Connecting Hover domain to Ecwid Instant Site

You can connect a custom domain purchased from Hover with your Ecwid Instant Site, so that customers can enter your unique URL in their browser and get right to your site.

Once connected, your Ecwid Instant site will open at your domain name, via secure HTTPS connection. You don’t need to separately purchase an SSL certificate as Ecwid provides free SSL for Instant Site users. Visit your Hover account to manage all the domain settings and to pay for the domain name, or renew it.

Step 1. Setting up your domain in the Ecwid admin

To link your domain with your Ecwid Instant Site, you should first specify your custom domain name in your Ecwid admin.

To specify a domain name:

1. From your Ecwid admin, go to Website → Domain.
2. In the Domain name and site address block, click Connect Existing Domain.
3. In the Specify a domain name field enter your custom domain name (without www):
   

   

4. Click Next Step.
5. You will see a popup that contains an IP-address. Copy that IP-address. You will need it to set up your domain in your registrar account.
6. Click Save.

Step 2. Setting up your domain in the Hover account

To finish linking your Ecwid Instant Site with your domain, you should make changes in your domain settings and point the domain to your Ecwid site. For that, you need to add an A record and a CNAME record in your domain host account.

To point the domain to your Ecwid site:

1. Go to the Hover website at https://www.hover.com and click Sign in to log into your account.
2. In the upper right corner, click Your account → Domains:

3. Open the DNS tab:

4. To create an A record, click Add a record button and fill in the fields:
   • Type: Choose A.
   • Hostname: Enter @.
   • IP address: Enter the IP address that you earlier copied from your Ecwid admin (23.23.44.201, 34.193.83.23, or 3.211.60.235).
   • TTL: You can keep the default of 15 minutes.

5. Click Add record.
6. Delete other A records that you see in the DNS tab. To make the domain work with your Instant site, there must be only one A-record — the one pointing to Ecwid IP address:

7. To create CNAME, click Add a record button and fill in the fields:
   • Type: Choose CNAME.
   • Hostname: Type www.
   • Target name: Enter your custom domain name without www like yourperfectstore.online.
   • TTL: You can keep the default of 15 minutes.

8. Click Add record.

As a result, you should have an A record pointing to your Ecwid IP address and a CNAME, like this:

That’s it! You’ve set up a domain. Now give the changes some time to propagate. On average, it takes a couple of hours, but in some cases may be up to 48 hours. After that, your Ecwid store will open at your custom domain name with and without www (for example, yourperfectstore.online and www.yourperfectstore.online), via secure HTTPS connection.