Your web address

Every site needs an address before anyone can visit it. You can use the free one we give you, or your own domain name. You can start with the free one and move to your own later without rebuilding anything.

The short version

• The free address works instantly and costs nothing.
• Your own domain looks more professional and is yours to keep.
• A site uses one or the other, not both at once.
• Switching either way takes a moment and does not touch your pages.
• Both live under Website Settings, on the Address tab.

The free address

Pick a name and your site lives at that name under our domain. It works the moment you choose it, because we run that DNS ourselves. Nothing to buy, nothing to configure, no waiting.

This is the right choice for getting something live today. A real site at a free address beats a perfect site nobody can visit, and you can put your own domain on it the week after.

Your own domain

A domain you own is the professional choice, and it is the one customers remember. It also means your address does not change if you ever move somewhere else.

Two ways to get one. Buy it through us and we point it at your site automatically, with nothing for you to configure. Connect one you already own and you make one change at whoever you bought it from, pointing it here.

You use one or the other

A site has one address at a time. When you connect your own domain, the free address is released and stops working. When you switch back to a free address, the domains come off the site.

This matters if you have shared the free address anywhere. Once you switch, links to it stop working, so it is worth switching before you print anything rather than after.

Switching back to a free address does not give up the domain. You still own it, it is still in your Domains list, and you can put it back on any site later.

Switching from the free address to your own domain

Add the domain on the Address tab. We show you the exact record to create and where. Create it at whoever you bought the domain from, then use Check again.

Nothing changes for your visitors until that record is actually pointing here. Your site keeps serving on the free address the whole time, so there is no window where it is unreachable.

More than one domain on one site

You can connect several. One of them is the primary, which is the address visitors see in their browser; the others forward to it. That is what you want when you own both the .com and the .net, or a shortened version for print.

Choosing a good free address

Use your business name if it is available. Keep it short and easy to say out loud, because people will read it off a card or hear it over the phone. Avoid hyphens and numbers for the same reason.

It is worth a little thought even though it is temporary, because temporary addresses have a way of ending up on a flyer.