Two flavors of "send visitors somewhere else when they hit my domain": registrar-level forwarding and hosting-level redirects. Both work, they're just configured in different places and behave a little differently.
Registrar-level domain forwarding
If your domain isn't pointed at any hosting and you just want it to redirect to another URL, you can set up forwarding at the registrar level. This works without any web server.
To configure:
- Go to Domains and click the domain.
- Open the DNS subpage.
- Add an
Arecord pointing at our forwarding service IP (we provide it on the page). - Open a ticket with our team and tell us the destination URL.
Or, simpler: if you don't want to deal with DNS at all, just open a ticket telling us "forward yourdomain.com to https://other-place.com" and we'll set it up.
This is good for:
- A domain you've registered but don't have hosting for, that you want to point at your existing site.
- Marketing domains (
yourbrand.com.au→yourbrand.com). - Old domains you've replaced but still own (preserving SEO link equity).
Hosting-level redirects (more flexible)
If your domain is pointed at our hosting and you want to redirect specific URLs (or the whole site), use the hosting redirect tool. This is more flexible — you can redirect:
- Individual pages (
/old-blog-post→/new-blog-post). - Whole subdirectories (
/blog/*→/articles/*). - The whole site to another domain.
- HTTP to HTTPS (this is auto-on for managed plans).
To configure:
- Go to Services and click your hosting service.
- Open the Domain Redirects tile.
- Click Add redirect.
- Choose the source path, the destination URL, and the redirect type (301 for permanent, 302 for temporary).
- Save.
Changes take effect immediately.
301 vs 302
- 301 (permanent) — search engines treat the new URL as the canonical one and transfer SEO ranking value from the old URL to the new. Use for permanent moves.
- 302 (temporary) — search engines keep the old URL indexed and don't pass ranking value. Use for genuine temporary moves (A/B testing, maintenance pages, seasonal content).
Most of the time, you want 301.
Path forwarding
For registrar-level forwarding, you can choose whether the path is preserved:
- With path —
yourdomain.com/blog/post→https://other.com/blog/post. The path comes along. - Without path —
yourdomain.com/blog/post→https://other.com/. Everything ends up at the destination root.
For hosting-level redirects, paths are always handled per-rule (you decide what each rule does).
SSL on forwarded domains
If you're forwarding to an https:// destination, the visitor's browser still wants a valid SSL certificate on your domain to load the redirect securely. We auto-issue certificates for any domain on hosting, so this is handled automatically.
For pure registrar-level forwarding without hosting, we provide an SSL-capable forwarding endpoint so the redirect is secure.
What forwarding can't do
- Mask the destination URL — that's frame masking, which has been broken in modern browsers for a decade. We don't offer it.
- Forward email — that's email forwarding, completely different. See Email forwarding.
- Send visitors to different places based on location — that's geo-redirect, requires hosting-level setup with a CDN. Open a ticket for help.