Going Live Guide

Use your own web address

Your site is live right now at the temporary address we gave you. When you are ready, you can put it on the address you already own, like yourbusiness.com.

⏱ About five minutes of your time ✉️ Your email is not affected ↩️ Reversible

You do not transfer anything. Your domain stays exactly where you bought it, in your name, with nothing unlocked or moved. You are only telling it where to point.

Before you start, the reassuring part

Your email will not be affected. We only change the setting that controls your website. The settings that carry your email are separate, and we do not touch them.
Your old address keeps working, so nothing disappears while you are switching.
It can be undone by changing the same setting back.

1Tell us the address

Type it into the box on your dashboard and press Save.

Just the address itself, yourbusiness.com. No https:// needed.

2Add two records where you bought the domain

Sign in to whoever you bought the domain from and find the DNS settings. Add two records. Both are type A, and both point to the same place:

88.208.226.236

Type	Name / Host	Points to
A	`@` (means the address itself)	`88.208.226.236`
A	`www`	`88.208.226.236`

If records already exist for @ or www pointing somewhere else, change those rather than adding duplicates.

Where to find it, by provider

Each of these opens a short page showing the exact screens at that provider.

GoDaddy: Domain Portfolio, then DNS
Namecheap: Domain List, Manage, then Advanced DNS
IONOS: Domains & SSL, then the three-dots Actions menu
Squarespace: the domain, then DNS Settings and Custom Records
Wix: Domains, then Manage DNS Records
Cloudflare: your domain, then DNS, then Add record, leaving the cloud icon on
Someone else, or not sure: reply to us with who you bought it from and we will send you the exact screens

3That is your part done

We watch for the change and do everything else automatically: the secure padlock, making sure search engines see the right address, and setting up email from your own domain.

It usually takes a few minutes once your provider has published the change, though some providers take longer to publish it than others.

Your dashboard shows the progress and tells you the moment it is finished. You do not need to keep the page open.

I already have a website at this address

Make the change at a quiet time of day. That is the whole of the advice, and it is worth taking.

While the change spreads across the internet, some visitors reach your old site and some reach the new one. Both work, so nothing is lost in that period.

There is also a short window while your security certificate is being issued, when the address may not load properly for some visitors. It is brief, but it is the reason to start in the evening rather than at ten in the morning. Your dashboard tells you the moment the certificate is in place.

If your site takes bookings or orders, pick your quietest hour of the week. If anything still looks wrong an hour after you added the records, tell us and we will look at it.

Something looks stuck

The most common reason is that only one of the two records was added, or your provider has not published the change yet. Both are normal, and neither breaks anything.

If the dashboard still looks unfinished after a few hours, reply to us and we will look at it.

What we never touch

The settings that carry your email are separate from the setting that carries your website. We change the website one and leave the email ones exactly as they are, which is why an existing mailbox cannot break during the switch.

If you do not have email on your domain yet and you would like it, that is a separate job we can do afterwards.

Related guides: Bunny DNS, and why we now recommend it · Why your website's email lands in spam · Point your domain at your own PageMotor server (the self-hosted version of this job)