Hatchik help → Your own web address

Your own web address

Every project is reachable at <name>.hatchik.com from the moment it is live. If you own a web address of your own, you can point it at the same site at no extra cost.

Setting it up

Tell Claude: "point mysite.com at my live site". Or sign in at https://app.hatchik.com, open the project and go to Domains.

You get back one DNS record, like this:

Type:  A
Name:  @
Value: <the IP address Hatchik gives you>

Use the value Hatchik shows you for your project. Do not copy an IP address out of any guide, including this one.

About that Name box. @ is how nearly every control panel — GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare, IONOS, Squarespace, 123-reg and the rest — writes "the address itself". They add your domain on for you. If you type the whole address in there instead, you end up with a record for mysite.com.mysite.com, which leads nowhere and looks exactly like something being broken. For the www version the Name is just www. A small number of panels want the full name; if yours shows the whole address already filled in, leave it as it is.

Add the record wherever your address's DNS is managed — the registrar, or whoever runs your DNS if you moved it. Hatchik tells you both records to add: the address itself and its www version, so whichever one somebody types, they land in the right place.

How long it takes

Minutes. Usually one to five.

The "it can take 24 to 48 hours" line everybody repeats is about changing your nameservers — a different, much slower thing that Hatchik never asks you to do. Changing one record, with the nameservers left alone, is governed only by how long that record says it can be remembered for, which is normally a few minutes. If the address never had a record before, it is often instant.

You do not have to sit and watch. Once you have added the record, Hatchik checks the address every minute and emails you the moment it starts working. If it still is not right twenty minutes later, you get an email saying what is wrong, in plain words, with the exact thing to change.

The states

Ask Claude "what's the status of my domain?" at any time.

If it does not start working

Five things cause almost all of it.

1. An old "AAAA" record from your previous host. If this address used to point at Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, Cloudflare or most other hosts, there is very likely a second address record still sitting on it — the type called AAAA. It wins over the one you just added, so visitors and the security check both go to the old place, and the padlock can never finish. Delete the AAAA record. It is in the same list as the record you added, shown as type "AAAA". Leave your new A record alone. It sorts itself out a minute or two afterwards.

2. Cloudflare's orange cloud. If your DNS is at Cloudflare, the record must be set to DNS only — the grey cloud, not the orange one. Proxied records send visitors to Cloudflare instead of Hatchik, and the certificate can never be issued. Open the record in Cloudflare and click the orange cloud until it turns grey.

3. The record is at the wrong place. If you bought the address at one company and later moved its DNS to another, the record has to go where the DNS is now, not where you bought it. Check which nameservers your address uses; that is the company that needs the record.

4. The old site is still in the record. If the address used to point somewhere else, there is an existing A record with the old value. Change that record, rather than adding a second one. Two A records means half your visitors land on the old site.

5. The Name box has the whole address in it. See above. If you can see a record for mysite.com.mysite.com, that is this. Change its name to @.

If none of those, open the record at your DNS provider and compare it character by character with what Hatchik gave you: the type must be A, the Name must be what Hatchik showed you, and the value must be exactly the IP address on your project's Domains page.

"That address is already in use"

An address can only serve one site on Hatchik, so it can only be attached in one place. If you are told it is already in use, there are three ways through and none of them involves asking anybody.

If you were the one holding an address and somebody proves it is theirs, you get an email telling you so. Your site stays live at its Hatchik address; only the one web address moves.

More than one address

You can point several addresses at the same site. Adding one never removes another. Hatchik sets up the address and its www version together, so both work.

Buying an address

Hatchik does not sell you one. Buy it wherever you like, and keep it in your own name — it is yours, and moving it away later is your decision alone.

Removing one

Tell Claude "stop using mysite.com", or remove it under Domains on the project page. That releases the address immediately, so you (or anyone) can add it somewhere else. Your <name>.hatchik.com address always keeps working, so a site is never left unreachable.

The same page as plain text, for an AI or anything else that prefers it: /docs/custom-domain.md

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