Lovable, Bolt and v0 can turn a few prompts into a real website in an afternoon. Each one puts it on a free address of its own, such as lovable.app, bolt.host or vercel.app. That's fine for testing. For a business, you want customers to see yourbusiness.com.au, on Google, on your van and on your invoices.
This guide covers the whole job in order. You'll buy the domain, including the ABN rules for .com.au. You'll publish the site and add the domain in your tool, following each tool's own documentation. Then you'll add the DNS records, wait for the security certificate, and check your email still arrives. It ends with the common mistakes and when to hand the job to someone else.
Success looks like this: your domain opens your site with the padlock showing, the www and non-www versions both work, and email sent to your business address lands in your inbox as it did before. For most people the hands-on part takes under an hour. The waiting can take up to a few days.
Step 1: Buy your domain, and check you can hold a .com.au
A domain is the address people type to reach your site. You don't buy it outright. You licence it from a registrar for a set period and renew it. If you already have a domain, skip ahead to step 2.
Most Australian businesses want a .com.au. auDA, the body that runs .au names, says .com.au is for commercial entities registered to do business in Australia. In practice you need an active ABN or ACN. The name must also connect to your business: your business or personal name, an acronym of it, your Australian trade mark, or a product or service you offer. You need to stay eligible for as long as you hold it.
You register .au names through a .au domain provider. auDA's guide says a licence runs for one to five years, and a new name can take up to two days to be ready to use. Our beginner's guide to buying a .com.au domain covers choosing a name and a registrar in more detail.
Lovable, Bolt and Vercel will also sell you a domain inside their dashboards, and they set up the records for you. That's the quickest path. The trade-off is that your domain then sits inside your website tool's account. Lovable notes that domains bought through it renew separately from your subscription, so you have two bills to keep track of. If you think you might change tools later, a separate registrar keeps the address independent of the website.
Step 2: Publish the site and pick the right plan
Each tool needs the site published before the domain will show anything. Publishing makes a live copy of your project on the tool's own address.
- Lovable: click Publish in the top right of the editor, check the lovable.app address, and click Publish in the dialog. Lovable says publishing doesn't use credits. Later changes don't go live on their own. You open the same dialog and click Publish changes.
- Bolt: click Publish in the top right, then Publish again in the menu. Bolt deploys in about a minute to a bolt.host address with a random name, which you can rename.
- v0: v0 deploys your app to Vercel, which gives it a vercel.app address. From there, the domain is set up in Vercel.
Check the plan before you go further. Lovable and Bolt both say custom domains need a paid plan. At the time of writing (October 2026), Lovable Pro is US$25 a month and Bolt Pro is US$25 a month. Bolt also says that if you drop back to its free plan, you can no longer publish to your custom domain.
On Vercel, the free Hobby plan is limited to personal, non-commercial use under Vercel's fair use guidelines. A business website belongs on Pro, which is US$20 per developer seat a month at the time of writing. If you code the site with Claude or ChatGPT, or export it from Lovable through its GitHub sync, you can deploy it to Vercel directly. Vercel builds a new version every time you push a change to your main branch.
Step 3: Add the domain in your tool's settings
Next, tell the tool which domain to expect. It then shows you the exact DNS records to add. Use the values your dashboard shows you, because they can differ between projects.
Lovable
Go to Project, Settings, Domains. Under Connect existing domain, click Connect domain and enter your domain. Choose Root domain for yourbusiness.com.au. The Redirect www to root option is on by default, so www.yourbusiness.com.au is connected too. Lovable then offers to set up DNS automatically by logging in to your provider through a service called Entri, or shows you the records to add by hand.
Bolt
Click the gear icon at the top, then All project settings, Domains and Hosting, and Connect a domain you own. Enter your domain in the Custom domain field and click Verify and add domain. Bolt only shows this option once the project is published.
v0 and Vercel
In v0, open Publish and choose Customize Domain, or open the project menu, then Settings, then Domains. Click Add and enter your own domain. v0's docs then send you to Inspect on Vercel to finish the setup. In Vercel, the domain lives under your project's Settings, then Domains, then Add Domain. If you add the bare domain, Vercel prompts you to add the www version as well.
Step 4: Add the A and CNAME records at your registrar
DNS is the directory that tells browsers which server holds your website. It's managed wherever your domain's nameservers point, usually the registrar you bought it from. You'll add one or two records there. You leave every other record alone.
- A record: points a name at a server's numeric IP address. It's used for the bare domain, written as @ in most DNS screens.
- CNAME record: points a name at another name, such as www pointing at your host's address. A plain CNAME usually can't sit on the bare domain, which is why some hosts ask for an ALIAS or ANAME record there instead.
- TXT record: a line of text that proves you own the domain. Some tools ask for one before they connect.
Here is what each tool's documentation asks for at the time of writing. Always copy the values from your own dashboard.
Lovable
A @ 185.158.133.1
TXT _lovable lovable_verify=... (copy the full value Lovable shows)
Bolt
CNAME www site-dns.bolt.host
ALIAS @ site-dns.bolt.host (or ANAME, or flattened CNAME)
Vercel (and v0)
A @ 76.76.21.21 (most projects; use the value on your domain card)
CNAME www your project's own value, e.g. d1d4fc829fe7bc7c.vercel-dns-017.comBefore you save, look for older A, AAAA or CNAME records on the same names (@ and www). They usually point at a parking page or a previous host. Lovable, Bolt and Vercel all say a conflicting record can stop the domain connecting or stop the certificate being issued. Delete only those website records. Leave MX and other TXT records exactly as they are.
Vercel also offers a nameserver method, where you hand all of your DNS to Vercel. Its docs warn you to copy every existing record across first, including the MX records for email. For a single website, changing just the A and CNAME records is simpler and leaves your email untouched.
Step 5: Wait for SSL and check the site
SSL is the certificate that gives your site https and the padlock. Without it, Chrome marks a site as not secure. All three platforms issue a free certificate automatically once your DNS records are in place. You don't need to buy one from your registrar.
- Lovable: the domain moves from Setting up to Live. Lovable says most domains finish within a few hours, and DNS changes can take up to 72 hours. While it's still setting up, browsers may show a security warning, so wait for Live before you judge it.
- Bolt: the Status column shows Pending, then Secure. Bolt says a domain bought elsewhere can take up to 24 hours after DNS is correct. If the certificate is missing, an Ensure SSL certificate button in Domains and Hosting requests one.
- Vercel: the domain card changes to Valid Configuration, and Vercel provisions the certificate once DNS has propagated. Vercel notes that a DNS change can take up to 24 hours to fully update.
Once it's live, check four things on your phone and laptop. Open the domain with and without www. Look for the padlock. Click through every page. Send a test enquiry through your contact form.
Step 6: Make sure your business email still works
If you already use an address like you@yourbusiness.com.au, your email runs on the same domain as your website. MX records tell other mail servers where to deliver it. Google Workspace, for example, uses the MX value smtp.google.com. Your website records and your MX records are separate lines in the same DNS list.
Connecting a website doesn't require touching the MX records at all. Vercel's docs say adding a domain to a project does not, by itself, move its DNS records or change its email setup. Email breaks when someone deletes the MX records while tidying up, or switches nameservers to a new provider without copying the MX records across.
- Before: note your MX records and any TXT records that mention your email provider (SPF, DKIM or verification).
- During: change only the A, CNAME and website TXT records your tool asked for.
- After: send an email to your business address from a personal account and reply to it. If it doesn't arrive, compare your MX records with your email provider's setup page.
Google says new MX records can take up to 72 hours to be recognised, so a mistake here can mean days of missed enquiries. Don't have a business address yet? Our guide to setting up a business email address walks through it.
Common mistakes, and when to hand it to someone
Most domain problems come from a short list of causes. Check these first.
- An old record left behind. A leftover A or AAAA record on @ or www sends some visitors to the old host and can block the certificate. Bolt warns that even one conflicting A record can prevent SSL.
- Cloudflare's orange cloud. If your DNS is on Cloudflare, Lovable and Bolt both say to set their records to DNS only (grey cloud). Proxied records cause errors and failed certificates.
- Only one version connected. The bare domain works but www doesn't, or the reverse. Add both and redirect one to the other.
- Nameservers switched without the email records. The website comes up and the email stops. Copy MX and TXT records first, or change only the website records.
- Checking too early. A security warning in the first hours usually means the certificate is still being issued. Wait for the dashboard to say Live, Secure or Valid.
- A free plan for a business site. Lovable and Bolt need a paid plan for a custom domain, and Vercel's free Hobby plan is for non-commercial use.
- The domain in someone else's name. If a past designer or the AI tool's account holds the domain, you don't fully control your address. Fix that before you need to move it.
Doing it yourself is a good choice when you have one site, the DNS list is short, and nobody uses email on the domain yet. Staying on your tool's paid plan is also a fair choice if you keep building with it every month.
Hand it over when your domain already carries business email you can't afford to lose, when the DNS list is full of records nobody can explain, or when you're a freelancer moving several client sites at once. It also makes sense once the site is finished and you'd rather pay for hosting than keep a builder subscription for the odd edit. Lumeen hosting moves supported sites in for free, including exports from Lovable, Bolt and v0. We connect the domain, set up SSL, and change only the records the website needs, so email stays where it is.
Key takeaways
- (01)
Publish the site first, then add your domain in the tool's settings. Lovable and Bolt need a paid plan for a custom domain, and Vercel's free plan is for non-commercial use.
- (02)
A .com.au needs an Australian commercial entity, usually with an ABN or ACN, and a name connected to your business.
- (03)
Add only the A, CNAME or ALIAS and TXT records your tool shows, and delete any old website records on the same names.
- (04)
Leave your MX records alone, and send yourself a test email once the site is live.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a paid plan to use my own domain with Lovable, Bolt or v0?
For Lovable and Bolt, yes. Both say custom domains need a paid plan, and both Pro plans were US$25 a month at the time of writing (October 2026). v0 sites run on Vercel, where the free Hobby plan is for personal, non-commercial use, so a business site belongs on Vercel Pro.
How long does it take for my domain to work?
Often a few hours, sometimes longer. Lovable says DNS changes can take up to 72 hours, Bolt says up to 24 hours for a domain bought elsewhere, and Vercel says up to 24 hours for DNS records to fully update. The certificate is issued once DNS is correct.
Will connecting my domain stop my email working?
Not if you only change the website records. Email is delivered by your MX records, which are separate. Problems start when MX records are deleted or nameservers are moved to a new provider without copying them across.
Should I buy my domain through Lovable, Bolt or Vercel?
It's the quickest way, because the tool sets up the records for you. The trade-off is that your address then lives inside your website tool's account. Buying from a separate .au registrar in your business's name keeps the domain independent if you change tools later.
More answers on price, hosting and timing in our FAQ.