Pointing your domain at 8Deploy

Your domain name and your hosting are two different things. Your domain lives at a registrar (whoever you bought it from). Your website lives with us. Pointing the domain means telling the internet that your domain's traffic should come to us.

What you need

The values are shown on the domain's page in your panel. Do not copy them from another customer's guide or from an old article, always take them from your own panel, because they are specific to your account.

You have two options.

Option one: change the A record (simplest)

Keep DNS where it is, and change one or two records.

1. Sign in to your registrar or wherever your DNS is managed.
2. Find the DNS records for your domain.
3. Set the A record for @ (the bare domain) to the IP address shown in your 8Deploy panel.
4. Set the A record or CNAME for www as shown in your panel.
5. Save.

This keeps your existing email routing and any other records untouched, which is the safe choice if your email is somewhere else.

Option two: delegate DNS to us

Change your domain's nameservers at your registrar to the ones shown in your panel. We then manage all your DNS records for you, and we can automatically keep your web and email records correct. This is the easier option long term, especially if you also want email on your domain with us.

How long does it take?

Usually minutes, sometimes a few hours. DNS changes are cached around the internet, and the old values can linger for as long as the previous record's time-to-live. Give it up to 24 hours before worrying, and up to 48 hours for a nameserver change.

How do I know it worked?

The domain's page in your panel shows a live check. When it says the domain is pointing at us, it is. Your TLS certificate is then issued automatically, usually within a few minutes, and your site begins serving over HTTPS.

Careful with email

If your email is with Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 or anyone else, do not delete your MX records. If you delegate DNS to us, re-create your existing MX records here first, or tell us what they are and we will bring them across for you. Losing MX records means losing incoming email until they are restored.