Landing domain names on correct language

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Topic summary

A multilingual webshop owner operates pirobbq.com with additional country-specific domains (pirobbq.de for Germany, pirobbq.nl for Netherlands). Currently, visitors to the main domain are prompted to select their language, and the owner wants country-specific domains to automatically display in the corresponding language.

Current Shopify Limitation:

  • Language codes appear as URL paths (pirobbq.com/de or pirobbq.com/nl) by default
  • Custom domains can only be assigned at the market level, not the language level

Proposed Workaround:

  • Create separate markets for Germany and Netherlands
  • Assign pirobbq.de to the German market with German as primary language
  • Assign pirobbq.nl to the Dutch market with Dutch as primary language

Important Caveat:
This approach ties domains to markets (geographic regions), not pure language preferences. If secondary languages exist within a market, language handles (e.g., /de/ or /nl/) would still appear in URLs, making it impossible to show a custom domain purely based on language selection across different markets.

The discussion remains open regarding DNS or Shopify settings configuration.

Summarized with AI on November 9. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
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By default, it’ll show the slash and then language code abbreviation, at the end of your primary domain name, when a customer switches to a different language (that’s not your store’s primary language). Ex. PiRO-Startseite – PiRO bbq or PiRO bbq homepage

If you wanted to use a custom domain name for a specific language, that’s currently not possible. Custom domain names can only be assigned to specific markets. So what you could do is have a market for Germany, and then assign the probbq.de domain name to it, with the primary language for that market being German.

But if, for example, your store is based out of the USA (using probbq.com as the primary domain name, and English as the primary language), and you also have German as a secondary language on the store, and you want Americans viewing the site in German to see the probbq.de domain name – that wouldn’t be possible.

Custom domain names are assigned at the ‘market’ level, and not the ‘language’ level. Language-related handles (ex. “/de” or “/nl”) are added to the URL though, based on the secondary language that the site is being viewed in (if different from the market’s primary language).

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