Your customers already know your business by name. When your website lives at your own address, like yourcompany.com, that name is what they see in Google, on your trucks, on your cards and in every link you text a customer. It looks established, it is easy to remember, and it keeps the search history your domain has built up over the years working for your new site.
Your Servgrow website is already live at its servgrowpro.com address. Connecting your own domain takes two records at the company where you bought or manage your domain, about 10 minutes, and nothing else changes: your email keeps working, and every link to the old servgrowpro.com address forwards to your domain automatically.
What you will do
At your domain company you add two records. They are the same for every Servgrow website:
Type | Host / Name | Value / Points to | TTL |
A | @ | 76.76.21.21 | Default |
A | www | 76.76.21.21 | Default |
Three rules keep everything else safe:
Do not change your nameservers. You only add or edit these two records. Changing nameservers is the most common way business email stops working.
Leave your MX and TXT records alone. They run your email and your domain's security settings.
Remove what points the domain elsewhere. Any other A record on your bare domain, any AAAA record, and anything else named www (usually a CNAME) has to go first, or the new records cannot take over.
Step 1: Find where your domain's records live
Usually that is the company you bought your domain from, but not always. To check, look up your domain at lookup.icann.org and read the Name Server lines:
Your nameservers contain | Your records are at |
domaincontrol.com | GoDaddy |
registrar-servers.com | Namecheap |
googledomains.com | Squarespace Domains |
ns.cloudflare.com | Cloudflare |
worldnic.com | Network Solutions |
domain.com | Domain.com |
bluehost.com | Bluehost |
hostgator.com | HostGator |
ui-dns | IONOS |
dns-parking.com or hostinger | Hostinger |
wixdns.net | Wix |
porkbun.com | Porkbun |
name.com | Name.com |
hover.com | Hover |
dyna-ns.net | Dynadot |
awsdns | Amazon Route 53 |
If you are not sure, message us your domain name and we will tell you.
Step 2: Follow the steps for your company
Company not listed? The steps are the same everywhere. Sign in, find the DNS, DNS records or Zone Editor page for your domain, remove the old records described above, and add the two A records from the table. If a field asks for the host of your bare domain, use @; if it will not accept @, leave it blank.
Step 3: Tell us you are done
Message us from the chat bubble in Servgrow, or reply to the email where we sent you this article. We finish the switch on our side:
your site starts opening at your own domain, with and without www;
it gets its security certificate (the padlock) automatically;
your servgrowpro.com address forwards to your domain, so no shared link breaks;
Google sees your own domain as the main address from then on.
Most changes show up within an hour. Some take up to 48 hours to reach every network.
After the switch
Update the website address on your Google Business Profile, Facebook page and anywhere else it is listed.
You can cancel your old website plan once you are happy with the new site. Keep your domain registration and your email service renewed: some companies bill all three together, so cancel only the website part.
Troubleshooting
My domain still shows my old website. The change has not reached your network yet, or an old record is still there. Wait an hour, then check that no other A, AAAA or www record is left at your domain company.
My browser says the site is not secure. The certificate is issued a few minutes after your records point at us. If it lasts more than a few hours, message us. On Cloudflare, make sure both records are set to DNS only (grey cloud).
It will not let me save a record. Another record with the same name is in the way. Delete the old A, AAAA or CNAME record for that name, then add ours.
My email stopped working. Email is only affected if nameservers or MX records were changed. Put them back the way they were and message us; we will help.
I would rather not touch this myself. That is fine. Message us and we will walk you through it on a short screen share.