Connecting Your Domain to Shopify

Shopify lets you run your online store under your own domain name instead of a myshopify.com address, and Hover's Connect tool makes linking the two straightforward. This article walks you through connecting your Hover domain to your Shopify store.

How Connect Fits Into Setting Up Your Store

Connect is a feature in your Hover control panel that automatically adds the technical DNS settings your domain needs to point to Shopify. DNS (short for Domain Name System) is the internet's address book — it's what tells the internet which server should answer when someone visits your domain. Rather than adding those address-book entries by hand, you pick Shopify from a list in Connect and Hover takes care of the rest.

Note: Connecting can take up to 48 hours to fully settle, even though the setup itself only takes a few minutes.

Before you begin

• An active Hover domain — the domain you want to use for your Shopify store.
• Hover's nameservers set on your domain — Connect only works if your domain uses Hover's nameservers, ns1.hover.com and ns2.hover.com. Nameservers are the servers that control which company manages your domain's settings.
• A Shopify account and store — you'll need an existing Shopify store, with the domain already added to your Shopify account.

Warning: Changing your nameservers to Hover moves management of your domain's settings to Hover's system. Before you do this, make sure you're not relying on email or other services tied to your current DNS provider, since switching can disrupt them.

Step 1: Sign In and Select Your Domain

1. Sign in to your Hover control panel using your chosen method of two-factor authentication (2FA).
2. If you have more than one domain, select the domain you want to connect to Shopify from your list of domains.

Step 2: Confirm Your Domain Uses Hover's Nameservers

1. On the domain's overview page, check that the nameservers are set to ns1.hover.com and ns2.hover.com.

Step 3: Open the Connect Tab and Choose Shopify

1. Click the Connect tab, or click More and then Connect.
2. Find Shopify in the list of Connect partners and click Select.

Step 4: Add the Domain in Shopify and Connect

Note: Make sure you've already added this exact domain name to your Shopify account before completing this step, or the connection will fail.

1. Click Connect.

Step 5: Confirm the Connection

1. Once the connection is complete, Hover displays a confirmation message in the Connect tab.

Next steps

• Troubleshoot a connection issue — see Troubleshooting Domain Connect Issues if your domain doesn't connect to Shopify as expected.
• Learn more about the Connect tool — see Connecting Your Domain to a Host Using Connect for an overview of how Connect works with other hosting providers.

Questions? Contact Hover Support.