A free custom domain for your Netlify site
Netlify hosts your site free at your-site.netlify.app. To put it on a name of your own, like yourname.portfilio.live, you don’t need to buy a domain.
Your two options
| Way | What visitors see | Who can use it |
|---|---|---|
| Redirect | They type your name and land on your-site.netlify.app | Everyone, from the first sign-in |
| Direct DNS (CNAME) | Your name stays in the address bar; Netlify serves the site on it | Resolver tier and up |
Today: a redirect to your netlify.app address
- Sign in on namestead.dev and claim a name.
- Set it to Redirect and paste your site’s address, for example https://your-site.netlify.app.
- Save. The name forwards to your site over HTTPS.
At Resolver: connect the name with a CNAME
- In Netlify, open the site, go to Domain management and add your Namestead name as a custom domain.
- In your Namestead dashboard, switch the name to Direct DNS and add a CNAME pointing to your-site.netlify.app.
- If Netlify asks you to prove ownership, it shows a TXT record named netlify-challenge. Add it to the name as well.
- Netlify provisions the HTTPS certificate once DNS checks pass.
How to reach Resolver
Resolver needs 150 Trust Points and a Namestead account at least 7 days old.
Trust Points come from time on Namestead, connecting GitHub (its account age, public repositories and followers count), linking other accounts, keeping a name healthy, helping the project (a domain you asked for going live, an abuse report that was acted on) and contributing money. They have no cash value.
Cloudflare Pages and Render work the same way
Direct DNS also accepts a CNAME to a Cloudflare Pages project (your-project.pages.dev) or a Render service (your-service.onrender.com). Add the name as a custom domain on the platform first, then add the CNAME it shows you. Neither needs a TXT record.