Redirect rules in netlify.toml not firing for domain aliases on same project

Support
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1

Hi all — first post here. I have a project (in-count-her) deployed at the apex domain in-count-her.com. I’ve added several subdomains as domain aliases on this same project and want each one to 301 redirect to a corresponding path on the apex.

Example I’m trying to make work:

  • recognize.in-count-her.com → in-count-her.com/recognize

  • welcome.in-count-her.com → in-count-her.com/welcome

  • (8 more subdomains following this same pattern)

What I’ve tried:

I’ve configured rules in both _redirects and netlify.toml formats. The most recent attempt uses netlify.toml with this structure:

[[redirects]]
  from = "https://recognize.in-count-her.com/*"
  to = "https://in-count-her.com/recognize"
  status = 301
  force = true

I’ve also tried the _redirects file with both URL-prefix syntax (https://recognize.in-count-her.com/*`` https://in-count-her.com/recognize` 301!) and Host-conditional syntax (/* https://in-count-her.com/recognize 301! ``Host=recognize.in-count-her.com`).

What’s working:

  • Deploy log shows “Post processing - redirect rules” successfully every time

  • DNS resolves the subdomain aliases to my Netlify project correctly

  • SSL is provisioned (Let’s Encrypt cert covers all aliases)

  • Path routing on the alias works — visiting recognize.in-count-her.com/recognize correctly serves the Recognize page from the project

What’s not working:

When I visit the bare alias root (https://recognize.in-count-her.com/), I get HTTP 200 and the project’s index.html (home page) is served — instead of a 301 redirect to Recognize | In-Count-Her™ . Verified via httpstatus.io: status 200, redirects 0.

This happens regardless of which redirect format I use.

Questions:

  1. Is this expected behavior when source and destination are both on the same project (via aliases)? My read of the docs is that force = true should override default file-serving, but that’s not what I’m observing.

  2. Is there a known limitation where redirect rules don’t apply to bare-root requests on alias subdomains?

  3. If this is supposed to work, what configuration step am I likely missing?

I’ve been at this for several hours and want to make sure I’m not missing something obvious before pivoting to a workaround (separate Netlify projects per subdomain).

Thanks in advance.

3

Hey @shaunjmorris :wave:,
Thanks for reaching out!

We’ve gone ahead and created a support ticket for you, so our team can follow up with you directly via email from the help desk. Our Support crew will be in touch with you by email soon.

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Thanks for being here, and keep an eye out for that email from us!