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How to set up your website, domain and business email

Get a site live at a free Otto address or your own domain, have Otto design it, and prepare the records for business email.

Updated 2026-10-17

Website sets up three things in order: Domain, Design and Email. None of them waits for another, so you can design first and add a domain later. It is under Growth → Website. An owner or admin sets the site up, chooses the design and asks for records; everyone else sees "There is no site yet. An owner or admin sets one up." until they do.

1. Domain

  • Use a free Otto address: press Skip for now — use a free Otto address. Your site is live there, with or without a domain of your own.
  • Use a domain I already own: type Your domain and press Show the records. It stays where you bought it: you add two records there and Otto checks them. It shows Not pointed yet until they are seen, then Connected.
  • Find a new domain: look one up and press Buy. Nothing is bought until an owner or admin approves it in Reviews. Where buying is not switched on, Otto says "Registering new domains through Otto is not switched on yet." and you can still connect a domain you own.

Press Continue to design when you are ready.

2. Design

  1. Tell Otto about your business, for example "We repair and restore bicycles in Leeds, with same-week turnaround and a fair fixed price list", and Who is it for?.
  2. Pick The feel, Brand colours (or Otto chooses), the Pages, and tick Add a contact form if you want one. Messages from it land in your contacts, marked as from the website.
  3. Press Design three options. You can leave the page while Otto works.
  4. Look closer at each, then Choose this one. Otto builds the pages.
  5. Click anything on a page to change it, or ask Otto for a change. Press Save, then Publish site.

Every saved version is kept; Restore this version brings one back.

3. Email

Otto does not sell mailboxes. It prepares the records your mail provider asks for, so you get addresses on your own domain:

  1. On the Email tab, follow 1. Buy Microsoft 365 from Microsoft and 2. Add your domain there and paste the value Microsoft shows. Using Google Workspace instead? Press Prepare Google Workspace records.
  2. Press Prepare the records. For a domain bought through Otto, Let Otto set the records sends one change to Reviews. For a domain held elsewhere, copy the records and add them by hand.

To send Otto's customer emails from that domain too, see how to send email from your own domain.

If it doesn't work

  • "Otto is already working on the site." — wait for the current design to finish.
  • "Otto could not finish designing. Nothing is lost — try again, or change the brief first."
  • "Save your edits first — Otto works from the saved page."
  • "This server's address is not set yet, so there is nothing to point a domain at." — write to us.