This is the short walk from "I just signed up" to "my site is live with a padlock in the address bar." On most plans it really does take about a minute of your attention — the rest happens on its own while you get coffee.

Before you start

You'll need an account and a plan. If you don't have one yet, pick a plan first — every tier launches sites the same way, so you can start on Roost and grow into Perch Pro, Flock, or Aerie later without rebuilding anything. Every plan is backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee, so there's no risk in starting small.

You do not need a domain name to begin. Every new site gets a free, instant your-site.cloudperch.io subdomain so you can build and preview straight away, then point a custom domain at it whenever you're ready.

Launch a site

  1. From your dashboard, choose New site (or finish the onboarding wizard if you're brand new).
  2. Pick a name for your site. This becomes your temporary *.cloudperch.io address — you can connect a real domain later.
  3. Choose WordPress if you want the CMS installed and ready, or a blank site if you'd rather start from scratch.
  4. Confirm. That's the part that needs you.

Behind the scenes, CloudPerch creates the site on one of our nodes, sets up its own isolated space, and registers it for daily backups. You'll see it appear in your sites list within a few seconds.

Your instant subdomain works immediately — no DNS wait, no propagation. That's deliberate: it means you can start building the moment the site exists, long before any domain is involved.

What happens automatically

A few things set themselves up so you don't have to think about them:

  • Free SSL. A certificate provisions itself in the background, so your site is served over https:// with a padlock — no buttons to press, and it renews itself before it ever expires. On a brand-new custom domain this can take a few minutes while DNS settles; your *.cloudperch.io subdomain is secured right away.
  • Daily backups. From the moment the site exists, it's enrolled in daily backups with 30-day retention. See restore your site from a backup for how to roll back.
  • Tuned caching. LiteSpeed and server-level caching are configured for you, so the site is fast out of the box. Nothing to install.

Open your new site

In the dashboard, open the site to see its detail page — disk usage, its address, and the tools available on your plan. Click through to the live URL to see it in the wild, or open WordPress admin to start building.

If you chose WordPress, you can reach wp-admin from the site's detail page. Your login is created during setup; if you ever lose it, you can trigger a one-time magic login link rather than hunting for a password.

Where to go next

You've got a live, fast, backed-up, SSL-secured site. The usual next steps:

Stuck on any step? The FAQ covers the common questions, and our team is a short message away from the contact page — real people, Monday to Friday.