Domains and publishing

Your free address, connecting your own domain, the DNS records to add, and what pressing Publish actually does.

Your website has up to two addresses, and they behave differently on purpose.

Your free address — your-business.maxaibuilder.com. It always shows your latest work, the moment you make it. Search engines are told to ignore it through both the page metadata and a robots.txt rule that blocks crawling, but anyone with the link can open it, which makes it the right thing to send a colleague.
Your own domain — your-business.com, once you connect one. Your website is published to it automatically the first time it verifies; after that it only changes when you press Publish.

That split is what makes the builder safe to experiment in. Visitors to your live site keep seeing the last version you published, however much you change in the meantime.

Shared organization plans

On the shared organization plans, custom domains are the plan limit: Free has none (your website previews on its free subdomain), Starter connects one, Builder five, Artisan ten and Agency the number agreed with us — as many as you need unless one was. The count is shared across the organization's Websites, Forms and Games. Publishing and editing never use a slot — only connecting a new domain does, and changing the domain a website already has does not use another.

If connecting a domain is refused because every slot is in use, the Domain page says so and names the plan that allows more domains. You can also disconnect a domain from a website that no longer needs it, or delete a project whose domain you no longer need.

What you see on the Domain page depends on your role:

Owners and Admins get an Upgrade plan button. It opens the plans right there, over the page, with the plan that allows more domains marked Lifts this limit. If no plan allows more (Artisan, or Agency), the button is Contact us and opens an email to us.
Members and Viewers get no button. The page shows the owner and each Admin by name, with an email link, so you know who can fix it.

Trying to connect a domain when the plan has no room shows the same message in a notice, with the same Upgrade plan or Contact us button for owners and Admins.

A disconnected or deleted project releases its slot once its live content is confirmed offline. While that finishes, the page tells you the place frees up within a few minutes and shows no button, because upgrading would not help. Contact support if it does not finish. An organization still billed per website sees Contact us instead: it is moving to an organization plan, and plan changes wait for that. See Organization plans.

Until the website is live, an In development strip runs across the very top of the dashboard, above the navigation, so the development address and publishing controls remain visible on every tab while you work. It disappears the moment the website goes live.

Once your own domain is connected and you have published, the live domain is one click away, always in a new tab:

On the dashboard, the Preview button on a live website's picture carries a globe and opens its live domain. Until the website is live, that button opens the development address instead. The ⋯ menu on the card keeps both: Open preview for the development address and View live website for the live domain, which stays greyed out until the website is live.
On the website's Overview page, View site beside Edit website opens the live domain, the ⋯ menu keeps View dev site, and pointing at the website's picture offers Visit website.
In the builder's top bar, the globe button to the right of the open-in-new-tab button opens the live domain, while the open-in-new-tab button keeps opening the development address.

A domain that is connected but has never been published is not live, so none of these live links appear for it.

On the Domain & publishing tab itself, the development address and your connected domain's name are links too, and each opens in a new tab. A name too long for its card ends in "…"; point at it to see the whole name, and Copy still copies the full address.

Open Domain & publishing from the builder menu under Website, or from your website's page on the dashboard.

Once your website is live, its own-domain card appears before the free development address so the address visitors use is the first thing on the page. Manage DNS is shown there as a disabled preview of the upcoming control; keep managing records with your current DNS provider for now.

Your free address

Every website gets one, chosen from its name when it was created. You can change it: type a new label and save. Two things to know before you do.

The old address is released immediately. There is no forwarding from it. If you have already shared the old link, keep it.
Your pages are updated with it. A website names itself in its own files — the canonical link on every page, robots.txt, sitemap.xml, llms.txt. Published pages automatically expand relative canonical links into full URLs so search engines can read their preferred address. Changing the address rewrites those too, so nothing is left pointing at an address that no longer resolves.
Your dashboard links change with it. The website's pages in the dashboard use the same name as its free address, so after a change you are taken to the same page at its new link. A bookmark to the old dashboard link stops working; open the website from your dashboard and bookmark it again.

Some labels are reserved for the platform and cannot be used; you will be told if the one you want is taken.

The free address is a development surface, so its /robots.txt always blocks all crawlers and every page is marked not to appear in search results. These protections are applied by the platform and cannot be weakened by a website edit. Your connected domain keeps the indexing and visibility settings you chose for the live website.

One thing that is not instant. Your pages update the moment you change them, on your free address as on your own domain. Pictures, stylesheets and fonts are held for a few minutes on servers close to your visitors, which is what makes a website load quickly wherever it is opened from. If you swap an image and still see the old one, give it five minutes — or open the preview in the builder, which never waits.

Connecting your own domain

Before a domain is connected, its Domain page shows two choices together: register a new domain through Max, or connect a domain you already own. A domain you register through Max is connected to the website for you once the payment clears. If Max or a teammate is changing the website at that moment, the connection simply waits for that change to finish and completes on its own within a few minutes — the page keeps saying setup is in progress, not that anything needs attention.

Connecting a domain needs a paid plan. On the Free plan the Domain page says which plan custom domains start on, and an owner or Admin can open the plans from there.

Enter your domain — your-business.com, without https://. You will be connecting both the bare domain and its www. form. A subdomain such as shop.your-business.com is connected on its own, with no www. form to set up.
Add the DNS records you are shown. These live at whoever you bought the domain from — the registrar's DNS panel, or your DNS provider's. The page lists each record with its type, name, and value, ready to copy.
Press Verify. Checking runs as often as you like; DNS changes usually take a few minutes to propagate, and occasionally up to a few hours.

There is no fourth step. The moment all three checks pass, we publish your website to your domain for you. The page shows Publishing your website while it is copied there, and tells you it is live only once your domain actually shows it — you are never told the domain is ready while it is still showing nothing. Checking also continues in the background, so you can close the page and come back to a live website.

If your website could not be published at that exact moment — you had not built anything yet, or it was mid-save — the page says so plainly and gives you a Publish now button to finish it.

The record table appears as soon as the domain is added. Until you select a DNS provider, the page shows broadly compatible A records for the main domain and www. If you use Cloudflare, select Cloudflare to switch the table to its preferred flattened CNAME records. Selecting any other listed provider keeps the compatible A setup and labels the instructions for that provider. For a subdomain, the table shows one traffic record named after the subdomain (shop for shop.your-business.com) instead of @ and www.

Changing a connected domain

Select Change domain, enter the replacement address, and review the confirmation before continuing. The confirmation names both addresses. Once you confirm, the current address stops connecting to this website immediately and the replacement address begins its own DNS verification. The old address is not forwarded automatically.

Disconnecting a domain

Select Disconnect beside Change domain to take your domain off a website without deleting the website. The confirmation names the domain. Once you confirm:

Visitors to the domain stop seeing this website. The address is not forwarded anywhere.
The website itself is kept — its pages, its published version and its free address, which becomes its address again.
On a shared organization plan the domain's slot is freed, so you can connect a domain to another website, including the same domain. A domain that was live is taken offline first, which usually takes a few minutes; until then the page says the domain is being taken offline and connecting another domain waits for it.
A domain you bought through Max AI Builder stays registered to you and keeps renewing. Only its connection to this website is removed. A domain you have just bought can be disconnected once its setup has finished.

Editors and administrators can disconnect a domain; viewers cannot.

The records, and what each is for

You will be given a handful of records across three purposes:

Domain ownership — a TXT record proving you control the domain.
SSL certificate — a CNAME record used to issue the HTTPS certificate. Your site is served over HTTPS; there is no separate certificate to buy or renew.
Website traffic — a CNAME pointing your domain at the platform's routing hostname, and the same for www. (a subdomain gets just the one record).

The traffic record points at a stable routing name rather than a raw IP address, so if the underlying infrastructure ever moves, your DNS keeps working untouched.

If your DNS provider will not put a CNAME on a bare domain, look for ALIAS, ANAME, or "CNAME flattening" — most providers offer one of them. If yours truly offers none, the page also shows an A record you can use for the bare domain instead. Prefer the CNAME wherever it is available.

The three status cards

Once a domain is entered, three cards tell you where you stand:

Domain — we can confirm you control this web address.
Security — HTTPS is protecting visitors to your website.
Website traffic — your domain is sending visitors to us.

All three go green when the domain is ready. Until then, the card that is still checking tells you which record to look at.

What visitors see while the domain is connecting

Opening your domain during setup is the first thing most people do, so the address answers with a short page that says where it has got to rather than an error:

Still connecting — your DNS records have not finished verifying. Nothing to press: the website appears there on its own once they do. DNS changes usually take a few minutes and can take up to 48 hours to reach everyone.
Almost ready — the domain is verified, and nothing has been published to it yet. Press Publish and the page is replaced by your website.
Being built — a free address whose website has no pages yet.
No website at this address — the address is pointed here, but no website has claimed it. Add the domain on this page and finish its DNS setup.

The page carries your website's name and colour, never any mention of Max AI Builder, and it tells search engines not to index it, so nothing half-finished can be found in a search.

Once your domain is added, and until your website first finishes going live on it, the domain may instead show "Your website is currently being deployed 🚀" with the Max AI logo. It is there so nobody meets an error while your website is on its way: it reloads itself every 30 seconds and is replaced by your website as soon as that is live. Search engines are told not to index it either.

Publishing

The publish button is at the top right of the builder, and its label tells you where you stand:

Publish — this website has never gone live.
Publish changes — you have edits your live site has not received yet.
Published — your live site matches what you are looking at.

Pressing it takes the current state of your website and makes it the version your domain serves. Your free address is unaffected — it was already showing this work.

You do not have to press it to go live in the first place: connecting a domain publishes your website to it once, by itself. Publish is how every change after that reaches your visitors.

If you publish before connecting a domain, the version is marked published and waits. Once you connect a domain, it goes live there.

Publishing takes a moment

After you press Publish, your website is copied to your domain before anyone is told it is live. You see Publishing your website — in the panel that opens in the builder and on the Domain page — and both change to Your website is live the moment your domain shows the new version. You can keep working meanwhile; if you close the panel, a message tells you when it is done.

A small website is live within seconds, and the panel says so within a few seconds of your domain showing it. A very large one — thousands of pages — takes several minutes, and the panel and the Domain page tell you where it is the whole way: the pages being checked before they go live, how many files are on your domain so far and about how long is left, then that every file is there and we are waiting for your domain to answer with the new version. While a new version is on its way, visitors keep seeing the one you published before, so nothing goes missing in between. Keep building, switch modes or reload the canvas meanwhile: the message that it is live (or that it stopped) still reaches you.

If publishing does not go through

The Domain page and the publish panel tell you why, in one of two ways:

Something in your website needs a change. The message names the file and what is wrong with it — for example a file type a website cannot contain. Ask the assistant to fix it, then publish again.
Something went wrong on our side. You will read: "Something went wrong on our side while publishing your website. Our team has been alerted and will fix it as soon as possible. Please try again shortly." We have been told automatically; you do not need to report it. Press Publish again on the Domain page in a little while.

Either way, if your domain was already showing an earlier version, it keeps showing that one.

When your live site falls behind

Once your own domain is connected, the builder tells you the moment the two drift apart. A small bar rises from the bottom of the canvas saying You have unpublished changes, and it stays until they agree again. It only appears when there is a real difference: a website without a connected domain has no live site to fall behind, and the bar never shows there.

The bar gives you both ways out.

Publish — the same thing the button at the top right does. Your live site catches up with what you are looking at, and the bar goes away.
Cancel changes — the other direction. Your website goes back to exactly what your domain is serving right now, and the bar goes away because there is nothing left to publish.

Cancel changes asks you to confirm first, because it replaces everything on your screen. Your live site is not touched by it: it was already showing the version you are going back to, and visitors see nothing change. Nothing is thrown away either — the version you cancelled stays in your website's history behind the one you came back to, so the numbering only ever moves forward.

Seeing what the changes are

The bar can tell you what it is talking about. Click anywhere on it — the words, or the arrow at its right-hand end — and it opens into a list of what your draft holds that your live site does not, in plain words:

Home — Hero: Heading changed from “Hello” to “Hey there”
About — Page added
Images — 3 images added

Changes are grouped by the page or the part of the website they belong to — a page, the header and footer, your website details, a collection such as your blog posts, your forms, your images. Each group also says who last touched it and when, so if a teammate made an edit while you were away you can see at a glance that it was Sam asked Max · 2 hours ago rather than something you did yourself. Your own edits read as You.

A few things to know about the list:

It compares the draft with the live site, so a heading you changed three times reads as one line, from what visitors see now to what they would see after publishing.
A page is read section by section. Where a section's text can be matched up you get the exact words that changed; where a change is bigger than that — a new design for a section, a rewritten page — the list says so without the detail.
A long day's work does not open as tall as your screen: the list has a fixed height and scrolls, and a page with many changes shows its first dozen and counts the rest.
Opening the list does not change anything. Publish and Cancel changes work exactly as before, from the bar itself, and pressing either closes the list.

Before your website has been published for the first time there is no live site to compare with, so the bar has nothing to open.

What is not part of publishing

Some things apply as pages are served rather than being built into a version, so they take effect immediately on both addresses without republishing:

Page content is the opposite. If you changed a page and your live site does not show it, you have not published.

How your pages stay fast

Visitors' browsers keep a copy of your photos, fonts, and styles, so the second page they open and every return visit paints from their own device instead of downloading everything again. Pages themselves are always fetched fresh, so an edit you publish shows up on the first load after publishing finishes — usually a few seconds after you press Publish.

The one thing to know: if you replace a picture but keep the same file name, a visitor who already had the old one may see it once more before their browser picks up the new file, and it can take up to five minutes to reach everyone. Uploading the new picture under a new name — which is what the media library does when you swap one — shows the new picture immediately.

Older versions

Every publish keeps the version behind it. The platform retains your recent versions plus whatever is currently published, so an unlucky publish is never the end of the story — ask the assistant to change what went wrong, or restore an individual file from its history.

Security and transfers — strict HTTPS for a connected domain.
Redirects — keeping old links working after a rebuild.

Uptime monitoring

Point your uptime monitor at /max-ai-health-check on your published domain. A healthy published site returns HTTP 200 and exactly {"service":"maxaibuilder"}. The response is not cached. The previous /maxaibuilder-healthcheck and /cmsmax-healthcheck paths remain available while existing monitors are updated. This checks that a site build with a homepage is available; it is not a test of all links or third-party services on the website.