Connect your own domain (.com) to your Vercel site

Your site is already online with a .vercel.app URL. Now let’s give it a custom domain like yourname.com so it looks more professional. Tap each step to open it.

Before you start: you need your site published on Vercel (guide) and a domain purchased (Step 1 below).

1 Buy your domain

If you already have a domain, skip to Step 2.

A domain is the address people type to reach your site (e.g. myportfolio.com). You buy it at a registrar, a domain store. Some popular options:

Registrar	.com price approx.	Note
Namecheap	~$10–12 / yr	Simple interface, great for beginners
Cloudflare Registrar	~$9–11 / yr	No markup, more technical
GoDaddy	~$12–15 / yr	Most well-known; watch out for renewals

Approximate prices in USD. Subject to change. Confirm the final price on the registrar’s official page before buying.

Tips for choosing your domain:

Short and easy to remember.
Avoid hyphens and numbers.
.com is the most recognized, but .io, .co or .net also work.

2 Add the domain in Vercel

Go to https://vercel.com/dashboard and enter your project.
Go to the Settings → Domains tab.
Type your domain (e.g. myportfolio.com) in the field and click “Add”.
Vercel will show you the DNS records you need to configure. There are two methods:
- DNS records (A and/or CNAME): the most common, you configure them at your registrar.
- Vercel nameservers: you delegate the whole domain to Vercel (simpler if you don’t know DNS).

Choose what works best for you. Vercel shows the exact values to copy. Continue with Step 3.

3 Point the DNS at your registrar

Go to your registrar’s panel (Namecheap, GoDaddy, etc.) and find the DNS or DNS Management section.

Option A, DNS records (recommended):

Add the records Vercel gave you. They’re usually:

For the root domain (myportfolio.com): an A record pointing to 76.76.21.21
For the www subdomain: a CNAME record pointing to cname.vercel-dns.com

The exact values are shown by Vercel in Settings → Domains. Use them as-is, they may vary.

Option B, Vercel nameservers:

In your registrar’s nameservers section, replace the current ones with those Vercel gave you (usually two or three servers like ns1.vercel-dns.com, ns2.vercel-dns.com, etc.).

Save the changes at your registrar.

4 Wait for propagation and confirm

DNS changes take time to propagate across the internet:

With A/CNAME records: usually between 5 and 30 minutes.
With nameservers: can take up to 24–48 hours (usually less than 24 h).

How to know it worked:

In Vercel → Settings → Domains, the domain will show a green check and say “Valid configuration”.
Type your domain in the browser and you’ll see your site.

While you wait you can keep using the .vercel.app URL, it works in parallel.

If something goes wrong

Problem	Fix
Domain still not working after 48 h	Check that the DNS records are exactly as Vercel specified; one wrong character breaks it
Vercel says “Invalid configuration”	Go back to Settings → Domains, click the domain and follow exactly the values it shows
I have `www` but not the root domain (or vice versa)	Add both: the root domain and `www.yourdomain.com` separately in Vercel
My registrar won’t let me change nameservers	Use Option A (A/CNAME records) instead of nameservers
The site shows a red security lock	Vercel activates HTTPS automatically on its own; wait a few more minutes