You already own a domain — registered at GoDaddy, Namecheap, Google, wherever — and you want it pointing at your CloudPerch site instead of its temporary your-site.cloudperch.io address. This is a small DNS change, and there are two ways to make it. Pick whichever feels less fiddly.

The good news first: nothing breaks while you do this. Your *.cloudperch.io subdomain keeps working the whole time, so your site stays reachable right up until the moment your real domain takes over.

Find your records first

Before you touch anything at your registrar, open the site you want to connect in your CloudPerch dashboard and go to its detail page. There you'll find the exact address and DNS records to point at — the values are shown right on the page so you can copy them.

You'll see two things you might use:

  • An address for an A record (this points your bare domain, like yourdomain.com, at the server).
  • The records for www, so www.yourdomain.com works too.

Keep that page open. You're about to paste those values into your registrar.

Always copy the address and records from your own dashboard. Don't borrow values from a guide or a forum post — they won't be yours, and the certificate won't issue.

Option 1: Change the A record and www CNAME

This is the lighter-touch path. You leave your domain where it is and change just two records.

  1. Log in to wherever your domain is registered and open its DNS settings (sometimes called "DNS management" or "advanced DNS").
  2. Find the A record for the root of your domain — the one with a name of @ or your bare yourdomain.com. Change its value to the address shown in your CloudPerch dashboard.
  3. Find or create a CNAME record for www, and point it at the value shown in your dashboard (so www.yourdomain.com resolves too).
  4. Remove any old, conflicting A or CNAME records that still point at your previous host.
  5. Save.

That's the whole change. If your registrar offers a TTL field, a lower value like 300 (five minutes) means the switch shows up faster.

Option 2: Move your nameservers to us

If you'd rather we handle DNS entirely — and you'd like the records configured for you — you can point your domain's nameservers at CloudPerch. Your dashboard shows the nameserver values to use.

  1. In your registrar's settings, find Nameservers (sometimes under "DNS" or "domain settings").
  2. Replace the existing nameservers with the ones shown in your CloudPerch dashboard.
  3. Save.

This hands DNS to us — running on Cloudflare under the hood — so the right records get set up automatically. It's the cleaner long-term option if you don't want to manage individual records yourself.

How to tell it worked

DNS changes aren't instant. They propagate — spread out across the internet — usually within minutes, occasionally up to a day. Two ways to check:

  • Visit your domain in a browser. Once it loads your CloudPerch site instead of the old one, the change has reached you.
  • Use an online "DNS checker" or dig yourdomain.com from a terminal to see whether the new address is being returned.

Once DNS resolves to us, free SSL issues itself automatically — usually within a few minutes. You don't request it or pay for it. When it's done, your site serves over https:// with a padlock, and it renews itself before it ever expires.

RecordNamePoints to
A@ / bare domainThe address shown in your dashboard
CNAMEwwwThe value shown in your dashboard
Nameservers(whole domain)The nameservers shown in your dashboard

Where to go next

If the record types above are still a bit of a blur, DNS records explained gives each one a plain-English definition. And if you'd rather skip this whole dance next time, registering a domain through CloudPerch wires up the DNS for you automatically.

Stuck waiting on propagation longer than feels right? Reach a human from the contact page and we'll take a look.