Custom Domains and Branded Email

Overview

Custom domains and branded email are part of every plan.

BestWebby runs your storefront on your own domain and sends your customer email from that same domain. Two things get set up:

• The storefront — your shop served at yourdomain.com over HTTPS, with the certificate issued and renewed for you via Let's Encrypt.
• Branded email — a [email protected] mailbox that your store's notifications send from, cryptographically signed (DKIM) by your domain so those messages land in the inbox instead of the spam folder.

Both are driven by DNS records you publish at your registrar or DNS provider. You add the domain, prove you own it with one DNS record, point the domain at our server with another, and the rest is provisioned for you. You stay in control: nothing goes live until you publish the store yourself, and you can see the exact records to add at every step.

Your own domain is what a store goes live on. The yourshop.bestwebby.com address a store starts with is where you set it up; it cannot be published, because store email only ever sends from a domain you own.

You need the owner role to change a store's address or to add or verify a domain — adding a domain provisions infrastructure, so it lives under shop settings.

Your bestwebby.com address

Every store has a yourshop.bestwebby.com address while you set it up and preview it. You can change the name:

1. Go to Settings → Domains. Under your store, find Your bestwebby.com address.
2. Type the name you want. We check it as you type: it says whether the name is available, and if it is taken, offers names that are.
3. Click Change address and confirm.

What happens when you change it:

• Your store moves to the new address straight away.
• Links to the old address keep working. They redirect to the same page on the new address, with anything after the ? kept, so bookmarks, printed cards and shared links do not break.
• The old name stays reserved for your store for 180 days, so nobody else can take it and catch your visitors. You can switch back to it in that time with Make main address under Other addresses. After 180 days, another store may claim it.
• Your store's owners, admins and managers are told about the change, in the dashboard and by email, and it is recorded in the Audit log.

The rules for a name:

• 3 to 40 characters: letters a to z, numbers and single hyphens. It cannot start or end with a hyphen.
• No accented or non-Latin letters. Look-alike characters are a common way to imitate a real shop, so they are not allowed.
• Names the platform uses (such as www, api, admin, mail, status, cdn), and names that could be mistaken for BestWebby, a bank, a card network or another well-known company, are reserved.
• You can change the address 3 times in 30 days. The Domains page says how many changes you have left and when the next one opens.

A live store's address is always a domain you own, so the bestwebby.com name can only be changed while the store is not live. Once your store is live on your own domain, its old bestwebby.com address redirects there.

Find a domain name

Don't have a domain yet? Settings → Domains → Find a domain name suggests names built from your store's name (for example yourstore.com, yourstore.ca, shopyourstore.com) and checks each one against the public domain registries:

• Looks available: nobody had registered it when you searched. Buy it at any domain registrar you like; registrars usually charge a yearly fee.
• Already registered: someone owns it. Try another idea, or search for a different name or a full domain such as maplecandles.ca.
• Could not check: the registry did not answer in time, or we cannot check that ending. Ask a registrar.

BestWebby does not sell domains, and an answer is only as current as the moment you searched: the registrar confirms it when you buy. Once you own the domain, click I own it: connect (or Connect domain) and follow the steps below. You can search 20 times every 10 minutes.

Step 1: Add your domain

1. Go to Settings → Domains and click Connect domain.
2. Enter Your domain (for example yourdomain.com).
3. Choose which store it is for. Your main store is picked for you: it moves onto the domain and keeps its products, pages and settings. Choose A new, separate store only if you want a second store; it starts empty and counts towards your plan's stores.
4. Click Add & show DNS records.

If the store you picked is already live on a domain, it stays live there while the new domain is verified and its certificate is issued. The Domains page shows "Your store stays live on … until … is verified and has its certificate". When the new domain is ready, your store moves onto it and the old domain redirects to it, page for page. Until then you can click Cancel change, and the store simply stays where it is. If the new domain is not verified within 7 days, the change is cancelled for you.

The domain starts unverified. A store that is not live yet stays offline until you publish it. BestWebby generates a one-time ownership token and shows you two DNS records to publish:

The TXT record proves you own the domain. The A record points the domain at our server so we can serve your storefront and issue the SSL certificate. Use an A record for a subdomain such as shop.yourdomain.com too: the target is an IP address, which a CNAME cannot point at.

The www record is optional but recommended, since many shoppers type www.. When it points at us, www.yourdomain.com is added to your certificate and sends visitors on to yourdomain.com. Without it, only yourdomain.com works. Add it before you verify: once the certificate is issued, adding www later needs a new certificate, so get in touch if you do. Keep it in place once it is on the certificate: renewal checks every name on it.

Step 2: Publish the DNS records

Log in to your DNS provider (Cloudflare, your registrar, or wherever your domain's DNS lives) and add both records exactly as shown.

Tips:

• Copy the token exactly. A verify check that finds the record but sees the wrong value will tell you it didn't match — usually a stray space or a partial paste.
• If your provider auto-appends the domain to the host, enter just _bestwebby-verify for the TXT host rather than the full _bestwebby-verify.yourdomain.com.
• DNS changes are not instant. Give them a few minutes to propagate before verifying.
• On Cloudflare, new records are proxied by default (an orange cloud). Set the A record's Proxy status to DNS only (grey cloud). A proxied record points your domain at Cloudflare instead of at us, so we cannot issue its certificate; the domain shows "Proxied by Cloudflare — set to DNS only" until you change it.

Step 3: Verify and go live

Back in Settings → Domains, click Verify & issue SSL on the domain.

BestWebby looks up the _bestwebby-verify TXT record and confirms it matches your token. When it does:

1. The domain is marked verified.
2. Provisioning starts: a web server configuration is created for your domain, and a Let's Encrypt certificate is issued.
3. Once the certificate is live and your email is set up (Step 4), the site shows Ready to publish on Channels → Sites and we tell you. It does not go live by itself: you publish it from there when you are ready. See Going live.

Certificate issuance only starts once your domain's A record actually points at our server. If the A record hasn't propagated yet, the domain waits in a dns_pending state and is picked up automatically once it resolves — you don't need to keep clicking.

If a provisioning attempt fails, a Retry button appears. Retry re-runs the setup; it does not re-check ownership (that's already proven).

A note on rate limits

Certificate issuance is subject to Let's Encrypt's limits (a capped number of failed validation attempts per hostname per hour). BestWebby only attempts issuance when your domain resolves to our server, and it throttles retries per domain, so a mis-pointed domain doesn't burn through your attempts. If you hit a wall, wait out the cooldown and retry rather than clicking repeatedly.

Step 4: Branded email is provisioned for you

When your domain is verified, BestWebby also provisions email hosting for it on the shared mail server. This is what lets your store send from [email protected] instead of a generic platform address. It sets up:

• A DKIM key for your domain.
• A [email protected] mailbox that the platform uses to send your store's notifications.
• The MX, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records you need to publish.

This runs in the background and usually takes a few minutes. In Settings → Email, you'll see a "Setting up your mailboxes…" message until your mailboxes are ready.

Publish your email DNS records

Once your mailboxes are ready, Settings → Email shows the exact records for your domain. Publish all four at your DNS provider:

Store email does not send from your domain until BestWebby finds your SPF and DKIM records in public DNS. Mail signed for a domain whose DNS does not vouch for it fails those checks and lands in spam or is rejected, so we wait for the records rather than send too early. We check every few minutes and switch over on our own; Settings → Email says "Publish your email records" until then, and "Records found" after.

While you wait:

• Order receipts and account emails from your storefront still go out, from BestWebby's address.
• Campaigns, cart recovery and flow emails go out from BestWebby's address, and switch to your own address once your records are found.
• Email that has to come from you is not sent at all: shipping and delivery notices, pickup-ready emails, review requests, inbox replies, emailed till receipts, and booking and referral emails. It is never sent from our address while reading as your store. A shipping or delivery email that could not go out is noted on the order's timeline, and you are told under Notifications.

Your mailboxes work in the meantime: you can create extra ones and collect mail as soon as your MX record is published.

Extra mailboxes

Beyond the automatic support@ mailbox, you can create additional mailboxes on any domain whose email hosting is active — for example [email protected] or [email protected].

1. Go to Settings → Email and click New email.
2. Enter the username, pick the domain, and create.
3. Copy the password immediately — it is shown once and is not stored, so it can't be recovered later. If you lose it, delete the mailbox and create it again.

The number of mailboxes you can create depends on your plan.

Connecting a mail client

Extra mailboxes are POP3 mailboxes. Configure your email client with:

• Incoming (POP3): mail.bestwebby.com, port 995, SSL/TLS
• Outgoing (SMTP): mail.bestwebby.com, port 587, STARTTLS
• Username: the full email address (e.g. [email protected])
• Password: the one shown when you created the mailbox

IMAP is not available — use POP3.

Important: 48-hour retention

Mail is automatically deleted from the server 48 hours after it arrives. The server is a relay, not long-term storage. To keep your messages:

• Connect a POP3 client and keep it running so it downloads new mail regularly.
• Leave "delete from server after download" enabled so your client, not the server, becomes the permanent home for your mail.

If you don't connect a client, or leave it off for more than two days, mail older than 48 hours will be gone.

Other addresses

Under each store, Other addresses lists the hostnames it used to have: an old bestwebby.com name, or a domain you moved away from. Each one redirects visitors to the same page on the store's current address, so nothing you shared before stops working. A bestwebby.com name shows the date until which it stays reserved for you.

To make one of them the main address again, click Make main address. For a domain you own, that runs the usual connect steps, so the domain is proven to still be yours before the store moves back onto it.

Gotchas and troubleshooting

• "That address is already in use" or "used by another store recently". Another store has the name, or gave it up less than 180 days ago and it is still reserved for them. Pick one of the names offered instead.
• "You can change your bestwebby.com address 3 times in 30 days." You have used this month's changes. The Domains page says when the next one opens.
• "TXT record found but value does not match." You published the record, but the value is off. Re-copy the token and check for trailing spaces or a truncated paste.
• "Could not read TXT record." DNS hasn't propagated yet. Wait a few minutes and verify again.
• Store verified but not live. A store only goes live when you publish it from Channels → Sites. If it does not say Ready to publish yet, the certificate is still issuing, your A record isn't pointing at us yet, or your email records are not published. A domain in dns_pending resolves itself once the A record propagates. One that says it is proxied by Cloudflare does not: set the record to DNS only first.
• Can't create extra mailboxes. The domain's email hosting has to finish setting up first. If it still says "Setting up…", give it a few minutes; if it says setup failed, contact support.
• Store email still comes from the platform address. We have not found your SPF and DKIM records yet. Check that both are published exactly as shown on Settings → Email. If you already have an SPF record, add our ip4: address to it rather than publishing a second one; a domain may only have one.
• Mailboxes stopped sending and collecting. If your account is switched off for an unpaid invoice, mailboxes are paused: mail still arrives and is kept, but can't be sent or collected until you pay. See Billing and your plan.

Where to go next

• Settings → Domains — change your bestwebby.com address, find a domain name, add, verify and monitor domains and SSL status, and see your other addresses.
• Settings → Email — view your per-domain DNS records, create extra mailboxes, and check mail hosting status.

Questions? Get in touch.