Serve your site at an address you own, like yourbrand.com, instead of the one XFORG gives your project. It takes a few minutes of work and your site stays online the whole time.
You need two things: a project that is live (its database, backend and website are ready), and access to the DNS settings of your domain. DNS settings are usually where you bought the domain: Cloudflare, Namecheap, GoDaddy, Google Domains, Hostinger and so on.
1
Open your domain page
Go to your project and click Manage domain.
2
Type your domain
Write it without https://, for example yourbrand.com or www.yourbrand.com. Nothing on your site changes yet.
3
Add the DNS records
The page shows the exact records to add at your DNS provider. Add them and remove any AAAA records.
4
Check and confirm
Click Check again until the domain shows as verified, then confirm the switch. Your website and backend move to the new address and HTTPS is set up for you.
Whether you type yourbrand.com or www.yourbrand.com, both are set up: the one you type becomes your site's main address and the other one sends visitors to it. That is why you add two records, one for each name.
For yourbrand.com (the root, written @ in most providers)
Type
A
Host
@
Value
216.24.57.1
For www.yourbrand.com
Type
CNAME
Host
www
Value
your-site.onrender.com
Use your site's default address (it ends in .onrender.com and is shown on your domain page) as the CNAME value. For the root, a provider that supports ALIAS, ANAME or CNAME flattening can point @ to that same address instead of using the A record.
For an address like shop.yourbrand.com, add a single CNAME record: host shop, value your site's default address. No root record is needed.
AAAA records point a name to an IPv6 address. Your site is served over IPv4, so an AAAA record on your domain sends part of your visitors, and the verification check, to the wrong place. Delete any AAAA record on @, www or the subdomain you are connecting.
DNS changes usually show up in minutes but can take up to 48 hours. Your domain keeps waiting on the page, so you can close it and come back. To see what the internet sees, look your domain up on dnschecker.org.
If a record ended up as yourbrand.com.yourbrand.com, you typed the full name in a Host field that only wanted the host. Edit it to @ (for the root) or www.
If your domain has CAA records, they must allow Let's Encrypt and Google Trust Services, or the HTTPS certificate cannot be issued. Without CAA records there is nothing to do.
You can return to your default address at any time from the domain page. Your site is redeployed on it and your domain is disconnected; you can then delete its DNS records.
