Your own web address, and when it starts to matter

Every project gets a working web address on the day you create it. Not a placeholder, not a preview link that expires. A real address you can put in a message and send to somebody.

That is deliberate, because the alternative is the thing that stops most small business sites from ever existing. You decide to get a website, and the first thing you are asked for is a domain name and a card, before you have seen a single page. Plenty of people stop right there and never come back.

So you start with an address that works, and buying your own name becomes a decision you make later, when you know whether you want it.

When the free address is genuinely fine

Longer than people expect.

If you are testing whether you want a site at all, it is fine. If you are sending a link to a handful of people to ask what they think, it is fine. If your business runs on word of mouth and a local group and nobody is ever going to type your address into anything, it can stay fine for quite a while.

Nobody has ever failed to book a haircut because of the shape of a web address.

When it starts to matter

Four moments, and they are all about the address being read by a human rather than clicked by one.

When you print it. The moment it goes on a van, a card, a menu, a sign or a leaflet, it is being read out and typed in. A short name you own is worth real money at that point, and a long one is a source of typos and lost customers.

When you say it out loud. If you tell people your address over the phone, you want to be able to say it once.

When it goes on your email. An address at your own name reads like a business. This is unfair and completely real.

When you care how it looks in search results. Your own name is the thing that appears under your title, and it is doing quiet work in how trustworthy the result looks.

If none of those apply to you yet, you are not behind. If two of them do, it is time.

Choosing one without regretting it

Some rules that hold up.

Short beats clever. You will type it more often than you admire it.

Say it out loud, down an imaginary phone, to someone in a noisy room. If you have to spell it, or explain that it is spelled the fun way, or say "with a hyphen", pick another one. Hyphens and numbers are where addresses go to be misheard.

Match your trading name if you can. The address people guess first is your name, and being the thing they guess is worth more than being the thing that sounded good in your head.

Do not buy your services. Best plumber names age badly, restrict you if you add a second trade, and read like an advert rather than a business.

On the ending: a .com is still the one people assume, so if you have a choice it is the safest. But your national ending is not a downgrade, and for a business that only serves one country it can be better, since it says where you are before anyone reads a word.

How this works here

You can search for a domain from inside your project, see what is free and what it costs, and buy it without leaving. It is registered in your name, because it is your asset rather than something you rent from us, and the connecting up is ours to do rather than a job with instructions.

If you already own one, you do not need to move it. Point it here and leave it registered where it is.

One thing worth knowing about the order of operations: buying a name is open on every plan, including the free one, because the name is yours either way and there is no reason to make you subscribe to own it. What needs a plan is putting the site in front of the public, and connecting a name goes with that, since an address pointed at a site that is not live has nothing to point at.

So the honest sequence is: build the site for nothing, look at it, decide it is worth having, then deal with the name.

The short version

Start on the free address, because it works and because the alternative is a decision you are not ready to make. Buy your own name when the address starts being read by people rather than clicked by them. Pick a short one you can say down a phone. Then get on with the site, which is the part that actually decides whether any of this works.

Building and previewing are free, so the site can come first. Build free.