Adam Bowker
Oct 6, 2025
If you have a paid Bolt plan, it's super easy to add a custom domain - but if not, they want to charge you $25/mo for all the other features that you might not even need.
In this post I'll show you how to add a custom domain for free by deploying to Netlify.
Video tutorial
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Duplicate your Bolt project
If you have not yet published your Bolt project, skip ahead to Create a Netlify Account.
If you've ever published your Bolt project before (to a domain like your-project.bolt.host), you'll have to duplicate it, change some settings, and publish again to move it to Netlify.
Open your project, click on the title, then select "Duplicate". Do not publish your new duplicated project yet!
Connect Netlify Account
First, you'll need to create a free account at Netlify. You can use Netlify to deploy your Bolt project instead of using Bolt hosting, and they offer free custom domain support.
Once you have an account, go back to your new duplicated Bolt project. Go to Settings -> All project settings -> Applications, and click "Connect" beside Netlify. This will prompt you to log in to Netlify and connect your account.
Set Netlify as your project host & publish
Go to Settings > All project settings > Domains & Hosting. Set your Hosting provider to Netlify.
Now publish your project! You will see it gets published to a domain like your-project.netlify.app. This means you've successfully connected & deployed to Netlify.
Add custom domain in Netlify
Go to your Netlify account and you'll see your Bolt project. Open the project, go to Domain management, then "Add a domain you already own." Enter the domain and click "Verify," then "Add domain."
Netlify will now add both your-domain.com and www.your-domain.com to your project. This is ok - usually, the www domain will just redirect to the primary ("root") domain.
Each of these rows will show a warning "Awaiting External DNS." This means you have to add some records to your domain name to point it to Netlify, one for the root domain, and one for www.
Root domain setup
Starting with the root domain (the one without www), click this warning message to see the record. You'll see some options like this:
If possible, you should use the first option - but not all DNS providers support that. So, you can try this:
First, try adding a new DNS record of type CNAME, with:
Name set to
@Target set to
apex-loadbalancer.netlify.com(or, whichever domain shows up in your Netlify settings after theALIASpart.
In Cloudflare, that record looks like this:
If your DNS provider gives you trouble with the @ symbol for the Name, you can try Netlify's fallback option. Create a record of type A, with:
Name set to
@Target set to the IP address you get from Netlify. In the screenshot above, that's
75.2.60.5
www-domain setup
Last step! You need to add one more record for your www domain. Click the "Awaiting External DNS" message for the www domain, and you'll see something like this:
Add a new record of type CNAME, with:
Name set to
wwwTarget set to the domain you see in Netlify. In my screenshot above, that's
bright-eclair-ac7a86.netlify.app.Make sure you include that little period at the end of the domain!
In Cloudflare, that record looks like this:
Wait - how the heck do I add DNS records?
Use the list for help with some common DNS providers!
Done!
All done! It might take a few minutes (or a new hours) for your new domain to start working. Check Netlify every now and then - when the "Awaiting External DNS" message goes away, you're good to go.
