Getting a domain

Where we’d get one

At Cloudflare, for three reasons.

• They sell at cost: you pay what the registry charges them, with no markup, the first year and every year after. Elsewhere, a cheap first year often hides a much dearer renewal.
• Nothing else is sold to you. No hosting, no mailbox, no insurance: the checkout offers the domain and nothing more.
• Your details are hidden from the public domain directory, and you can forward an address like hello@your-domain.com to the inbox you already use. Both are included.

We earn nothing on this

No deal, no commission, no paid link. Cloudflare takes no margin on domains, so there is nothing to pay us.

What you don’t need to pay for

A domain is bought on its own. If you’re offered hosting, a website builder, a mailbox or “privacy protection” at the same time, you need none of the four: your site already lives with us, and your details are already hidden.

The one thing to get right

When you enter the values your dashboard gives you, Cloudflare shows a small cloud beside each row, orange by default. Click it to turn it grey.

If your extension isn’t there

Cloudflare doesn’t sell every extension; .co.uk in particular isn’t there. In that case, Porkbun does the job without selling you anything else. The steps are the same, cloud included: other providers have the same button under another name.

Once the name is yours

Come back to your site’s dashboard and enter it. You’ll find the exact lines to copy over at Cloudflare, with a button for each. A change like this can take up to 48 hours to spread; there is nothing to redo in the meantime.