A custom domain is a web address you own and point at your store or link-in-bio page. Instead of yourname.platform.com, customers type yourbrand.com or shop.yourbrand.com. The page behind it is the same; the address on top of it is yours, and it stays yours if you ever change tools.

It concerns anyone who sells under a name they want people to remember. A creator with a link-in-bio page, a small brand with a full storefront, a coach with a single landing page. The moment you print the address on a business card, put it in a video caption or run an ad to it, you want it to be yours.

What is a custom domain?

A domain name is the readable address of a website, registered through a registrar (Namecheap, OVH, Cloudflare, Google-successor services, GoDaddy) for a yearly fee. A custom domain, in the context of a commerce platform, is that name connected to the page the platform hosts for you, so visitors see your name in the browser bar instead of the platform's.

A few distinctions matter:

  • Root domain vs subdomain. yourbrand.com is the root (also called the apex or naked domain). shop.yourbrand.com and www.yourbrand.com are subdomains. You can point the root, a subdomain or both at your store.
  • Platform subdomain. yourname.platform.com is a free address the platform gives you. It works, but it advertises the platform, not you, and you lose it if you leave.
  • DNS. The Domain Name System is the address book of the internet. Your DNS records tell browsers which server answers for your domain. Connecting a custom domain means editing those records.
  • SSL certificate. The file that makes the browser show a padlock and use https. Without it, modern browsers label the page "Not secure", which is fatal at checkout.

A custom domain is not hosting. The registrar sells the name; the platform hosts the pages. It is not a trademark either. Owning yourbrand.com does not stop someone else from using the name, and having a trademark does not give you the domain.

Why it matters

Trust is the first reason, and it shows up in numbers. Run the same product page at two addresses, one on the platform subdomain and one on your own domain, with the same ad. The custom domain page typically converts 10% to 25% better, because the visitor sees one brand from the ad to the checkout instead of two.

Put it on a small store: 8,000 visitors a month, 1.6% conversion on the subdomain, $45 average order. That is 128 orders and $5,760 a month. At 1.9% on a custom domain, it is 152 orders and $6,840. The domain costs $12 a year. The difference is $1,080 a month.

Ownership is the second reason. Every link you post, every QR code you print, every backlink someone gives you points at an address. If the address belongs to the platform, switching tools means every one of those links dies. If it belongs to you, you change one DNS record and everything keeps working.

Search is the third. Google ranks domains, and it treats yourname.platform.com as a corner of the platform's site. Content and backlinks accumulated on your own domain build authority for you, for years.

Email is the fourth. With a domain, you can send from [email protected]. Email marketing from a gmail.com address lands in spam more often and looks like a hobby.

How it works

Connecting a domain takes ten minutes of work and up to a day of waiting. Step by step:

  • Buy the domain. Pick a registrar, search for the name, pay for a year. A .com runs $10 to $15 a year; country domains like .fr or .ma cost $8 to $30. Choose something short that people can spell after hearing it once.
  • Decide root or subdomain. For a full store, most brands use the root (yourbrand.com) with www redirected to it. For a link-in-bio page next to an existing site, a subdomain (links.yourbrand.com or shop.yourbrand.com) keeps the main site untouched.
  • Add the domain in your platform. The platform shows you the records it needs: usually a CNAME record (for a subdomain, pointing at something like shops.platform.com) or an A record with an IP address (for the root).
  • Edit DNS at the registrar. Open the DNS panel, add the record exactly as shown. Delete any old A or CNAME record for the same name, or the two will conflict.
  • Wait for propagation. DNS changes spread across the internet in a few minutes to 24 hours. Most registrars are done in under an hour.
  • SSL is issued automatically. Once the platform sees the domain pointing at it, it requests a certificate (usually from Let's Encrypt) and turns on https. This takes a few minutes and renews itself every 90 days without your involvement.
  • Set the primary domain. Tell the platform which address is the canonical one, so the platform subdomain and any alternates redirect to it. One address, one set of search results.

Benchmarks and examples

  • Domain cost: $10 to $15 a year for .com, $8 to $30 for most country extensions, $30 to $60 for premium extensions like .shop or .store in the first year with steep renewals. Watch the renewal price, not the launch price.
  • Setup time: 10 minutes of clicks, 5 minutes to 24 hours of waiting.
  • Conversion lift vs platform subdomain: 10% to 25% on cold traffic, less on an audience that already trusts you.
  • SSL: free on every serious platform. If a tool charges for a certificate in 2026, that is a signal about the tool.

Three typical setups. A creator with 40,000 Instagram followers buys firstname.co and points it at their link-in-bio page; the root domain is the page, nothing else. A candle brand with a store buys brandname.com, points the root at the storefront and adds www as a redirect. A coach with an existing WordPress site keeps it at coach.com and points shop.coach.com at the store where the courses are sold, so the two live side by side without touching the main site.

Common mistakes

  • Leaving an old A record in place. Two records for the same name means the browser sometimes reaches the old server. Remove the old one before adding the new one.
  • Forgetting www. Half of your customers will type www.yourbrand.com. If that address has no record, they get an error. Add it and redirect it to the root.
  • Buying the domain in an employee's or a freelancer's account. When they leave, so does the domain. Register it in the business's own account with an email you control.
  • Letting the domain expire. Auto-renew is off by default at some registrars. An expired domain takes the store offline and can be bought by someone else within weeks.
  • Pointing the domain before the store is ready. Visitors and search engines see a placeholder. Connect the domain when the storefront has products and a working checkout.

Best practices

  • Buy the .com and your country extension. Redirect one to the other. It costs $25 a year and stops a copycat from picking up the alternate.
  • Turn on auto-renew and add a second contact email. Domain expiry is the most avoidable outage in e-commerce.
  • Use the root for the main destination. yourbrand.com is easier to say and print than shop.yourbrand.com. Use subdomains for secondary pages.
  • Set up email on the domain the same day. Even a forwarding address ([email protected] to your inbox) makes every customer message look professional.
  • Keep DNS at one place. If the registrar's DNS panel is clumsy, move DNS to Cloudflare's free tier and manage all records there.
  • Check the padlock after setup. Open the store in a private window on a phone. If the browser does not show https with no warning, do not run traffic until it does.
  • Use the domain everywhere. Bio, email signature, packaging, ads. One address, repeated, is what makes a brand recognizable.

In Roctify

Roctify hosts your full store and your link-in-bio page under your own domain with a free SSL certificate issued and renewed automatically. The Creator plan ($19/month) includes one custom domain; the Pro plan ($39/month) includes unlimited domains, so a brand can run several stores or several country domains from one account. You add the domain in the dashboard, copy the DNS record shown, and https is on within minutes of the record propagating. The Free plan uses a Roctify subdomain.

Because every channel shares one catalog, a customer who reaches yourbrand.com or links.yourbrand.com sees the same products, stock and prices, and orders from either land in the same place.

FAQ

Should I use a subdomain or the root domain for my store?

Use the root when the store is your main site. Use a subdomain when you already have a site you want to keep and the store sits beside it. Either way, add the other and redirect it, so a customer who types the wrong one still arrives.

Do I need to buy an SSL certificate?

No. A modern commerce platform issues a free certificate as soon as your domain points at it and renews it automatically. You only need to buy a certificate for unusual setups, such as a wildcard covering dozens of subdomains, and a small store never needs that.

My domain is connected but the store still shows "Not secure". What do I do?

Wait an hour first; certificates are issued after DNS has propagated. Then check that there is exactly one record for the name, pointing where the platform told you, and that no old record is left. If it still fails after 24 hours, the record was mistyped or the domain is proxied through another service that must be turned off for the setup step.