Do you want to host your public Notion pages on a custom domain?
Notion is a powerful tool for organizing your life and work. Although each workspace in Notion has its own URL, it still uses the notion.site domain extension. The individual pages have messy URL structure which looks unprofessional.
In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to configure a custom domain for your Notion workspace so that each page gets pretty URL that can be shared with anyone.
What Does It Mean To Host Notion on a Custom Domain?
A custom domain is a domain name that you own and control. It’s a way to build your brand identity on the internet. For example, the domain for this website is notionzen.com and only I can use it.
A custom domain in Notion simpley means that people will be able to access your Notion public workspace using the branded URL instead of the brand.notion.site domain. Anyone who types in the URL yourdomain.com in the browser will get to see your public Notion pages similar to a website.
How To Use Notion With a Custom Domain?
There are three ways you can set up a custom domain for Notion. The first and the easiest way is to use a service like Potion which turn your Notion pages into a website.
The second method is to use service like Fruition which requires a bit of technical knowledge to set up. And the third method is to set up a redirect to the actual Notion URL.
The first method is the better way as you get control over the URL of the publically available pages. In the second method, you’ll need to create a Cloudflare account to do the set up. In the third mehtod, a user will type in the ‘yourdomain.com’ URL in the browser and it will redirect to the Notion URL that contains the Notion domain.
For all the methods that I am about to show, you’ll first have to purchase a domain for your Notion website with an extension of your choice. Domain extensions are the letters after the period (.) in a domain. Notion uses the .so extension while we use the .com extension for this website.
I use Namecheap for domain registration as it let me easily manage all my domains under one roof and it is cheap.
You can choose any other domain provider if you want. If you choose any other registrar, the steps will vary a little but the concept will remain the same.
To register a domain, go to the Namecheap website, enter your brand name in the search box, and hit Enter.
It will show you the domains with different extensions for the keyword you entered. If the .com extension is available, you can purchase it right away. If not you can scroll and look for some other extension. You can find the .xyz and .online domain extensions for as cheap as just $1-$2. Add the domain of your choice to the cart and complete the transaction.
Once you have purchased the domain for your website, let’s see how to set up a Notion custom domain using Potion.
1. Use Potion To Turn Your Notion Workspace Into a Website
Potion is a Notion website builder service that allows you to create a website using Notion on a custom domain. It also gives you control over URLs, allowing you to create pretty URLs for SEO with your own domain.
Potion Features
- Custom domain with pretty URLs.
- 5 minutes to set up with no coding skills required.
- Live Editor with options for Custom CSS and fonts.
- Great built-in SEO and speed.
- Password-protected sites.
- Perfect for your portfolio, blog, job posting, landing page, or business site.
We have a detailed tutorial on how to create a website with Notion using Potion that you might want to check out.
Once you’ve created a website on a Potion subdomain, you can move it to your own custom domain.
In your Potion dashboard, under Sites, open the settings for the site you just created. This will launch the Potion site customizer, where you need to click on the gear icon at the top.
Want to get a free personal website template like the one in the screenshot? Check out the template on Gumroad.
This will bring up the Site Settings menu in the sidebar, where you can toggle the Custom Domain option and enter the custom domain that you purchased. Next, click the Setup Info button under the box
This will open a popup with two domain records that we must add to point our domain name to Potion’s server. If you’re not sure what this means, don’t worry! It’s very simple, and I’ll walk you through it.
Go to your domain registrar, Namecheap in my case, and in the dashboard click on Manage next to the domain.
Next, click on Advanced DNS at the top navigation and under Host Records, click on Add New Record.
Select A record as the Type, enter the value provided by Potion as the Host and Value, and leave the TTL set to automatic. After you’ve entered both records, click the green checkmark to save them.
Now, you’ll have to wait for some time, usually up to 24 hours, before the changes are propagated. You can check the status from the Potion dashboard, and once it changes to live, you’ll be able to access the Notion page from the domain.
Isn’t that easy? Let’s now check the second method which uses Fruition, a free open source toolkit for building Notion sites.
2. Use Fruition To Use Custom Domain Your Notion Page
Fruition is similar to Potion, but requires some technical knowledge. It is not as plug and play as Potion.
To start using it, you first need to create a free Cloudflare account and then run a custom script on it. The Fruition websites walk you through the process step by step.
You can view the setup process on the Fruition website or watch the video if you prefer that.
The last method only adds a redirect from your domain to the Notion page without actually changing the URL. Let’s check that out now.
3. Set Redirect From Domain Control Panel
Another way to use a custom domain is to redirect the domain to your Notion page.
Once you’ve purchased the domain and logged in to your dashboard, click the Manage button next to the domain. On the new page, you’ll see a section labeled Redirect Domain.
Below it, click on the Add Redirect button, and in the source URL, type in the URL of the domain you just purchased, and in the Destination URL, add the public Notion page URL. Check if everything is correct and click the green checkmark to save the changes.
Now when anyone types in the custom domain URL in the browser, it will redirect them to your Notion page.
That’s it! These are the three methods that you can use to add a custom domain to your Notion public pages.
Wrapping Up: Notion Custom Domain
Notion cannot be used on a custom domain by default, but there is a workaround. If you want to serve the pages via pretty URLs, using a website builder like Potion makes sense.
If you want something free, Fruition might be solution you want to try. Buut if all you want to do is set up a redirect from your domain to the Notion page, the last method is preferable.
That’s it for this tutorial. If you liked this tutorial, you can check out our tutorial on how to password protect Notion pages.
