Using your own domain
Pointing a domain you own at your store, the exact DNS records, and why verification is not instant.
Your store is live at your-store.ecrate.com from the day you create it, and it works perfectly well. Connecting a domain you own is optional, and it is the step most people get stuck on — not because eCrate makes it hard, but because DNS is slow and unforgiving and nobody tells you which of those two you are looking at.
What you need
A domain you already own, and the ability to sign in wherever you bought it (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare, Google Domains, your host) and edit its DNS records. That editor is usually called DNS, DNS records, Advanced DNS or Zone file.
Buying a domain through eCrate is not switched on here, so you will need to buy one from a registrar first. Everything below is about connecting a domain you already own, which works normally.
Connecting it
Go to Dashboard → Domains, add your domain, and eCrate shows you the exact records to publish. There are two kinds and they do different jobs.
The two records do different jobs and are published at the same time. The routing record is what carries visitors; the TXT record is only ever read by eCrate, to confirm the domain is yours.
The verification record proves you control the domain. It is a TXT record on a dedicated subdomain, _ecrate-challenge, so it cannot collide with anything else you have at the root:
| Type | Name / Host | Value |
|---|---|---|
| TXT | _ecrate-challenge | the value shown on your Domains screen |
The routing record is what actually sends visitors to your storefront, and which one you need depends on where you are connecting:
| Connecting | Type | Name / Host | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
The root, e.g. acme.com | A | @ | the IP address shown on your screen |
www, alongside the root | CNAME | www | the target shown on your screen |
A subdomain, e.g. shop.acme.com | CNAME | shop | the target shown on your screen |
Copy the values from your own Domains screen rather than from this page — they are specific to your deployment, and your verification value is specific to you.
Then press Verify
eCrate does a real DNS lookup for your TXT record. If it is not there yet, it says so and you try again in a few minutes.
This is where the waiting is. DNS changes are not instant. A few minutes is normal, an hour is common, and some registrars are slower than that. Nothing is broken while you wait. If it has been more than a few hours, the cause is almost always one of these:
- The host field has the domain in it twice. Many registrars append your domain automatically, so typing
_ecrate-challenge.acme.comproduces_ecrate-challenge.acme.com.acme.com. Enter just_ecrate-challenge. - The value was copied with a quote mark or a trailing space. Paste it again.
- The record was added to the wrong domain, which happens easily with several in one account.
- Cloudflare's proxy is on. Set the record to DNS only (grey cloud) while verifying.
After it verifies
Your storefront serves on your domain over HTTPS; the certificate is issued and renewed for you and there is nothing to buy or install. If you connected both the root and www, one of them is canonical and the other redirects to it — you choose which on the Domains screen, and shoppers and search engines both end up at the one you picked.
Your .ecrate.com address keeps working. Nothing you had is lost.