Connecting a domain you already have

You can point a domain that already belongs to you at your website with us. To do that you enter it in the «Domain» tab, and we tell you the DNS records that have to be set at your current provider. As soon as those records are live, we switch the domain on and fetch the certificate — that usually takes minutes, sometimes a few hours. Until then your website stays reachable under its technical address, so nothing is lost.

How it goes

1. Enter the domain in the «Domain» tab, without https:// and without a path.
2. We show one line per hostname: what has to be set and what we currently find. A bare domain brings www along with it — both hostnames should work, one serves the page and the other redirects there.
3. Set the records at your provider. The place is usually called «DNS», «zone management» or «name server records» there.
4. Wait. We check every five minutes by ourselves; «Check now» doesn’t speed anything up but shows you the state immediately.

Why sometimes only one hostname works

It often happens that www.your-domain.ch already serves the page and your-domain.ch doesn’t, or the other way round. Those are two records, and whoever sets only one has only one. The line in the portal says per hostname what is missing.

When an old record is in the way

The most frequent case, and the one that costs half a day: next to the right record there is still an old one from the previous provider — typically an AAAA record for IPv6. The old one then wins, because IPv6 is asked first, and your page points at the wrong place. We report such records in the system check together with the address they point to. Deleting them is something you do at your provider; we have no access there.

Which address ends up in the address bar

You choose: the domain itself or www in front. The other one redirects there with a permanent redirect, so that your website stays a single one for search engines and isn’t split across two addresses.