Use a custom domain name for your SharePoint Online public-facing website address

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You can change your public-facing website on SharePoint Online to use a custom domain name instead of using the domain name that you chose when you signed up for Microsoft Office 365 for professionals and small businesses, for example, contoso.sharepoint.com.

Why do this? So customers can access your SharePoint Online website by using a familiar domain name that you already own or a new domain name that you’ve chosen and purchased for your business.

To watch a video about this task, see Assigning a Domain Name to a SharePoint Public Site.

Note

Be sure to customize your website before you update Office 365 to use your custom domain name for your SharePoint Online website. Otherwise, customers will see the sample website that is provided with SharePoint Online.

In this article

  • Change your SharePoint Online website to use the domain name you want

  • Prepare to change the domain name for your SharePoint Online website

Change your SharePoint Online website to use the domain name you want

  1. If you haven’t done so already, add your custom domain to Office 365. For more information, see Options for adding your domain to Office 365.

  2. Customize your Office 365 public-facing website by adding your company name, logo, and business information. For more information, see Customize a public-facing website.

  3. On the Admin page, in the left pane, under Management, click Domains.

  4. Click Change address, and then step through the wizard.

    Tip

    If you want to keep your current public-facing website, hosted outside of Office 365, instead of creating a new public website that uses your domain on SharePoint Online, don’t use the Change address option to point traffic to your SharePoint Online website.
    Instead, redirect your website traffic from Office 365 back to the hosting provider where your website is located. To learn how, see Update DNS records to keep your website with your current hosting provider.

You can now access your website using your custom domain, for example: https://www.contoso.com/, instead of your temporary Office 365 domain, for example: https://contoso.sharepoint.com/.

Prepare to change the domain name for your SharePoint Online website

When you change your website to use your custom domain name, keep in mind the following.

  • If you set up Office 365 to use your custom domain name for your SharePoint Online website, you can easily change the site later to use another custom domain name, or change back to the original domain name that you used, for example, contoso.sharepoint.com, by using the Change address option. Or later, you can move the site to be hosted by another third-party service.

  • You can only host one public-facing website with your Office 365 account, and you can only redirect one domain to the website.

  • You can’t use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol with a website hosted by Office 365.

  • Some DNS records must be overwritten by Office 365 to change the website to use your custom domain name. For example, if you have a DNS record named www, Office 365 must update that record to point to SharePoint Online.

See Also

Update DNS records to keep your website with your current hosting provider

Options for adding your domain to Office 365