invitation sees your branding and a sign-in screen, and nothing else.
Choose it as carefully as you would a phone number You can change it later, but the old one stops working immediately — there is no redirect. Anyone who bookmarked it, or has it on a card you handed out, gets an error. Pick the name you would be happy printing.

A few names are not available: anything shorter than three characters, anything with two hyphens in a row, and a list of names Strivli itself uses (www, help, admin, mail and similar). The form tells you as you type. If another tutor already has the name you want you are told that too — never who has it.

Leaving the box empty gives the address up and puts you back on plain strivli.co.uk. The name then becomes available for somebody else, so only do it if you mean it.

Using your own web address instead

If you would rather use a domain you already own than one under strivli.co.uk, that is what Your own domain is for. It is more work — the one part of Strivli that asks you to do something at your domain provider — but your students never see the word "Strivli" at all. You can have both, and your own domain wins where they overlap.

Under the branding form sits Your own domain. It lets your students open a web address you own — practice.yourbusiness.co.uk — instead of strivli.co.uk, and see your brand from the very first screen, before any device has ever joined your account.

A few things to decide before you start:

Type it in and press Use this domain. Claiming it switches nothing on and affects nothing your students are doing — it only produces the record you are about to publish.

If it is refused, the message tells you which of the two things happened: "That doesn't look like a real domain" (a typo, or an address with a slash or https:// in it — just the address itself is what goes in the box), or "That's one of Strivli's own domains", which you cannot claim.

If you signed up for your own child rather than as a business This panel is not on your screen, and your branding page is called Personalise your reports: a colour and a logo for your child's printed reports, and nothing to fill in about a business.

Adding the TXT record and verifying it

Two records do two different jobs. One proves the address is yours, which is what stops anyone claiming an address they do not own. The other sends visitors to us. You need both, and only the first is what Verify now looks at.

  1. Copy the value before you leave the screen

    As soon as you claim the domain, a small table appears: Type TXT, Name — your own address with _strivli-challenge. on the front — and Value, a long string of letters and numbers. Copy that value somewhere safe now: it is shown once, on this screen, for this visit.

  2. Add the TXT record at your domain provider

    Sign in wherever your domain's DNS is managed and add a new record with exactly those three things. Some providers want the whole name in the box, others only the _strivli-challenge part and add the rest themselves — look at how an existing record is written there and match it.

  3. Point the address itself at us

    While you are there, add the second record: point practice.yourbusiness.co.uk at strivli.co.uk. A CNAME record is usually the simplest way. The https padlock is then set up automatically the first time a real visitor arrives, so there is nothing to buy or install.

  4. Give it a little while, then press Verify now

    DNS changes take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to spread. Pressing Verify now too early costs nothing and breaks nothing — you can press it as often as you like.

There are two messages you might meet, and they mean different things:

"That TXT record isn't showing up yet — DNS changes can take a little while to spread. Try again shortly." We cannot see a record at that name at all. Usually it simply has not spread yet. If it is still saying this an hour or two later, check the name you typed at your provider — a record saved under the wrong name is the common cause.
"The TXT record is there, but its value doesn't match — double-check you copied it exactly." The record is found, so the name is right; the value is wrong. Usually a partial copy, or a space picked up at one end.
If you have lost the value Leaving the screen and coming back shows a placeholder where the value was, and reloading the page does not bring it back — it is only ever sent once, which is what makes it worth anything as proof. Getting a new one is quick and safe: press Use a different domain, then claim the same address again. You get a fresh value, and you replace the value in the record you already made rather than starting the whole job again.

Once it passes, the panel reads "your address is verified and live" and your students can use it.

Verified but the address does not open? Then the first record is right and the second one is missing. Verification only ever looks at the _strivli-challenge record — it says "this address is yours", not "this address reaches Strivli". Add the CNAME and it will start working.

Changing or removing your domain

Before it is verified, Use a different domain drops the claim and puts the box back. After it is verified, Remove this domain asks you to confirm — "Your students will go back to using strivli.co.uk" — and then clears it.

Claiming a different address always starts over. You get a new value to publish, and the old address's verification does not carry across, whether you had it working for a day or a year. Tidy up by deleting the old _strivli-challenge record at your provider once you have finished with it; leaving it there does no harm, but it will confuse whoever looks next.

Moving address means new join codes for devices already practising A child's device remembers who they are against the exact address they joined at. If a pupil has been practising at strivli.co.uk, opening your new address on that same tablet looks like a brand new visitor and asks for a join code. They carry on perfectly well at the old address in the meantime — with your branding on it — so this is a change to make at a lesson, one code each, not something to do the night before an exam.

Questions people ask

Do I have to fill all of it in?
No. Anything you leave blank simply stays as it was. A business name on its own already replaces Strivli's name on reports, in the parent portal and in invitations.
Will my students see the word Strivli anywhere?
Not in their own app once you have branded the account, and not at the foot of a printed report. The parent portal's own header and the layout of the emails are still Strivli's, and emails come from a Strivli address.
Can I have a different logo for different students?
No — branding is one set of details for the whole account, and every student on it gets the same.
Does my colour change what the children actually see?
Yes. It replaces the app's own accent colour, so buttons and highlights are in your colour. Nothing about how the practice works changes.
I do not have a domain. Can I buy one just for this?
You can, and the process above is the same. But it is worth doing branding first and living with it for a term — the name, colour and logo are what a parent actually notices, and the address is the part that needs the most from you.
Do I need to buy an SSL certificate for my domain?
No. It is issued automatically the first time somebody visits, which means the very first visit after you set it up may take a moment longer than usual.
Can I use my main website address rather than a subdomain?
Technically yes, but then that address serves Strivli and nothing else — your website would need to move. A subdomain such as practice. is almost always what you want.
Something is refusing to save and I cannot see why.
The message under whichever panel you are using is the real reason, and it is always about the file or the value you supplied rather than about your account. If it is a permission message, you are signed in as a member of the business rather than as its owner.

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