Using your own name

Sooner or later you want the address to be yours: yourbusiness.com rather than an address somebody gave you. There are two ways, and the first one is much easier.

Putting your own name on a site is part of the paid plans. The name itself is bought separately, at its own yearly price, whichever plan you are on.

Buying one here

Open your project's settings, go to Domains, and search for the name you want. You will see which endings are free — .com and the rest — and what each one costs per year, in plain money.

Buy it with the card on your account. There is no other company to sign up with, no separate password, and no page of extras you did not ask for.

Then we do the connecting. A name bought through Spanli is pointed at your site for you. There is no step where you copy settings from one screen to another. Give it a short while and your site answers at your new name, over a secure connection.

You will see the purchase move through a few steps of its own — processing, then registering, then active. If anything goes wrong at the registrar's end, the purchase is refunded and it says so rather than leaving you wondering.

Connecting one you already own

Keep it where you bought it and point it here. Two steps:

1. Type it into Spanli. Settings, Domains, add the name you own.
2. Copy one line. Spanli shows you exactly one line to add at the company you bought the name from, and exactly where it goes. Paste it there and save.

That is the whole job. Spanli watches for it and tells you when your site starts answering at the name.

If you are connecting the bare name — yourbusiness.com rather than www.yourbusiness.com — some companies will not accept the line as shown, because of an old rule about bare names. Spanli says so when that is your situation. If your provider offers something like "forwarding" or "flattening" for the bare name, that is the setting that solves it; otherwise use the www form and forward the bare name to it.

Renewals

Leave a domain renewing automatically so it cannot quietly lapse, or switch that off and decide each year. It is a switch you control per name.

Every domain charge appears in your receipts alongside everything else you have paid for.

Two honest limits

It is yours, not lent to you. The name is registered to you, not rented for as long as you stay a customer.

It does not give you email. Spanli makes and runs your website; it does not provide mailboxes. Buying a name here does not set up you@yourbusiness.com — that comes from an email provider, separately. This one catches people out, so it is worth saying twice.

Your free address still works

Adding your own name does not remove the address your site already had. Old links keep landing on your site. See Your free web address.