While a free subdomain is a great way to get started, a website looks a lot more professional with a custom domain name. Fortunately, you can register your own domain name with an external company (like NameSilo) and use it on InfinityFree.
There are multiple ways you can add the domain name as an account. You can create it as a new account or add it to an existing account.
Adding your domain name to your hosting account
Option 1: Create a new hosting account
To add your domain name to a new hosting account, simply login to your client area, click the Create Account button and select the “Custom Domain” option. Then, enter your own domain name in the box (without http:// or www) and continue with the setup as shown there.
Option 2: Add your domain to an existing account
Instead of creating a new account for your domain, you can also add a new domain to an account you already have. This can be especially useful if this account has an existing website you want to reuse.
There are two ways to add your domain through the Control Panel:
- As an Addon Domain: an Addon Domain gets it’s own, new website directory, so you can upload a new site to it, separate from your existing website. The directory will have a name like
<your domain>/htdocs. - As a Parked Domain: if you add your domain as a Parked Domain, you can select one of your existing domains on the account, which will link the domain to the same directory as the existing domain. This is the easiest way to get an existing website on your new domain.
You can also add your domain through the client area. In the client area, you will see a Directory dropdown that lets you choose whether you want a new directory or use the directory of an existing domain.
Validating your domain name
Before you can add your own domain name to your account, you will need to configure some settings to prove that you own the domain name. There are two ways to validate your domain: using nameservers or using CNAME records.
Validating your domain by updating the nameservers
The recommended way to verify your domain name is by updating the nameservers. This is the easiest method, and requires the least steps. Nameserver validation works for adding domains while creating accounts or adding them to existing accounts.
However, some domain extensions and domain name providers do not support setting the nameservers of your domain to nameservers that have not been set up yet. Changing the nameservers may also cause downtime if you already have a website set up. For those cases, you can use CNAME verification instead.
Validating your domain with a CNAME record
If changing the nameservers is not a good option for you, you can also verify your domain name with a CNAME record. Note that CNAME validation only works for adding domains to existing accounts. If you want to setup a new account with your own domain name, please create the account with a free subdomain first and add the CNAME record afterwards.
Please note that the CNAME record you’ve added is only used for verification. To host your website with InfinityFree, you will need to change your domain’s DNS settings after it has been added to your account. You can either setup the correct DNS records at your current DNS provider or change the nameservers of your domain to point it to your hosting account.
After adding the domain: wait for DNS propagation
After you’ve added the domain name to your account, it probably won’t show your website right away. That’s because adding your domain name needs to configure our nameservers to point your domain name to the right hosting account. This change, like most DNS changes, can take up to 72 hours to be visible everywhere. Unfortunately, we can’t speed that up, but there are some workarounds you can try.